ABSTRACT
THE problems of the composition of the Mahayana Scriptures are much more complex than what we find in the eighteen schools. These schools had a body of Scripture which was essentially the same for all. Even the avadanas of the Sarvastivadins were not an attempt to compile new suttas to be added to the original collection. But the Mahayanists deliberately composed new discourses on the model of the old. These works begin with the same phraseology, " thus have I heard " (the words which Ananda is held to have used when reciting the suttas at the first Council), and they continue with the statement that Buddha was dwelling at a certain place. Then follows a discourse very different from the matter of the old suttas. What view the authors held about historical facts is not clear. It may be that the structure of the discourse was considered a mere convention, and that enthusiasm for the truth of the doctrines expounded produced the conviction that it must have been the primitive teaching.
