The following are the names of some of the principal Mahayanist scriptures.  Comparatively few of them have been published in Europe and some exist only in Chinese or Japanese translations.

1.  Prajna-paramita or transcendental knowledge[129] is a generic name given to a whole literature consisting of treatises on the doctrine of sunyata, which vary greatly in length.  They are classed as sutras, being described as discourses delivered by the Buddha on the Vulture Peak.  At least ten are known, besides excerpts which are sometimes described as substantive works.  The great collection translated into Chinese by Hsuean Chuang is said to consist of 200,000 verses and to comprise sixteen different sutras.[130] The earliest translation of one of these treatises into Chinese (Nanjio, 5) was made about 170 A.D. and everything indicates that portions of the Prajna-paramita are among the earliest Mahayanist works and date from about the first century of our era.  Prajna not only means knowledge of the absolute truth, that is to say of sunyata or the void, but is regarded as an ontological principle synonymous with Bodhi and Dharma-kaya.  Thus Buddhas not only possess this knowledge in the ordinary sense but they are the knowledge manifest in human form, and Prajna is often personified as a goddess.  All these works lay great stress on the doctrine of sunyata, and the non-existence of the world of experience.  The longest recension is said to contain a polemic against the Hinayana.

The Diamond Cutter is one of the best known of these transcendental treatises and the two short works called Heart of the Prajna-paramita, which are widely read in Japan, appear to be brief abstracts of the essence of this teaching.

2.  The Saddharma-Pundarika, or Lotus of the Good Law,[131] is one of the best known Mahayanist sutras and is highly esteemed in China and Japan.  It purports to be a discourse delivered by Sakyamuni on the Vulture Peak to an assemblage of Bodhisattvas.  The Lotus clearly affirms the multiplicity of vehicles, or various ways of teaching the law, and also the eternity of the Buddha, but it does not emphasize, although it mentions, the doctrine of sunyata.  The work consists of two parts of which the second (chaps.  XXI-XXVI) is a later addition.  This second part contains spells and many mythological narratives, including one of an ancient Bodhisattva who burnt himself alive in honour of a former Buddha.  Portions of the Lotus were translated into Chinese under the Western Tsin Dynasty 265-316 A.D. and it is quoted in the Maha-prajna-paramita-sastra ascribed to Nagarjuna.[132] The first part is probably not later than the first century A.D.  The Lotus is unfortunately accessible to English readers only in a most unpoetic translation by the late Professor Kern, but it is a great religious poem which starting from humanity regards religion as cosmic and universal, rather than something mainly concerned with our earth.  The discourses of Sakyamuni are accompanied in it by stupendous miracles culminating in a grand cosmic phantasmagoria in which is evoked the stupa containing the body of a departed Buddha, that is a shrine containing the eternal truth.