The same characteristic marks the much richer collection of Mahayana Sutras, which contains the works most esteemed by Chinese Buddhists.  It is divided into seven classes: 

    1. [Chinese:  ] Pan-jo (Po-jo) or Prajnaparamita.[712]

    2. [Chinese:  ] Pao-chi or Ratnakuta.

    3. [Chinese:  ] Ta-chi or Mahasannipata.

    4. [Chinese:  ] Hua-yen or Avatamsaka.

    5. [Chinese:  ] Nieh-pan or Parinirvana.

    6. [Chinese:  ] Sutras in more than one translation
    but not falling into any of the above five
    classes.

    7. [Chinese:  ] Other sutras existing in only one translation.

Each of the first five classes probably represents a collection of sutras analogous to a Nikaya and in one sense a single work but translated into Chinese several times, both in a complete form and in extracts.  Thus the first class opens with the majestic Mahaprajnaparamita in 600 fasciculi and equivalent to 200,000 stanzas in Sanskrit.  This is followed by several translations of shorter versions including two of the little sutras called the Heart of the Prajnaparamita, which fills only one leaf.  There are also six translations of the celebrated work known as the Diamond-cutter,[713] which is the ninth sutra in the Mahaprajnaparamita and all the works classed under the heading Pan-jo seem to be alternative versions of parts of this great Corpus.

The second and third classes are collections of sutras which no longer exist as collections in Sanskrit, though the Sanskrit text of some individual sutras is extant.  That called Pao-chi or Ratnakuta opens with a collection of forty-nine sutras which includes the longer version of the Sukhavativyuha.  This collection is reckoned as one work, but the other items in the same class are all or nearly all of them duplicate translations of separate sutras contained in it.  This is probably true of the third class also.  At least seven of the works included in it are duplicate translations of the first, which is called Mahasannipata, and the sutras called Candragarbha, Kshitig., Sumerug., and Akasag., appear to be merely sections, not separate compositions, although this is not clear from the remarks of Nanjio and Wassiljew.

The principal works in class 4 are two translations, one fuller than the other, of the Hua-yen or Avatamsaka Sutra,[714] still one of the most widely read among Buddhist works, and at least sixteen of the other items are duplicate renderings of parts of it.  Class 5 consists of thirteen works dealing with the death of the Buddha and his last discourses.  The first sutra, sometimes called the northern text, is imperfect and was revised at Nanking in the form of the southern text.[715] There are two other incomplete versions of the same text.  To judge from a specimen translated by Beal[716] it is a collection of late discourses influenced by Vishnuism and does not correspond to the Mahaparinibbanasutta of the Pali Canon.