↑ The Mahayana movement claims to have been founded by the Buddha himself. Scholars however, think that it originated in South India in the 1st century CE’ – Indian Buddhism, AK Warder, 3rd edition, 1999, p. 335.
↑ Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2004, page 293
↑ Buddhist Saints in India, Reginald A. Ray, 1994, p.404
↑ A History of Indian Buddhism - Hirakawa Akira (translated and edited by Paul Groner) - Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, 1993, p. 252
↑ Certainly, we have for this period an extensive body of inscriptions from virtually all parts of India. ... But nowhere in this extensive 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 Hinayana groups — the Sarvastivadins, Mahasamghikas, and so on. From this point of view, at least, this was not “the period of the Mahayana,” but “the period of the Hinayana.”, Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2004, page 493
↑ There are, it seems, very few things that can be said with certainty about Mahayana Buddhism, Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2004, page 492
↑ But apart from the fact that it can be said with some certainty that the Buddhism embedded in China, Korea, Tibet, and Japan is Mahayana Buddhism, it is no longer clear what else can be said with certainty about Mahayana Buddhism itself, and especially about its earlier, and presumably formative, period in India., Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2004, page 492
↑ It has become increasingly clear that Mahayana Buddhism was never one thing, but rather, it seems, a loosely bound bundle of many, and — like Walt Whitman — was large and could contain, in both senses of the term, contradictions, or at least antipodal elements., Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 2004, page 492
↑ The Shrimaladevi Sutra, tr. by Dr. Shenpen Hookham, Longchen Foundation, Oxford 1998, p.27
↑ Welch, Practice of Chinese Buddhism, Harvard, 1967, page 396
