The Case for the Authenticity of the Lotus Sutra

Ancient Manuscript of the Lotus Sutra

Modern Buddhist studies often operate with an implicit hierarchy of textual authority. At the top of this hierarchy stands the Pali Canon, widely regarded as the most reliable record of the historical Buddha’s teachings. Mahayana sutras, by contrast, are commonly treated as later doctrinal innovations, valuable for religious development but historically inauthentic. This essay questions whether that confidence in the Pali Canon is as secure as it is often assumed to be, and whether the dismissal of texts such as the Lotus Sutra as ahistorical rests more on methodological assumptions than on decisive evidence.

The argument advanced here is not that the Lotus Sutra can be conclusively proven to be a verbatim discourse of the historical Buddha. Rather, it is that the sharp contrast drawn between an “authentic” Pali Canon sutta and “inauthentic” Mahayana sutras is overstated, and that belief in the possible historical authenticity of the Lotus Sutra is more compatible with the available evidence than is typically acknowledged.

The Pali Canon as a Sectarian Product

The Pali Canon is often described as “the earliest Buddhist canon,” a phrase that quietly elides several important qualifications. While it is the oldest surviving complete Tripiṭaka, it is not the original canon, nor is it preserved in the language spoken by the Buddha. Pali itself is a standardized Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language, so the Pali Canon is both a liturgical text and a “translation” like the Sanskrit manuscripts, not a verbatim transcript of spoken discourses. Like the Chinese and Sanskrit canons, it represents a “translation,” redaction, and standardization of earlier oral material. The notion that the Pali language is identical to the Magadhi Prakrit spoken by the historical Buddha is, in fact, widely accepted by scholars as being a Theravada myth. (The reason I put “translation” in scare quotes is because, while Pali isn’t the exact dialect spoken by the Buddha, it is probably similar enough to be considered practically identical. Pali isn’t exactly the precise way Shakyamuni would have spoken but it isn’t exactly a different language either.)

Moreover, the Pali Canon is not a neutral archive. It is the product of a specific sectarian lineage, transmitted and eventually written down by Theravādin communities in Sri Lanka around the first century BCE. That process necessarily involved selection, exclusion, and doctrinal framing. The existence of substantial overlap across Buddhist canons does testify to a shared early tradition, but the points of divergence are equally instructive.

One particularly revealing case concerns the ordination of Mahāprajāpatī and the founding of the bhikkhunī order. In the Pali Vinaya, the Buddha is portrayed as reluctant to ordain women and as predicting that the admission of women will hasten the decline of the Dharma. He then imposes the eight gurudhammas, strict rules for nuns that clearly subbordinate them to monks. Yet in one Northern parallel of this account, these patriarchal elements are absent in the beginning and only develop later. In this version, the Buddha does not resist Mahāprajāpatī’s request, nor does he lament the consequences of female ordination. Instead, the nuns are relatively free to do their own thing in the early sangha, with the monks getting upset and demanding the imposition of strict patriarchal rules later. The discrepancies around this narrative strongly suggests doctrinal alteration rather than simple preservation. (See my post A Sidelight on Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī for more information on this.)

Further evidence of sectarian shaping appears in the Theravādin insistence that only men can become bodhisattvas or buddhas, despite passages in the Pali Canon itself affirming that women can attain unsurpassed awakening. Correspondingly, the Jātaka corpus preserved in Pali includes only male bodhisattva births, while Northern traditions preserve stories in which the bodhisattva is female. (There are early Buddhist manuscripts of the Rupavati story from both the Dharmaguptaka and Mulasarvastavadin recensions of the Tripitaka.) These patterns point to selective transmission driven by doctrinal commitments, not to a uniquely pristine preservation of early Buddhism.

If the Pali Canon itself shows signs of doctrinal trimming and ideological interpolation, its status as the unquestioned baseline for authenticity becomes far less secure.

