The History of Buddhist Thought c28.s5.3

c28.s5.3

Mahāyāna doctrine was expounded by Nāgārjuna in the second century A.D., and we can certainly hold that some of the sūtras were in existence a century, perhaps two centuries, earlier.¹ But we cannot point to any one of them and feel sure that it belongs to the first century B.C. The question of division into schools is also obscure. The two earlier Mahāyāna schools, that of Nāgārjuna and that of Vasubandhu, both called themselves Mahāyāna, and both taught the doctrine of the void and the career of the bodhisattva. We do not know how far their peculiar doctrines brought them into distinct opposition as sects. Many of the Mahāyāna sūtras are not sectarian at all. Some of them emphasize special doctrines of buddhology, or present imaginative mythology, which may have been accepted by any Mahāyāna sect. The most we can say about the sūtras is that they fall into groups. So far as they have sectarian features their relationship is rather that they arose in certain literary centres. The most distinctive in doctrine and probably the oldest is the Prajñāpāramitā group. Another group is that which emphasizes the worship of Amitābha. The Laṅkāvatāra is distinct from both, not only in its Yogāchāra doctrine, but also in its distinct literary character, which suggests South India.