Religion Compass 4/2 (2010): 5565, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00195.

Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism I: Recent Scholarship

David Drewes*
University of Manitoba

Abstract

A good deal of important scholarship on early Indian Mahayana Buddhism has been done in
recent years. Well established theories, such as the theory that the Mahayana arose as a lay reaction
to the arhat ideal and the theory that it arose from the Mahasamghika monastic lineage, have been
rejected, and a number of new theories, perhaps most notably _theories linking Mahayana to forest
ascetics and to a cult of the book, have been put forward. Part 1 of this article surveys and
evaluates these recent developments. Part 2 will present a number of new perspectives for future
scholarship.

In recent years, early Indian Mahayana has been an active area in Buddhist studies. Views
that were widely accepted for most of the 20th century have been left behind and
new ones have risen to take their place. Part 1 of this article surveys and evaluates some
of the most important recent developments in the field. Part 2 will present some new
perspectives.
For most of the 20th century, the two leading theories on early Mahayana were that it
was a movement developed by lay people and that it developed from the Mahasamghika
_
nikaya, or monastic lineage. Both theories have their roots in 19th century speculation.
The idea that Mahayana was more open to lay participation than earlier forms of
Buddhism was first suggested by V. P. Vasilev in 1857 (Vassilief 1865) and grew popular
over the following decades. Also important was the idea that the Mahayana arose as an
altruistic reaction to the arhat ideal in favor of the putatively more compassionate ideal of
the bodhisattva, which was first presented by T.W. Rhys Davids in 1881 and quickly
began to ricochet around the field. The first scholar to present an actual lay origin theory
was Jean Przyluski, who argued that the Mahayana arose as a lay reaction to the haughty
spirit, atheistic nihilism, and sterile perfection of Buddhist monastics and their arhat
ideal. Unlike monastics, who retreated from the world to seek their own private salvation, Mahayanists became bodhisattvas for the good of other beings, even if one must
remain long in the whirl of reincarnations (1926, 1932, 1934). Przyluskis theory was at
root a simple combination of the ideas initially presented by Vasilev and Rhys Davids.
Building on Rhys Davids idea that the Mahayana began as an altruistic reaction to the
arhat ideal, Przyluski linked this reaction to the laity by tying the arhat ideal to Buddhist
monastics. Przyluski never cited any evidence to support his hybrid theory, but many
scholars, including Etienne Lamotte (19441980, vol. 3, 1954, 1984) and Edward Conze
(1951, 1960), found it plausible and it became the dominant theory on the origin of
Mahayana in the West for several decades. In recent scholarship Przyluskis theory has
generally been linked to Lamotte, its original authorship apparently having been forgotten. In the 1950s, the Japanese scholar Akira Hirakawa (1963, 1990) developed a different
lay origin theory, according to which the Mahayana developed among groups of lay
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56 David Drewes

people that coalesced primarily around stupa sites. While this theory found little support
in the West, it became highly influential in Japan.
The Mahasamghika origin theory also has its roots in the 19th century. It can be found
in the work of_ Hendrik Kern (1896, 19011903), L.A. Waddell (1895), and T.W. Rhys
Davids (1896). The Chinese monk Fa-hsien stated that he found a copy of the
Mahasamghika Vinaya in a Mahayana monastery in his fourth and fifth century travels in
_ the Mahasamghikas advocated a docetic Buddhology similar to that found in
India and
many Mahayana texts._ These facts, probably combined with the fact that both names
begin with Maha-, led many scholars to see a historical link. Scholars who advocated
this theory often presented it together with a theory of lay orientation or lay origin.
For most of the 20th century, scholars treating early Mahayana did little more than
recycle these two theories, singly or together, often with an admixture of various speculations, e.g., on the importance of Nagarjuna and Asvaghos.a, the place where Mahayana