The bhikkhuni (nun) order has completely disappeared within the Theravada tradition. Its non-existence is largely due to patriarchy and sexism. Even the Pali Canon affirms that the Buddha allowed the ordination of nuns. Nevertheless, patriarchal culture led to the decline of the bhikkhuni order in the Theravada world. There have been movements to restore the bhikkhuni order in Theravada but the all-male hierarchy has opposed it and regarded it as illegitimate. The main argument against it is that nuns require dual ordination; first they must be ordained by a quorum of bhikkhunis and then by a quorum of bhikkus (monks). Since there is no bhikkhuni order in Theravada countries, the monks argue that no restoration of the order of nuns is possible. The problem is, the Mahayanists do have bhikkhunis and it is possible to go outside the Theravada lineage to re-establish the order of nuns. Mahayana monastic orders trace back to the Mulasarvastivada and Dharmaguptaka lineages within the Sthavira Nikaya — it’s literally the same lineage as the Theravadins. In Buddhist monastic discipline, “heresy” does not render a monastic lineage or its ordinations invalid. If the Mahayana bhikkhunis are following the Vinaya, then their ordination of nuns would be valid, regardless of doctrinal differences. Furthermore, the requirement of dual ordination seems to have been a later addition to the text and not a part of the oldest layer of composition, as it is missing from some versions of the account. The refusal to fully ordain women seems to be motivated by patriarchal culture. And there is considerable evidence that the Theravadins did alter the Buddhist canon in order to justify patriarchal norms.

Manuscript Chronology and the Limits of “Early”

The chronological gap between the Pali Canon and Mahayana literature is often exaggerated. While Theravādin tradition holds that the Pali Canon was written down in the first century BCE, the oldest surviving Pali manuscripts date only to the fifth century CE, with the oldest complete picture of the Pali Canon only coming many centuries later than that. By comparison, the Chinese Tripiṭaka began to be committed to writing in the first century CE, with surviving manuscripts from the sixth century. The difference, while real, is not dramatic.

More importantly, the oldest Buddhist manuscripts of any kind are the Gandhāran texts, dating from the first to third centuries BCE. These texts belong to a non-Theravādin school, particularly the Dharmaguptaka tradition, whose Vinaya later became foundational for Mahayana ordination. The existence of these early non-Pali witnesses undermines the idea that the Theravādin recension uniquely preserves the earliest strata of Buddhism.

Against this background, it is significant that some Mahayana texts demonstrably existed at a very early date. The Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra is attested in Gandhāran manuscripts as early as the second century BCE, potentially predating the writing down of the Pali Canon itself. Manuscript evidence for the Lotus Sutra is roughly contemporaneous with early Pali witnesses, not separated by centuries as is sometimes implied.

Thus, while the Lotus Sutra is generally believed by scholars to be not “early” in the same sense as the oldest layers of the Nikāyas/Agamas, it is also generally accepted that it existed and circulated during or even before the period of canonical fixation in Sri Lanka. The idea that the various Mahayana sutras are later forgeries rather than products of early Buddhism is based more on speculation and assumption than on solid manuscript evidence. Most of the facts that seem to support that assumption can also be explained in other ways. (This is a point we will return to shortly.)

To put the Lotus Sutra in historical context, let’s look at another early Mahayana sutra. When people discuss the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, they often assume it is a late and purely imaginative work of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Yet the textual history of the scripture is far more interesting and complicated than that assumption suggests. The Avataṃsaka is not a single text composed all at once, but rather a vast compilation that appears to have grown by incorporating several earlier Mahāyāna scriptures. Among the most important components are the Daśabhūmika Sūtra, which outlines the ten stages of the bodhisattva path, the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra, which tells the story of the seeker Sudhana traveling to meet fifty-three spiritual teachers, the devotional text known as the Bhadracaryāpraṇidhāna, and cosmological sections such as the Anantabuddhakṣetraguṇodbhāvana. These works circulated independently before being assembled into the massive scripture known today in East Asia as the Flower Garland Sutra.

What is particularly noteworthy is that manuscript fragments of some of these component sutras, of which the Avatamsaka is comprised, survive from the 5th to 7th centuries, including Sanskrit fragments from Central Asia and the Gilgit manuscript discoveries. By comparison, the oldest surviving physical manuscripts of most of the Pāli Canon appear centuries later, mostly around the 9th century or afterward. Of course, this does not prove the Avataṃsaka is earlier than the Pāli Canon in composition, since both traditions relied heavily on oral transmission for long periods, but it does show that the manuscript evidence for parts of the Avataṃsaka is actually older than the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Theravāda canon.

Doctrinal Development and the Assumption of Late Innovation

A central argument against the historical authenticity of the Lotus Sutra is its doctrinal sophistication. Teachings such as the One Vehicle, the eternal Buddhahood of Śākyamuni, and the reclassification of arhatship as provisional are often taken as clear evidence of later invention. Yet this argument rests on an unexamined assumption: that doctrinal development must occur only after the Buddha’s lifetime.

