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The Mahāvastu (Sanskrit for "Great Event" or "Great Story") is a canonical text of the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda school of Early Buddhism which was originally part of the school's Vinaya. The Mahāvastu is a composite multi-life hagiography of the Buddha The Buddha. Its numerous textual layers are held by scholars to have been compiled between the 2nd century BCE and 4th century CE. "Mahāvastu" (2008).Jones (1949), p. xi, writes: ""... the Mahāvastu is not the composition of a single author written in a well-defined period of time. Rather, it is a compilation which may have been begun in the second century B.C., but which was not completed until the third or fourth century A.D."
The Mahāvastu was first published in the West in an editio princeps by Émile Senart between 1882 and 1897.Tournier 2017 This edition is in a language which has been termed Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.Jones (1949), pp. x–xi.
The Mahāvastu opens with two prologues ( nidānas), the Nidānanamaskāras (dating to around the 3rd century CE) and the Nidānavastu (c. 1st century CE).
Four sections of the Mahāvastu contain texts of the Bahubuddhaka sūtra genre. This includes a bahubuddhasūtra in chapter XXI of Jones' translation, Volume III and Chapter V in Jones Volume I. The Bahubuddhakasūtras are which contain narratives of past Buddhas and these narratives often served as sources for Buddhist doctrines relating to the bodhisattva path. Parallel examples of Bahubuddhakasūtras have been found in Gandharan Buddhist text collections.Salomon, Richard. New Biographies of the Buddha in Gāndhārī (Studies in Gāndhārī Manuscripts 3) Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume: 44, 2021, Pages: 355-401. DOI: 10.2143/JIABS.44.0.3290296 One of these manuscripts dates to the 1st century BCE. Another parallel Bahubuddhaka sūtra is the Chinese translation Fo benxing ji jing (Taisho 190).
The Mahāvastu
From "Ancient Buddhist Texts". See also; ch. 8, "Sahassavagga", and ch. 25, "Bhikkhuvagga"
The more recent layer of the Mahāvastu is the Daśabhūmika, a text which contains teachings on a scheme of bodhisattva bhūmis (stages). According to Vincent Tournier, this text was grafted into the Mahāvastu (which itself does not contain any teaching on bodhisattva stages) during the last period of textual formation (ca. 4-6th centuries CE). The Daśabhūmika seems to have originally been considered an appendix or supplement (parivāra, parisara) which later made its way into the Mahāvastu itself. A similar case occurred with the second Avalokitasūtra which shows similarities with Mahayana sutras.
In spite of this school affiliation however, the Theravada Bhikkhu Telwatte Rahula concludes in his study of the text that its depiction of the Buddha is not that much different than the depiction of the Buddha in the Pali Canon, since the more docetic and transcendent ideas common to the Lokottaravāda are not widely present in the text.Bhikkhu Telwatte Rahula (1978). A Critical study of the Mahāvastu. pp. 70-79. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass.
The Nidānanamaskāras prologue introduced the doctrine of the fourfold "phases" of the bodhisattva's career. According to this doctrine, the four stages ( caryās) of the bodhisattva path are:Drewes, David, Mahāyāna Sūtras and Opening of the Bodhisattva Path, Paper presented at the XVIII the IABS Congress, Toronto 2017, Updated 2019.
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