developed (the most popular suggestions being the Andhra
region and the Northwest),
and the possibility of foreign, especially Persian, influence. A vast number of explanations conforming to this pattern were put forth over several decades. No significant
conceptual development occurred in Western scholarship in the field from the late
1920s to the 1970s.
New winds began to blow in the 1970s and 1980s. In his 1975 article The Phrase
sa pr@ thivpradesas caityabhuto bhavet in the Vajracchedika: Notes on the Cult of the Book in
Mahayana, Gregory Schopen argued, contra Hirakawa, that rather than coalescing primarily around stupa sites, early Mahayana groups rejected stupa worship and developed
new cult sites where they enshrined and worshiped Mahayana s
utras. He argued that
these sites served as institutional bases for various Mahayana groups. This theory quickly
became influential and remains so today. Building on Schopens ideas, other scholars
argued that the Mahayanas use of written texts was necessary for its survival and that
it enabled the development of some of its new ideas and imagery (Gombrich 1988;
McMahan 2002; Norman 1997).
Perhaps the single most influential publication in the field in recent decades has been
Paul Harrisons 1987 Who Gets to Ride in the Great Vehicle? Self-image and Identity
Among the Followers of Early Mahayana. In it Harrison presented preliminary results of
his study of the first Mahayana s
utras translated into Chinese, a group of 11 s
utras translated during the second century CE, most of which are attributed to the translator
Lokaksema, which at the time were the oldest datable Mahayana texts. Harrison pointed
_ while these texts do refer to lay bodhisattvas, they place higher value on monasout that
tic practice and sometimes advocate that laypeople become monastics or adopt rigorous
religious practices. He also pointed out that these texts provide little support for what
were at the time several other commonly held ideas about the Mahayana. Although the
Mahayana was long depicted as splitting off and forming a new school, or sect, of Buddhism distinct from the various, so-called Hnayana, nikayas, Harrison pointed out that
his texts provide no strong support for this view, and that they show little desire to
establish a new sectarian identity. Although the Mahayana was long imagined to have
begun with the rejection of arhatship, Harrison pointed out that some of the early translations in fact acknowledge the legitimacy of arhatship as a religious goal and even depict
their own teachings as resulting in arhatship or other attainments leading up to it.
Although the worship of so-called celestial bodhisattvas such as Avalokitesvara and
Manjusr was long depicted as one of the Mahayanas central features, Harrison observed
that none of his texts recommend devotion to such bodhisattvas. Harrison also argued
that although scholars have sometimes claimed that Mahayana had a more positive
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Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism I 57