The Lotus Sutra itself claims the opposite. It presents its teachings as advanced, deliberately withheld until practitioners were ready to receive them. In this framework, doctrinal depth is not a sign of lateness but of pedagogical sequencing. While this claim cannot be verified historically, it is internally coherent and consistent with Indian religious models of gradual revelation and restricted transmission.

Moreover, the Buddha’s teachings in the Nikāyas are not static. They show adaptation to audience, occasion, and circumstance. It is not unreasonable to hypothesize that a teacher of forty-plus years might articulate different or more developed teachings later in their career. The mere presence of doctrinal development does not, by itself, prove post-Buddha composition.

Style, Translation, and the Problem of Literary Difference

Stylistic arguments against the Lotus Sutra also warrant reconsideration. The Lotus is often contrasted with the pragmatic, repetitive prose of the Nikāyas. Its parables, cosmic assemblies, and self-referential claims are taken as evidence of literary fabrication. Yet no Buddhist discourse survives in the Buddha’s exact words. All extant texts are mediated through oral transmission, translation, and redaction. And mythological elements like gods and spirits are also present in the extant Pali discourses.

The Pali Canon itself bears clear marks of mnemonic restructuring and formulaic compression. Differences in style between the Nikāyas and the Lotus Sutra may reflect not only different genres of teaching but also different translation histories and rhetorical aims. The Lotus presents itself not as an everyday sermon, but as a visionary disclosure. If authentic, one might expect it to sound different.

Secrecy, Transmission, and Historical Silence

Perhaps the strongest objection to the Lotus Sutra’s authenticity is the absence of early references to it in non-Mahayana sources. Yet if the Lotus Sutra was transmitted as an advanced or restricted teaching, its limited circulation would be expected. Secrecy does not imply non-existence. What the evidence shows is not that the Lotus Sutra must be inauthentic, but that its mode of transmission, if early, was atypical.

The Lotus Sutra itself claims to be a mystical revelation that came late in the Buddha’s career. The revelation occurs in the air above Vulture Peak, in a sort of mystical realm that transcends space and time. Countless, innumerable beings are said to have been present — gods, bodhisattvas, and buddhas from other worlds are said to have assembled there. And the revelation is said to be for a future generation — the teaching is supposed to be held in secret and only taught to the most advanced and worthy Buddhists, until the appropriate time for them to be taught openly. The Mahayana texts are said to represent a more fully-developed form of Buddhism. They were supposedly revealed later in his career. And they are predicated on the “provisional” teachings found in older Buddhist texts. The Mahayana sutras could only be expounded in a context where the “provisional” sutras were already well-known and understood. This meant that the Mahayana sutras couldn’t be publicly taught until Buddhism had spread throughout Asia.

The fact that the Lotus Sutra doesn’t seem to have been openly espoused and referenced in early Buddhist literature makes sense, if you assume that the Lotus Sutra is the kind of text that it claims to be. And its differences make sense if you assume that it represents a more fully-developed Buddhist philosophy that emerged later in the Buddha’s career. And, indeed, a lot of what the Mahayana sutras state seems to logically follow from the teachings of the Buddha in the “provisional” sutras. Vegetarianism logically follows from what the Buddha said in the provisional sutras about non-violence and compassion for animals. The provisional sutras didn’t outright prohibit the consumption of meat because the sangha wasn’t quite ready for that teaching yet. And the emphasis on the bodhisattva path (seeking enlightenment for others and not just for oneself) logically follows from the Buddha’s earlier teachings on loving-kindness. It would make sense to believe that the Buddha’s teachings may actually have developed in such a way over the course of his own career.

Against the idea of a the Mahayana sutras as a separate or secret transmission, one could cite the suttas where Shakyamuni says:

“I’ve taught the Dhamma without making any distinction between secret and public teachings. The Realized One doesn’t have the closed fist of a tutor when it comes to the teachings.”(Cf. Digha Nikaya 16 and Samyutta Nikaya 47.9)

However, this just means that the Buddha doesn’t have “secret” teachings in the sense of esoteric doctrines. Original Buddhism didn’t have guru cults and secret initiations into esoteric occult practices. This does not mean that there are not particular texts that are only to be recited among certain groups. Shakyamuni specifically states that the Patimokkha is not to be recited in the presence of laypeople. (Cf. Vinaya Pitaka, Mahavagga, Khandaka 2, Ch. 16) This rule seems to have extended to the whole of the Vinaya Pitaka, as Nagasena states “the recitation of the Pātimokkha and the whole of the Vinaya Piṭaka are kept close and secret.”(Mendakapanha 5.4.2)

And, it should be emphasized that Mahayana sutras like the Lotus Sutra and the Vimalakirti Sutra do not teach esoteric doctrines. They are, perhaps, more advanced teaching but literally everything in them is already in the other discourses of the Buddha. They are just elaborating on, generalizing, and expanding upon things that are already indicated in the regular discourses.

