བཅམ་ལྡན་འདས་མ་ཤས་རབ་ཀྱ་ཕ་རལ་ཏ་ཕྱན་པའ་སྙང་པ intro.7

intro.7

Traditionally, the earliest version of The Heart Sūtra in Chinese was thought to be Taishō 250, which in traditional sources is described as a translation of Kumārajīva. However, this attribution is generally no longer accepted, and some scholars have placed it later in time—some even in the beginning of the eighth century ce.⁹ Apart from Taishō 250, the earliest witness for The Heart Sūtra’s existence is a famous stone stele, which was discovered in the early twentieth century at the Yunju Temple in the Fangshan region near Beijing. The inscription on this stele is a rendering of the short version of The Heart Sūtra, and the colophon is dated to 661. The colophon further states that this is the translation prepared by Xuanzang (i.e., an equivalent of Taishō 251).¹⁰ Of the three shorter versions of the text in Chinese,¹¹ this is the one that has been commonly read and recited across East Asia down to the present day.