Heart Sutra

In The Heart Sūtra: Revisiting Its Texts, History, and Meaning, Henry C. H. Shiu investigates the historical origins of the Heart Sūtra, a significant Buddhist scripture. He compares the Sanskrit texts with their Chinese and Tibetan translations to analyse whether the Heart Sūtra might be a Chinese apocryphon, through detailed linguistic examination. To achieve this goal, Shiu thoroughly examines the primary sources from which the scripture was extracted. He emphasises the necessity of reading the Heart Sūtra in the larger context of the Perfection of Wisdom literature, which contains the essence of Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching. In this monograph, Shiu successfully transcends the boundaries between the Chinese, Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions and provides a revisionist interpretation of the Heart Sūtra.