With the audience having been enumerated [in Chapter 1, Introductory], the Buddha then teaches a Mahāyāna sūtra identified in Sanskrit as Mahānirdeśa. However, nothing of the content of that teaching is provided, and mahānirdeśa is a generic term that simply means “great instruction.” Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation, however, renders this as “a Mahāyāna sūtra named Immeasurable Meanings,” and by the fifth century, a text purporting to be this very sutra was circulating in China, also with the name Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings (Ch. Wuliang yi jing), said to have been translated by a monk named Dharmāgatayaśas. No Sanskrit original, or reference to the Sanskrit original, has been located, nor are any other translations attributed to Dharmāgatayaśas, leading scholars to consider the text to be a Chinese apocryphon, a work composed in China that purports to be not only of Indian origin but spoken by the Buddha himself. It achieved canonical status in China, where it is regarded as the first of three sūtras comprising the so-called threefold Lotus Sūtra. The text itself is short, not quite thirty pages in English translation, and has only three chapters. The first describes the bodhisattvas present in the assembly and reports their lengthy praise of the Buddha. In the second, the Buddha praises the importance of the Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings and then gives the actual teaching, which is that, although buddhas teach immeasurable meanings, they all originate from a single dharma, which is without form. Also in the chapter the Buddha says, “For more than forty years I have expounded the dharma in all manner of ways through adeptness in skillful means, but the core truth has still not been revealed.” East Asian commentators would find great meaning in this statement, for it serves to position the Lotus Sūtra as the Buddha’s final teaching. The third and longest chapter is devoted to ten benefits accruing to those who hear one verse of this sūtra or keep, read, recite, and copy the sūtra.