Crossword-Solution: RAMIT 5 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 7

The Mahâbhârata and Prajñâpâramitâ are not books in the European sense: we cannot give a date or a table of contents for the first edition[65]: they each represent a body of literature whose composition extended over a long period.

Many sutras (for instance the Diamond Cutter) extol themselves as all-sufficient for salvation: the Prajñâ-pâramitâ commences with a salutation addressed not as usual to the Buddha but to the work itself, as if it were a deity, and Hodgson states that the Buddhists of Nepal worship their nine sacred books.

Thus the T'ien-t'ai sect has for its scriptures the Lotus, the Nirvâṇa-sûtra and the Prajñâ-pâramitâ, while the Shin-shu sect admits only the three Amidist sutras.

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

Similarly it is held in the Far East that there were five periods in Śâkyamuni's teaching which after passing through the stage of the Hinayana culminated in the Prajñâ-pâramitâ and Amitâbha sutras shortly before his death.