Buddhism has a large corpus of scripture and The Lotus Sutra is regarded as the most important of the Mahayana Buddhism which spread in most parts of the then known world, including China, Korea and Japan, where it served as the basis of Tien-tai, Tendai and Nichiren schools, the latter now very popular in the West under the name of Soka Gakkai led by the famous Daisaku Ikeda. The work bears the character of a dramatic performance, the chief interlocutor being Sakyamuni Lord Buddha himself, consisting of a series of dialogues, brightened by the magic effects of a would be supernatural scenery.

The work is interesting to the non-Buddhist also, because it reveals to him the reason why an Indian religion spread all over without the use of any kind of force, and so successfully.