The figure who composed the Heart Sutra cannot be identified with certainty, and the question of authorship has long remained open to debate. Traditional Buddhist devotion often presents the text as a direct teaching of the Buddha, with Avalokiteśvara as the speaker and the Buddha confirming the discourse, yet this is not regarded as historically precise by most scholars. Other traditional attributions, such as to great masters like Nāgārjuna, are likewise understood as expressions of reverence rather than historical claims. From a scholarly perspective, the text is best approached as anonymous, the work of unknown Mahayana monks or scholars rather than a single, named author. It stands as a distilled expression of the broader Prajñāpāramitā, or “Perfection of Wisdom,” literature, rather than as an isolated or entirely original composition.

The dating of the Heart Sutra is similarly a matter of careful inference rather than firm certainty. Modern scholarship generally places its composition somewhere between roughly the 2nd and 6th centuries of the common era, with many proposals clustering between about the 4th and 6th centuries. The earliest reliable witnesses are Chinese translations, with figures such as Kumārajīva and later Xuanzang playing a crucial role in transmitting the text. Xuanzang’s translation in particular marks a clear point by which the text was already well established. Some scholars suggest that the work may have originated in Sanskrit, while others argue for a Chinese origin later rendered into Sanskrit; this remains a contested point, and no single view commands universal agreement.

What emerges from this uncertainty is a picture of the Heart Sutra as a kind of crystallization of Mahayana wisdom rather than the product of an individual genius. It appears to condense themes and even passages from longer Prajñāpāramitā scriptures, such as the vast “Perfection of Wisdom in 25,000 Lines,” into a brief yet potent liturgical form. The earliest surviving Sanskrit manuscripts are relatively late, while Chinese versions provide the first solid textual footing, suggesting a long period of transmission, adaptation, and contemplative use before the text reached the form now revered. In this light, the Heart Sutra can be seen less as the voice of a single author and more as the echo of a centuries-long conversation on emptiness, distilled into a few unforgettable lines that continue to shape Mahayana understanding.