The Mahayana sutras are Buddhist texts that are accepted as canonical and authentic buddhavacana in Mahayana Buddhist sanghas. These include three types of sutras: Those spoken by the Buddha; those spoken through the Buddha's blessings; and those spoken through mandate. They are largely preserved in Sanskrit manuscripts, and in translations such as the Tibetan Buddhist canon, and Chinese Buddhist canon. Several hundred Mahāyāna sutras survive in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese translations. The Buddhist scholar Asanga classified the Mahāyāna sūtras as part of the Bodhisattva Tripiṭaka, a collection of texts meant for bodhisattvas.Boin-Webb, Sara (tr). Rahula, Walpola (tr). Asanga. Abhidharma Samuccaya: The Compendium of Higher Teaching. 2001. pp. 199–200
Buddhists consider the most important Mahayana sutras to be the spoken teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. These were quickly recorded one year following his Mahaparinirvana, when the Buddha's main attendant Ananda recited these Sutras in their entirety at the First Buddhist Council, where they were recorded. At that Council, two other attendants recited two other classifications of the Buddha's teachings.Ways of Enlightenment, Dharma Publishing, pages 31-32 Other Mahāyāna sūtras are presented as being taught by masters such as bodhisattvas like Mañjuśrī and Avalokiteśvara. There are various reasons that Indian Mahāyāna Buddhists give to explain why some Sutras appeared at later times. One such reason is that they had been hidden away in the land of the Nāgas (snake deities, dragons) until the proper time for their dissemination arrived. They are also sometimes called Vaipulya ("extensive") sūtras by earlier sources.Drewes, David, Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism II: New Perspectives, Religion Compass 4/2 (2010): 66–74,
Modern scholars of Buddhist studies generally agree these sūtras began to be more widely disseminated between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE.e Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004): p. 293Akira, Hirakawa (translated and edited by Paul Groner) (1993). A History of Indian Buddhism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass: p. 252 They continued being composed, compiled, and edited until the decline of Buddhism in ancient India. Some of them may have also been composed outside of India, such as in Central Asia and in East Asia.Williams (2008), p. 85. Some of the most influential Mahāyāna sūtras include the Lotus Sutra, the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Pure Land Sutras, and the Nirvana Sutra.
The Mahāyāna sūtras were not accepted by all Buddhists in ancient India, and the various Indian Buddhist schools disagreed on their status as "word of the Buddha".Sree Padma. Barber, Anthony W. Buddhism in the Krishna River Valley of Andhra. 2008. p. 68. They are generally not accepted as the Buddha's word by the school of Theravāda Buddhism.Hay, Jeff (2009). "World Religions" p. 189. Greenhaven Publishing LLC.
History and background
Origins and early history The origins of the Mahāyāna and their sūtras are not completely understood. Modern scholars have proposed numerous theories about the origins of Mahāyāna and the Mahāyāna texts.
Some of the main theories are the following:Drewes, David, Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism I: Recent Scholarship, Religion Compass 4/2 (2010): 55–65, Williams (2008), pp. 21-25, 30.
The lay origins theory, first proposed by Jean Przyluski and then defended by Étienne Lamotte and Akira Hirakawa, states that laypersons were particularly important in the development of Mahāyāna and its texts. This is partly based on some texts like the Vimalakirti Sūtra, which praise lay figures at the expense of monastics. This theory is no longer widely accepted."One of the most frequent assertions about the Mahayana is that it was a lay-influenced, or even lay-inspired and dominated, movement that arose in response to the increasingly closed, cold, and scholastic character of monastic Buddhism. This, however, now appears to be wrong on all counts...much of its [Hinayana's] program being in fact intended and designed to allow laymen and women and donors the opportunity and means to make religious merit." Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004): p. 494 The theory which held that Mahāyāna developed within the Mahāsāṃghika tradition. Drewes notes that there is actually little evidence that Mahāsāṃghika schools had a special connection to the production of Mahāyāna texts, and it seems Mahāyāna arose as a pan-Buddhist phenomenon. The "forest hypothesis", which states that Mahāyāna arose mainly among hardcore wilderness ascetics (aranyavasins) who were attempting to imitate the Buddha. This has been defended by Paul Harrison and Jan Nattier. This theory is based on certain sutras like the Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra and the Mahāyāna Rāṣṭrapālapaṛiprcchā which promote ascetic practice in the wilderness as a superior and elite path. These texts criticize monks who live in cities and denigrate the forest life.Williams (2008), pp. 33-34. However, Drewes notes that only a few early Mahāyāna texts advocate or promote this practice, and other Sūtras outright discourage forest dwelling or say it is unnecessary. The cult of the book theory, defended by Gregory Schopen, states that Mahāyāna arose among a number of loosely connected book worshiping groups of monastics, who studied, memorized, copied and revered particular Mahāyāna sūtras. Schopen also argued that these groups mostly rejected stupa worship, or worshiping holy relics.