attitude toward womens religious practice than earlier forms of Buddhism, his texts show
a generally negative attitude toward them. As he memorably put it, from the perspective
of his texts, although both men and women can ride in the Great Vehicle, only men are
allowed to drive it.
The publication of this article spelled the end of the lay origin theory in the West.
Harrison did not make an elaborate argument against it, but did not need to. The old
theory was no more than an assertion propped up by repetition. As soon as Harrison
questioned it, it immediately collapsed. So far as I can recall, only one attempt was made
to defend the theory and this was not influential (Vetter 1994).
Although it was never influential in the West, several Western scholars have presented
arguments against Hirakawas theory, pointing out that it is based on a number of faulty
presuppositions and is not supported by the available evidence. Several have pointed out
that it projects aspects of contemporary Japanese Buddhism, which is oriented primarily
toward lay practice, has a married clergy, and does not preserve a lineage of full monastic
ordination (upasampada), onto ancient India (Harrison 1995; Nattier 2003; Silk 1994b;
_
Williams 1989). Hubert
Durt (1991) has made the parallel observation that the Western
lay origin theory depicts the Mahayana as originating in the same manner as Protestantism
in the West and that it likely involves a projection of French secularism (lacite).
The Mahasamghika origin theory died a somewhat quieter death. Scholars began tak_ it long ago, arguing that other nikayas also had a clear influence on
ing bites out of
Mahayana thought (e.g., Dutt 1930; Hirakawa 1963; Thomas 1933). More significantly,
scholars in recent years have advocated a new basic perspective on the relationship
between Mahayana and the various nikayas. For most of the 20th century, scholars
depicted the various nikayas, the Mahasamghika, Sarvastivada, etc., as collectively repre_ the Hnayana, or inferior vehicle. Mahayana
senting what Mahayana texts derisively call
was generally presented as splitting off from the nikayas and forming an altogether distinct
form, or school, of Buddhism. Beginning in the 1960s, and throughout his career, Heinz
Bechert insisted that Indian Mahayana was not distinct from the nikayas and that
Mahayana monastics continued to take ordination in them (e.g., 1973). As we saw above,
Harrison stated similarly in 1987 that the early Chinese translations of Mahayana s
utras
provide little support for the idea of a distinct Mahayana sect. In a chapter in his widely
cited 1994 doctoral dissertation, revised and published as an article in 2002, Jonathan Silk
focused attention on this issue, arguing forcefully that in Indian Buddhism there is no
evidence that there was any kind of Buddhist monk other than one associated with a
Sectarian [i.e., nikaya] ordination lineage. He also drew attention to the fact that the idea
that Mahayana was not institutionally distinct from the nikayas had already been
advocated by several leading scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including
Junjir
o Takakusu, Auguste Barth, Louis de La Vallee Poussin, and Jean Przyluski.
Over the past roughly 15 years, the idea that Mahayana was not separate from the
nikayas has become widely accepted and most scholars active in the field have expressed
this view. The only notable holdout is Gregory Schopen, who has argued that while some
early Mahayana groups were marginalized, embattled segments still institutionally imbedded in the dominant mainstream monastic orders others may have been marginal in yet
another way: they may have been small, isolated groups living in the forest at odds with
and not necessarily welcomed by the mainstream monastic orders (2000). Schopens belief
that some Mahayanists were at odds with the nikayas seems to be based on his belief that
Mahayanists developed institutionally distinct book shrines (Drewes 2007). He does not
cite any other evidence for such Mahayanists and there does not seem to be any. As far as I
am aware, no other Western scholar of Indian Mahayana continues to assert the existence
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58 David Drewes

of Indian Mahayana groups distinct from the nikayas. In a similar vein, several scholars have
recently drawn attention to the fact that both Chinese pilgrims and Indian Mahayana texts
themselves make reference to Mahayanists living together in the same monasteries as nonMahayanists (e.g., Cox 2003; Nattier 2003; Schopen 2000).
Along with this general shift in opinion, scholars have ceased depicting the Mahayana
as having a special connection to the Mahasamghika. In principle, one could accept that
_ and still argue that the Mahasamghikas
the Mahayana was not separate from the nikayas
_
played an especially significant role in its formation. Louis de La Vallee Poussin (1930)
in
fact once did this. Contemporary scholars, however, have not adopted this approach,
probably because it has become clear that there is little evidence of a special linkage. Paul
Harrison expresses the current general consensus very well in his 1995 article Searching
for the Origins of Mahayana: What Are We Looking For?:
One of the things we cannot dois determine the sectarian affiliation of the early Mahayana. I
used to think that this was possible, but now believe it to be hopeless, since it has become
accepted that the Mahayana was a pan-Buddhist movement or, better, a loose set of
movements rather like Pentecostalism or Charismatic Christianity, running across sectarian
boundaries.

In 1979 and 1987, Schopen published two articles that drew attention to the important
fact that few of the many known Indian Buddhist inscriptions can be linked to the
Mahayana. He pointed out that the oldest epigraph that can be linked to the Mahayana is
an inscription on a pedestal which identifies the statue that was associated with it, now
lost except for its feet, as Amitabha Buddha, and which dates to about 153 CE. Apart
from this, the oldest clearly Mahayana epigraph he was able to identify dated from the
fourth or fifth century. Summarizing his findings, he commented, after its initial appearance in the public domain in the second century [the Mahayana] appears to have
remained an extremely limited minority movement if it remained at all that attracted
absolutely no documented public or popular support for at least two more centuries and
concluded:
All of this of course accords badly with the acceptedviewthat the movement we call the
Mahayana appeared on the scene somehow fully formedat the beginning of the Common
Era. Indian epigraphy makes it very clear that the Mahayana as a public movement began
to invert an old line of T. S. Eliots not with a bang, but a whimper. It suggests that,
although there was as we know from Chinese translations a large and early Mahayana literature, there was no early organized, independent, publicly supported movement that it could
have belonged to. (1987).