The idea that there might have been sutras that were not recited alongside other texts and were reserved to be recited only in front of a particular audience is not inconsistent with Shakyamuni’s method and what we know about original Buddhism.

Could Authentic Sutras Have Been Originally Composed in Sanskrit?

One argument for the inauthenticity of the Mahayana sutras is that they were generally recorded in Sanskrit, and some of them seem to have originally been literary products and not just transcripts of orally preserved sutras.

It is generally well established that writing did exist at the time of the Buddha. The Buddha himself was a noble prince, and many of his direct disciples were from the noble and priestly castes. Many of his disciples came from the Brahmin caste, the Vedic priestly caste, who studied the Vedic texts in Sanskrit and used Sanskrit for conducting rituals and philosophical discussions. And the Brahmi and Indus scripts were in use in the region well before the Buddha’s time. Many of the Buddha’s early followers were people who almost certainly would have spoken Sanskrit and, very likely, some of them would have been able to write. Sariputra, Maudgalyayana, Mahakassapa, Kaundinya, Uruvela Kassapa, Nadi Kassapa, and Gaya Kassapa — these are just a few of the Buddha’s disciples who almost certainly would have been able to speak and write Sanskrit. This would have been closer to archaic Vedic Sanskrit rather than the polished Classical Sanskrit of Pāṇini, but still Sanskrit nonetheless. And, this is consistent with what we find in the Mahayana texts. Most of them are written in Hybrid Sanskrit, which is a more archaic form of Sanskrit than Pāṇini’s but which is also not purely Sanskrit. Hybrid Sanskrit resembles an imperfectly Sanskritized Prakrit, often grammatically and phonetically appearing closer to Pali than to Classical Sanskrit. However, key philosophical terms tend to take their Sanskrit form. If the Buddha’s disciples did record his teachings in Sanskrit, this is likely what it would have looked like.

The earliest records of writing in the region are preserved in the form of engravings on pottery and monuments. Writing likely was much more common than the archeological record suggests, as it would have been normal to write on perishable materials. Birch bark and paper-like materials generally did not survive the test of time in the region. It is likely that writing was far more common in the region than is generally acknowledged. And, even if the Buddha did not speak or write in Sanskrit himself, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of some of his disciples having preserved some of his teachings in Sanskrit.

If Mahayana Sutras are authentic and are what they claim to be (that is, esoteric texts that were to be kept secret and only taught to the elite until Buddhism was well-established in the world), it is plausible that they may have actually been composed in Sanskrit by the Buddha’s direct disciples. Even if they were authentic, they likely would not have been composed in Magadhi Prakrit (the vulgar common language) since they were not intended for general circulation among the common people. The idea that there might have been authentic discourses of the Buddha originally given or preserved in Sanskrit is not really far-fetched. And again, there is manuscript evidence for the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra going back to the 2nd Century BC. This is about 700 years older than the earliest manuscript evidence for the Pali Canon.

The idea of the inauthenticity of the Mahayana sutras is largely based on the scarcity of early evidence for them. But the scarcity of early evidence for them can also be explained in ways that are entirely consistent with their authenticity. If they were Sanskrit compositions preserved by elite groups of monks and not recited publicly alongside the Prakrit sutras (which, if they are authentic, is exactly what they would likely have been), then it follows that there would been less early manuscript evidence for them and fewer (perhaps no) references to them in other early Buddhist literature. The idea of the transmission of early sutras in Sanskrit, either orally or in written form, is entirely plausible. And, if these were more esoteric/revelatory sutras, it would explain the many stylistic and linguistic differences between the Mahayana texts and those preserved in the Pali Canon.

