ABSTRACT
In the introduction to this book, I argued that the problem of the origins of Mahāyāna essentially devolves into two separate problems. The first is a genealogy of the genre itself, a classification that I argue often involves retroactive classification of prototypical works. The second problem is the genealogy of the works that would eventually become prototypical in this manner. Chapters 2 through 5 argue that much of what is understood to be Mahāyāna in Asia points back to the doctrines of the first chapter of the Perfection of Wisdom. In the last chapter, I laid out what I see as the textual history of the Perfection of Wisdom itself based on Schmithausen’s claim that the first few pages of the first chapter constituted the original core of the sutra.