Although a third century inscription from Central Asia discovered after the publication of
this article seems to make reference to a king who had set out on the Mahayana and a
third century letter, also from Central Asia, makes reference to a magistrate who had
done the same (Salomon 1999; Walser 2005), Schopens observations remain essentially
valid. Apart from inscriptions, several scholars have claimed or argued that certain sculptures dating to the first centuries of the common era depict well-known Mahayana figures, especially Amitabha and Avalokitesvara, but other scholars have rejected all of these
identifications as incorrect or dubious (Boucher 2008b; Ducor 2004; Fussman 1999; Salomon & Schopen 2002).
Another idea which has become popular in recent decades is that the Mahayana
was not a single movement and that there were many distinct Mahayana groups, each
associated with a particular s
utra. The locus classicus for this view is the final sentence of

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Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism I 59

Schopens 1975 The Phrase sa pr@ thivpradesas caityabhuto bhavet, Since each text placed
itself at the center of its own cult, early Mahayana (from a sociological point of view),
rather than being an identifiable single group, was in the beginning a loose federation of
a number of distinct though related cults, all of the same pattern, but each associated with
its specific text. Following Schopen, Paul Williams (1989) comments that there was a
series of cults, probably based on different sutras and their attendant practices, and that
it is likely that [these cults] had little or no direct and regular connection with each
other. Jan Nattier (2003) similarly comments that there is no doubt thatthe communities that formed around [Mahayana s
utras] were multiple, for as Schopen rightly contends each text placed itself at the center of its own cult. Several other scholars have
expressed similar views (e.g., Boucher 2008a; Harrison 1995; Nakamura 1987; Ray 1994;
Silk 2002).
Most of the significant new conclusions on early Mahayana have been negative in
nature: Mahayana was not a distinct sect. It did not involve the worship of bodhisattvas. It was not developed by laypeople. It was not an offshoot of the Mahasamghikas.
_ ayana
It was not a single religious movement. With so many new things that the Mah
was not, what are we to conclude that it was? The leading theory to arise in recent
years is what Paul Harrison calls the forest hypothesis, and defines as the thesis that
the Mahayanawas the work of hard-core ascetics, members of the forest dwelling
(aranyavasin) wing of the Buddhist Order (Harrison 2003). The theory was first pre_ separately by Harrison himself and Reginald Ray in the early 1990s. In his 1995
sented
Searching for the Origins of Mahayana, originally presented at a conference in 1992,
Harrison asserted that the Mahayana s
utras translated into Chinese by Lokaksema in the
_
second century display a strong and positive emphasis on the dhuta-gunas (extra
ascetic
_
practices) and aranya-vasa (dwelling in the forest or jungle). Reginald Ray argued in
his 1994 Buddhist _ Saints in India that forest renunciants have been the primary innovators in the history of Buddhism and that they were responsible for the initial development of Buddhism, the rise of the Mahayana, and the development of Vajrayana. In her
2003 A Few Good Men, Jan Nattier argued that the Ugraparipr@ ccha Sutra represents the
earliest or most primitive form of Mahayana that we have access to and that it presents
the bodhisattva path as a supremely difficult enterprise adopted primarily by ascetic,
male monastics who typically practiced forest dwelling. Several other scholars have also
argued that forest dwelling was an important early Mahayana practice (e.g., Boucher
2001, 2008a; Deleanu 2000; Schopen 1995, 1999, 2000, 2003; Williams 2000).
The scholarship of recent decades has advanced our understanding of early
Mahayana significantly. Most important of the new developments, I believe, are Harrisons more-or-less single-handed disposal of the old lay origin theory; the clarification by Silk, Bechert, and others that the Mahayana was not institutionally distinct
from the nikayas; the attention drawn to the related fact that Mahayanists and nonMahayanists often shared the same monasteries; and the attention drawn primarily by
Schopen to the fact that there is virtually no archeological, epigraphal, or art historical
evidence for the early Mahayana. Harrisons suggestion that early Mahayana s
utras do
not advocate the worship of celestial bodhisattvas, that they often approve of or advocate the pursuit of arhatship, and that they are generally subordinative of women now
also seem to have become established and seem destined to stand the test of time.
The other main ideas that have been put forward, the idea of a Mahayana cult of
the book and the related idea that the Mahayana was dependent on the use written
texts, the idea that there were multiple Mahayanas, and the forest hypothesis, are each
problematic.
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60 David Drewes

