4
The Rise and
Development of
Mahayana Buddhism
4.1 THE RISE OF MAHAYANA
D
uring the two c~nturies from 100 B.C.E. to 100 c.E., as India switched
from an oral to a written culture, developments within and without
Buddhism caused the religion to undergo one of the most far-reaching
splits in its history. On the internal level, the early canons were committed to
writing, thus fixing a standardized version of the teachings with a greater fi-
nality than ever before. Abhidharma scholars succeeded in getting their texts
accepted as part of this established corpus, on a par with the Sutra and Vinaya
Pitakas, but a backlash gradually developed-centering largely in Andhra, in
south India-among those who felt that Abhidharma analysis had missed the
point of the teaching. In taking on the Abhidharmists, the members of this
backlash found themselves faced with the belief that the Abhidharma was di-
rectly or indirectly the word of the Buddha, so they began composing new
Sutras of their own, placing their anti-Abhidharma arguments in the mouths
of the Buddha and the great arhants, and claiming that their Sutras were newly
discovered texts that had been hidden since the Buddha's time. The disagree-
ment over whether these new Sutras could be accepted as normative seems to
have been the first rift leading to the major split.
On the external level, Buddhism as a whole was encountering a host of
new theistic religious movements in its expanding environment. The cult of
Vi~l).u was developing in India, while Hellenistic and Zoroastrian savior cults
were spreading into Gandhara in northwestern India and along the major trade
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