The History of Buddhist Thought c26.32

c26.32

The brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu are said to be the founders of the Yogāchāra school. They were the founders in the same sense as Nāgārjuna was the founder of the Mādhyamikas. In both cases there was a school in existence and popular expositions of the doctrine in sūtras. The genius of one or two men in each case resulted in a systematic exposition of the doctrines of an already existing school. The connection of Asanga and Vasubandhu does not seem to have been so close to the *Laṅkāvatāra* as was that of Nāgārjuna to the Prajñāpāramitā works, but it was essentially the system of that work which they expounded and elaborated. It is not necessary to hold that they were of exactly the same school, and naturally they applied their own methods of persuasion. When a doctrine was taught orally in separate monasteries, it would be inevitable that the originality of individual teachers would lead to new lines of thought. In this sense there may have been far more schools than we are aware of, but there were two definite Mahāyāna systems, the Mādhyamika and the Yogāchāra, and to one or the other of these all Mahāyāna schools belonged in essentials.