F​i​v​e​-​S​c​r​i​p​t​ ​H​e​a​r​t​ ​S​u​t​r​a​ ​o​f​ ​P​r​a​j​ñ​ā​p​ā​r​a​m​i​t​ā

The “Heart Sutra of Prajñāpāramitā” is among the most widely circulated short scriptures of the Prajñā corpus, usually attributed to the Tang translation by Xuanzang, summarizing the meaning of emptiness in prajñā and the bodhisattva path through phrases such as “the five aggregates are all empty” and “form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form.” In Qing imperial and official printing systems, multilingual Buddhist scriptures in Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and other scripts were commonly produced to reflect the empire’s multilingual governance, ties with Tibetan Buddhism, and Buddhist patronage. This item, titled “Five-Script Heart Sutra of Prajñāpāramitā,” is a carved edition from the forty-ninth year of the Qianlong reign and may serve as material for the study of multilingual Buddhist printing, the dissemination of the Heart Sutra, and Qing court Buddhist culture.