The History of Buddhist Thought c21.18

c21.18

Although we are unable to point to the actual place or the particular school in which the doctrine arose, we thus find all the conditions for its origination among the Sarvāstivādins. We can speak of Mahāyāna doctrine when it began to be cultivated as the sole or only worthy ideal. As the Mahāyānists existed at the time when the extant Sarvāstivāda documents were compiled, it is possible that reciprocal Mahāyāna influences may be found in them, but it is in these documents that we find the earliest form of the bodhisattva doctrine.