The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment is famously known in Chinese as 圓覺經 (Yuánjué jīng) and in Korean as 원각경 (Won-gak-gyeong). Despite its deep influence on Ch’an (Zen) circles, no original Sanskrit manuscript has ever turned up. Scholars generally agree it’s an apocryphal text composed in China around the late Tang dynasty—think ninth century—rather than a direct translation from an Indian original.

Over the years, retroactive Sanskrit titles have been floated—labels like Pūrṇa-bodhi-sūtra (“Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment”) or Sammāsambodhi-sūtra—but those are modern conveniences rather than evidence of an authentic Indian predecessor. Tracking down a Sanskrit original has become something of a wild goose chase, often leading researchers into parallels with the Avataṃsaka or Samādhi‐rāja Sūtras, whose vocabulary and thematic echoes appear throughout.

Recent academic meetings—like the 2023 International Association of Buddhology conference in Kyoto—have once again underscored this point: no palm-leaf or birch‐bark fragments in Sanskrit have surfaced. What survives instead is the beautifully concise Chinese text that Zen communities from the Caodong and Linji schools in China to the Seon monasteries of Korea have treasured for over a millennium. In that sense, the “original” language of this sutra is firmly Chinese, its Sanskrit identity more a scholarly placeholder than a historical reality.