Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c10.2

c10.2

It need not be pointed out how great is the importance of the Prajñāpāramitās in the history of the Buddhist literature and how much the history of the origin and development of Mahāyānism depends on them. From the large number of works on Prajñāpāramitās existing in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan, a list of which is to be found in Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese Buddhist Tripiṭaka and Walleser's Die Vollkommenheit der Erkenntnis, it is apparent that at a certain stage of Buddhism the Prajñāpāramitās were considered by the Buddhists the most holy and the most valuable of all works. Nāgārjuna considered it worth while to undertake the task of writing a commentary on one of them while Asaṅga and many others devoted much time and energy to comprehend the philosophy embedded in them.