tury or more and, therefore, would throw the earliest
phase of this literature back to about the beginning of
the common era. The emergence of the Mahayana
has—mostly as a matter of convention—therefore
been placed there. But even apart from the obvious
weaknesses inherent in arguments of this kind there is
here the tacit equation of a body of literature with a
religious movement, an assumption that evidence for
the presence of one proves the existence of the other,
and this may be a serious misstep.
The evidence for the Mahayana outside
of texts
Until fairly recently scholars were content to discuss
the emergence of the Mahayana almost exclusively in
terms of literary developments, and as long as they did
not look outside of texts the emergence of a Mahayana
could indeed be placed—at least conventionally—
around the beginning of the common era. But when
they began to look outside of texts, in art historical or
inscriptional or historical sources, for evidence of the
Mahayana as a religious movement, or for evidence of
actual Mahayana groups or cults in India, this became
much more difficult. A good illustration of the issues
involved here might be seen in the Indian evidence for
what became first in China, and then in Japan, a ma-
jor form of Mahayana Buddhism.
One of the Mahayana texts translated by Loka-
ksema is called in Sanskrit the Sukhavatlvyuha-sutra,
and a Chinese translation of it came to be a central
text for East Asian PURELANDBUDDHISM. According
to the line of thought sketched above, since this text
was translated already at the end of the second cen-
tury it must have been composed in India sometime
earlier and, by convention, around the beginning of
the common era. Thus, if we limited ourselves to tex-
tual evidence, this form of Mahayana Buddhism must
have emerged in India at that time. If, however, we
look outside of texts there is simply no evidence for
this. There is a large body of archaeological, art his-
torical, and inscriptional evidence for Buddhist cult
practice for this period, but absolutely nothing in it
would suggest anything like East Asian Pure Land
Buddhism, and no trace of the Buddha AMITABHA, the
central figure and presumed object of devotion in this
Buddhism. In the hundreds of Buddhist donative in-
scriptions that we have in India for the whole of the
first five centuries of the common era, in fact, there is
only a single certain, utterly isolated and atypical, ref-
erence to Amitabha, and it is as late as the second half
of the second century. Among the hundreds of sur-
viving images from the same period, images that tes-
tify to the overwhelming presence of the historical
Buddha S ́akyamuni as the focus of attention, there is
again a single certain isolated image of Amitabha.
There is a very small number of images or reliefs from
Northwestern India (Gandhara) that some scholars
have taken as representations of Amitabha and his
Pure Land, but there is no agreement here, and the
images or reliefs in question may date from as late as
the fifth century. In other words, once nontextual ev-
idence is taken into account the picture changes dra-
matically. Rather than being datable to the beginning
of the common era, this strand of Mahayana Bud-
dhism, at least, appeared to have no visible impact on
Indian Buddhist cult practice until the second century,
and even then what impact it had was extremely iso-
lated and marginal, and had no lasting or long-term
consequences—there were no further references to
Amitabha in Indian image inscriptions. Almost exactly
the same pattern occurs on an even broader scale when
nontextual evidence is considered.The Mahayana and monastic Buddhism in the
middle period
Although the history of Buddhism in India is in gen-
eral not well documented, still, for the period from
the beginning of the common era to the fifth to sixth
centuries—precisely the period that according to the
old scheme should be the “period of the Mahayana”—
we probably have better sources than for almost any
other period. Certainly, we have for this period an ex-
tensive body of inscriptions from virtually all parts of
India. These records document the religious aspira-
tions and activities of Buddhist communities through-
out the period at sites all across the Indian landscape,
and they contain scores of references to named Bud-
dhist groups and “schools.” But nowhere in this ex-
tensive body of material is there any reference, prior
to the fifth century, to a named Mahayana. There are,
on the other hand, scores of references to what used
to be called Hnayana groups—the Sarvastivadins,
Mahasam
̇ghikas, and so on. From this point of view,
at least, this was not “the period of the Mahayana,”
but “the period of the Hnayana.” Moreover, it is the
religious aspirations and goals of the Hnayana that
are expressed in these documents, not those of a Ma-
hayana. There is, for example, a kind of general con-
sensus that if there is a single defining characteristic of
the Mahayana it is that for Mahayana the ultimate re-
ligious goal is no longer NIRVANA, but rather the at-
tainment of full awakening or buddhahood by all. ThisMAHAYANA