The argument that Schopen makes for the existence of Mahayana book shrines is based
solely on a few enigmatic passages from a few Mahayana s
utras that say that places where
people use these texts in various ways, memorizing them, reciting them, copying them,
etc., will become caityabhuta. Previous scholars typically took this compound to mean like
a caitya or like a stupa or shrine, but Schopen argues that it in fact means a true shrine,
or even a great shrine, and that the passages refer to special cult sites where early Mahayanists venerated s
utras. He argues additionally that various passages that assert that more
merit can be made from the use of s
utras than from the veneration of stupas and relics indicate that the new Mahayana cult sites were set up in competition with the stupa cult.
Recent research suggests that the caityabhuta passages that serve as the basis of Schopens
argument do in fact merely compare places to shrines and do not make reference to actual
cult sites. In addition, it seems that when read contextually, the passages that Schopen
interprets as indicative of competition between s
utra and stupa worship actually reflect a
positive attitude toward stupa worship. Although there were long thought to be a few cases
in which Mahayana s
utra manuscripts were discovered in South Asian stupas, it has recently
become clear that there have not been any (Drewes 2007). Most notably, it now appears
that the Gilgit manuscripts, which were long believed to have been found in a stupa, were
in fact found in the ruins of a sort of house (Fussman 2004). Interestingly, however, there
are a very large number of cases in which non-Mahayana textual material has been found
in stupas. Overall, no evidence now suggests the existence of Mahayana s
utra shrines and it
can be safely concluded that they never existed. Although Mahayanists certainly venerated
texts in written form, the practice seems unlikely to have played an especially important
role in the movement. Rather than being distinctly or even originally Mahayana, the
practice seems to have been pan-Buddhist, or even pan-Indian, from an early date.
The idea that the survival of the Mahayana was made possible by its use of written texts
and the idea that it was distinct in being a written tradition are also problematic. The only
evidence that has been cited for either is passages advocating worshiping and copying s
utras.
The scholars involved generally ignore the facts that Mahayana s
utras advocate mnemic oral aural practices more frequently than they do written ones, make reference to people
who have memorized or are in the process of memorizing them, and consistently attach
higher prestige to mnemic oral practices than to ones involving written texts. Study of differences in various versions of s
utras translated into Chinese has directly shown that these texts
were often transmitted orally (e.g., Nattier 2003). It is thus highly unlikely that writing was
necessary for the preservation of Mahayana s
utras during the movements formative centuries.
There is no evidence that Mahayana s
utras were initially composed in written form. The
recent discovery of a non-Mahayana Buddhist avadana manuscript radiocarbon dated to a 2r
range of 18446* BCE (Falk 2008) and a non-Mahayana s
utra manuscript radiocarbon dated
to a 2r range of 206 BCE59* CE (Salomon & Allon forthcoming) makes it seem all but
certain that written texts were in use before the development of the Mahayana. If the dating
of these manuscripts holds up, presuming that Buddhist texts were written down for some
time before them, it is conceivable that Buddhist manuscripts could have been copied as early
as the third century, even in the time of Asoka, before which it is unclear that many Buddhist
texts even existed. Overall, there is no evidence that Mahayana textual practices were ever
distinct from those of non-Mahayanists. Generally speaking, the categories of written and
oral traditions fit Indian religions very poorly. A category like the literate orality proposed
by Velcheru Narayana Rao (1993) is necessary to make proper sense of them.
*Correction added on 25 October after first publication online on 18 December 2009. Errors in the years had been
introduced during the typesetting process and have been corrected in this version of the article.
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Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism I 61

