Mahayana Buddhist Sutras

The Mahayana sutras are the body of scripture accepted as canonical, authoritative buddhavacana within the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, distinct from the earlier agama and nikaya texts shared with non-Mahayana schools. Composed and compiled across roughly a millennium beginning in the early centuries after the Buddha's death, they range from short devotional texts recited from memory to vast composite scriptures assembled from originally separate parts. This group gathers thirteen sutras in this atlas whose own live, cited descriptions each identify them as Mahayana Buddhist scripture: the widely recited Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra, and the broader Perfection of Wisdom Sutras corpus on emptiness; the Lotus Sutra, Avatamsaka Sutra, Lankavatara Sutra, Vimalakirti Sutra and Surangama Sutra, each foundational to a later school; the Pure Land tradition's Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra and the devotional Karandavyuha Sutra, Bhaishajyaguru Sutra and Nilakantha Dharani Sutra; and the Platform Sutra, the tradition's one sutra attributed to a Chinese rather than an Indian teacher. Together they show the diversity of genre, length and regional transmission that scholarship groups under this single canonical designation.