According to David Drewes, none of these theories have been satisfactorily proven and they lack sufficient evidence. Drewes writes that the most likely origin of Mahāyāna is that it was "primarily a textual movement, focused on the revelation, preaching, and dissemination of Mahāyāna sūtras, that developed within, and never really departed from, traditional Buddhist social and institutional structures." The figures of this movement probably saw themselves as bodhisattvas entrusted with teaching and preserving the Mahāyāna sūtras.
Scholars like Joseph Walser have also noted how Mahāyāna sūtras are heterogeneous and seem to have been composed in different communities with varying ideas. Walser writes that "Mahāyāna was probably never unitary, but differed from region to region.".Walser (2012), p. 24. Likewise, Hajime Nakamura states:Unlike the various recensions of the Hīnayāna canon, which were virtually closed by the early centuries of the common era and which shared, at least ideally, a common structure . . . the Mahāyāna scriptures were composed in a variety of disparate social and religious environments over the course of several centuries, diverge widely from each other in content and outlook, and were in many cases meant to stand as individual works representing (it has been conjectured) rivals to the entire Hīnayāna corpus.There is also no evidence that Mahāyāna ever referred to a separate formal school or sect of Buddhism, but rather that it existed within the early Buddhist schools as a certain set of ideals, texts and later doctrines, for bodhisattvas. Mahāyānists also never had a separate Vinaya (monastic rule) from the early Buddhist schools.Williams, Paul (2008) Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations: p. 4-5 The Chinese monk Yijing who visited India in the seventh century, writes about how Mahāyāna monastics and non-Mahāyāna monastics lived together under the same Vinaya. The only difference among them was that Mahāyāna monks venerated the bodhisattvas and read the Mahāyāna sūtras.Williams, Paul (2008) Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations: p. 5
Some scholars like Richard Gombrich think that Mahāyāna Sūtras only arose after the practice of writing down religious texts became widespread in India and thus that they were always written documents. However, James Apple and David Drewes have drawn attention to these oral features of the early Mahāyāna texts, which were not written documents but orally preserved teachings. Drewes writes, that Mahāyāna sūtras 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 sutras translated into Chinese has directly shown that these texts were often transmitted orally. Mahāyāna sūtras were committed to memory and recited by important learned monks called "Dharma reciters" (dharmabhāṇaka), who were viewed as the substitute for the actual speaking presence of the Buddha.
Much of the early extant evidence for the origins of Mahāyāna comes from early Chinese translations of Mahāyāna texts. These Mahāyāna teachings were first propagated into China by Lokakṣema, the first translator of Mahāyāna Sūtras into Chinese during the second century."The most important evidence — in fact the only evidence — for situating the emergence of the Mahayana around the beginning of the common era was not Indian evidence at all, but came from China. Already by the last quarter of the 2nd century CE, there was a small, seemingly idiosyncratic collection of substantial Mahayana sutras translated into what Erik Zürcher calls 'broken Chinese' by an Indoscythian, whose Indian name has been reconstructed as Lokaksema." Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004): p. 492
The Mahāyāna movement remained quite small until the fifth century, with very few manuscripts having been found before then (the exceptions are from Bamiyan). According to Joseph Walser, the fifth and sixth centuries saw a great increase in their production.Walser, Joseph, Nagarjuna in Context: Mahayana Buddhism and Early Indian Culture, Columbia University Press, 2005, p. 29. By this time, Chinese pilgrims, such as Faxian, Yijing, and Xuanzang were traveling to India, and their writings describe monasteries which they label 'Mahāyāna' as well as monasteries where both Mahāyāna monks and non-Mahāyāna monks lived together.Walser, Joseph, Nagarjuna in Context: Mahayana Buddhism and Early Indian Culture, Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 40–41.
Modern scholarly views on dating Dating the Mahāyāna sūtras is quite difficult; and many can only be dated firmly to when they were translated into another language.
Andrew Skilton summarizes a common prevailing view of the Mahāyāna sūtras among modern Buddhist studies scholars as follows:
A. K. Warder notes that the Mahāyāna Sūtras are highly unlikely to have come from the teachings of the historical Buddha, since the language and style of every extant Mahāyāna Sūtra is comparable more to later Indian texts than to texts that could have circulated in the Buddha's putative lifetime.Indian Buddhism, A.K. Warder, 3rd edition, page 4-5 Warder also notes that the Tibetan historian Tāranātha (1575–1634) proclaimed that after the Buddha taught the sutras, they disappeared from the human world and circulated only in the world of the nagas. In Warder's view, "this is as good as an admission that no such texts existed until the 2nd century A.D."