The idea that separate Mahayana communities formed around individual Mahayana
s
utras also seems incorrect. First, as we have seen, several scholars have drawn attention
to the fact that there is no textual or archeological evidence that early Mahayanists
formed distinct communities at all, which makes it hard to imagine many, even perhaps
hundreds, of distinct communities coalescing around individual s
utras. The one significant fact cited for the existence of multiple Mahayana groups is that Mahayana s
utras
tend to advocate divergent doctrinal or philosophical views, but it is not clear why this
should be taken as evidence for separate communities. Mahayanists accept the authenticity of s
utras with a wide spectrum of divergent perspectives today and clearly did so
from the earliest periods for which we have evidence. We have s
utra anthologies which
cite literally dozens of Mahayana s
utras with divergent perspectives, the earliest of which
may have been composed in some form as early as the second or third century.
Mahayana sastra authors often cite multiple s
utras as proof texts. Translators of Mahayana
s
utras from Lokaksema in the second century CE on down usually translated multiple
_ perspectives. Finally, many apparently early Mahayana s
s
utras with divergent
utras themselves, including the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita (or Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines),
_ _ have the oldest firmly datable evidence, advocate the use of
the s
utra for which we
other, unnamed, Mahayana s
utras besides themselves. Rather than representing the established doctrines and practices of distinct communities, various Mahayana s
utras seem
more likely simply to represent the views and imaginations of different Mahayana
authors. Instead of distinct communities, the varying perspectives of Mahayana s
utras can
better be taken as evidence that the movement encouraged innovation and made room
for theoretical diversity.
The forest hypothesis provides a picture of the Mahayana that threads the needle of
some of the other recent findings in the field. Both Harrison and Schopen have pointed
out that a forest location for the early Mahayana could help to explain the near total
lack of early Mahayana inscriptions. It also makes it possible to imagine Mahayana as a
distinct form or forms of Buddhism not rigidly distinct from the nikayas. Despite having
ordinations in various nikayas, being isolated in forests could have led monastics to form
new groups. Western thinkers have also long tended to identify forest meditation as
true, original Buddhism. It was thus perhaps natural for those interested in the Mahayana
to imagine it as an intensification of this tendency or as a sort of revival movement.
The main problem with the forest hypothesis is that Mahayana s
utras, the final court for
any theory of the early Mahayana, provide little support for it. Harrison claims that
Lokaksemas texts place a strong emphasis on forest dwelling, but he does not cite actual
_ or texts as evidence. So far as I have been able to determine, only two of the
passages
dozen or so texts now linked to Lokaksema, the Pratyutpanna and Kasyapaparivarta,
_
actually advocate forest dwelling. The others
either do not mention it, depict is as
unnecessary for the pursuit of Buddhahood, or explicitly attempt to discourage it. The
Aksobhyavuha and larger Sukhavatvyuha s
utras, for instance, each present very easy prac_ such as merely listening to the s
tices,
utra, or thinking of particular Buddhas, that they
claim can enable one to be reborn in special, luxurious pure lands where one will be
able to make easy and rapid progress on the bodhisattva path and attain Buddhahood
after as little as one lifetime. In the Astasahasrika, the Buddha explicitly says that he does
not recommend forest dwelling and_ _ explains that it is a dangerous practice recommended by Mara. In another passage, the Astasahasrika depicts the great bodhisattva
__
Dharmodgata as having skillful means that enable
him to maintain his moral purity
even though he lives in a palace in the middle of a city and has sex with 6,800,000

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62 David Drewes

women. The Suramgamasamadhi Sutra also repeatedly makes the point that avoidance of
sensual pleasures is_ not important for bodhisattvas.
Reginald Ray and Nattiers versions of the theory are equally problematic. Ray is not
an early Mahayana specialist and his argument in support of the Mahayana portion of his
theory is based on only four texts that he cites only in Western language translation, only
one of which seems likely to be early (though another is a late anthology that quotes passages from some apparently early texts). He excludes from his study the large majority of
even the dozens of Mahayana s
utras that have been translated into Western languages,
many of which are clearly older than most of his texts, and few of which would lend any
support to his views. In addition, as Nattier (2003) has already suggested, not all of the
texts Ray cites in fact support his views. Although Ray claims that the Ratnagunas_
amcayagatha, the one text he cites that seems likely to be early, advocates forest dwelling,
for example, the very passages he cites from this text to support his claim explicitly discourage it.
Nattiers version of the theory is based on a single text, the Ugraparipr@ ccha Sutra, which
she depicts as containing the oldest or most primitive known evidence for the Mahayana
(Nattier 2003). Other recent scholars, however, have not seen the text as necessarily being
especially early (Dantinne 1991; Pagel 2006) and there are good reasons to conclude that
it was written after some of the other texts translated into Chinese around the same time,
e.g., the Astasahasrika. In addition, the Ugra advocates forest dwelling and monasticism
_ _ In one passage, the Buddha says that lay people should not criticize monks
inconsistently.
who violate the precepts, in another he defines forest dwelling metaphorically as dwelling
without relying on anything, and in another he permits forest dwelling only to people
who have many delusions. In one unusual passage, the householder Ugra is asked why he
has decided to remain a layperson and he replies that he has done so to benefit others.
The Buddha then applauds him and states that it would not be possible to find Ugras
good qualities in a thousand renunciant bodhisattvas. Before Nattier, several scholars in fact
took the Ugra as evidence for active lay participation in the Mahayana. Indeed, though this
has long been forgotten, it was Vasilevs reading of the Ugra that led him to make the first
historical suggestion that the Mahayana was open to increased lay participation (Vassilief
1865), which can clearly be shown to be the conceptual progenitor of the whole lay origin
theory. In another publication Nattier (2000) argues that the Aksobhyavyuha also provides
_ Mahayana. She argues
evidence of the importance of harsh and ascetic practice in early
that with the exception of a passage that states that one may attain rebirth in Aksobhyas
_
pure land, Abhirati, by memorizing and reciting the Aksobhyavyuha itself, which
she
_
regards as anomalous, the text presents rebirth in Abhirati as requiring a significant amount
of rigorous training. Nattier, however, overlooks the main passage in the text that
describes how to be reborn in Abhirati, which presents no less than twelve distinct methods, most of which are very easy (e.g., forming a desire to be born there, hearing the
names of bodhisattvas in Abhirati, practicing mindfulness of the Buddha s). As Naomi Sato
(2005) makes clear, most of these easy methods are found already in the oldest Chinese
translation of the text. Nattiers general idea that earlier forms of Mahayana advocated difficult, jataka-like practices and that easy means of practice were developed only later has
no obvious evidentiary support.
Overall, while the scholarship of recent decades has clarified a great deal, a number of
key problems remain. Part 2 of this article will present new perspectives on some of
them.

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Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism I 63

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Peter Skilling and Jonathan Silk for making valuable suggestions on
a draft of this paper and Richard Salomon for very kindly permitting me to cite one of
his forthcoming articles.
Short Biography
David Drewes is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at the University of
Manitoba. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 2006. His research is
focused primarily on early Mahayana and early Buddhism.
Note
* Correspondence address: David Drewes, 328 Fletcher Argue Bldg, Department of Religion, University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3T5V5.
E-mail: dddrewes@gmail.com.

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