From a Mahāyāna perspective, this raises an interesting possibility about how these teachings were transmitted. The early Buddhist community preserved the Buddha’s teachings primarily in vernacular dialects related to Prakrit so that they could be widely remembered and recited by monks and laypeople alike. But if the Buddha also gave more advanced teachings intended for a smaller circle of highly committed practitioners, it would not be surprising if those teachings circulated differently. Some Mahāyāna traditions hold that certain discourses were preserved in textual form by bodhisattvas or transmitted quietly within small communities until conditions were right for their broader revelation. In that context, it is notable that many Mahāyāna texts are preserved in forms of Sanskrit rather than the earlier vernacular dialects. Sanskrit functioned as a literary and scholarly language, and texts recorded in it may have been intended for more specialized audiences rather than the general public. And, to be clear, the vernacular dialects were basically variations of Sanskirt, so composing or recording sutras in Hybrid Sanskrit wouldn’t exactly have made them incomprehensible to the the common folks. Most people couldn’t read but they would likely have understood Hybrid Sanskrit if you recited it to them.

A potential counterpoint to this argument would be that Shakyamuni seems to have explicitly prohibited the Sanskritization of the sutras.

“At this time there were two monks called Yameḷa and Kekuṭa, brothers born into a brahmin family, who were well-spoken and had good voices. They went to the Buddha, bowed, sat down, and said, “Sir, the monks now have a variety of names and come from a variety of families, castes, and households. They corrupt the word of the Buddha by using their own expressions (sakāya niruttiyā). Now we could give metrical form (chandaso āropemā”ti) to the word of the Buddha.”… The Buddha rebuked them, “You shouldn’t give metrical form to the word of the Buddha. If you do, you commit an offense of wrong conduct. You should learn the word of the Buddha using its own expressions (sakāya niruttiyā).””(Khandhaka 15.33)

This passage is generally taken to be a prohibition of translating the Buddha’s words into Sanskrit, but that seems to be an oversimplification or, perhaps, even a convenient reinterpretation of the sutra. The term nirutti here seems to mean “manner of speaking.” The consensus of Pali scholars seems to be that rendering sakāya niruttiyā as “local dialect” is inaccurate. The passage is traditionally interpreted within the Theravada tradition as being a prohibition of translating the Pali suttas into standardized Sanskrit.

One problem with this interpretation is that the standardization of Sanskrit by Pāṇini would have just begun (or maybe not even yet begun) in Shakyamuni’s time, and that development took place in a different part of India — Shakyamuni and his interlocutors almost certainly would have been totally unaware of it. Plus, chandas does not refer to the Sanskrit language as such but rather to the poetic form it takes. And, if you look at the parallels in Northern recensions of the Tripitaka, it makes clear that the concern here has to do more with rhythm and pronunciation during recitation than with translation per se.

A little bit of background might help. The Vedas, the sacred texts of the brahmins, are recited in Vedic Sanskrit. For those who follow the Vedas, Vedic Sanskrit is literally regarded as the language of the gods. When reciting the Vedas, the exact sound, pitch, and rhythm are considered sacred. So, mispronouncing a word (pronouncing it the way you would in ordinary speech rather than in the “proper” way) is considered to be corrupting the Vedas. And this seems to be what this sutra is actually talking about. These brahmin brothers, who had converted to Buddhism, were upset that other disciples of the Shakyamuni were not using “proper” pitch, tone, and pronunciation when reciting the Buddha’s words.

The accuracy of this interpretation is made clear when you look at some of the parallels to this discourse in Northern recensions of the Tripitaka. The Mahīśāsaka Vinaya parallel is explicit:

“There were two brahmin brothers who had recited the Chandas Vedas (metric poetry of the scriptures of the brahmins). Later, they went forth into the true Dharma. Hearing the monks recite the scriptures “incorrectly,” they criticized them, saying: “Venerable sirs, though long gone forth, you do not understand singular and plural forms, present, past, and future tense, or long and short sounds, light and heavy tones, yet you recite the Buddha’s scriptures like this!” The monks, hearing this, felt ashamed. The two monks went to the Buddha and reported the matter in full. The Buddha said: “I allow reciting according to the local pronunciation (音, literally “sound”), but the meaning of the Buddha must not be altered. It is not permitted to render the Buddha’s words into the style of heretical texts (外書語, literally “language of external texts”). One who does so commits a serious offense.”(Mahīśāsaka Vinaya)

The Dharmaguptaka Vinaya parallel is virtually identical to the version just cited, so I will not address it separately.

The Sarvāstivāda Vinaya parallel reads:

“The Buddha was in Śrāvastī. There were two brahmin brothers, one named Gubha and the other Yabha, who, having deep faith in the Buddha’s teaching, went forth. They had previously recited the Vedas of the outsiders, and after ordaining, they recited the Buddha’s scriptures using those same sounds (以是音聲, literally “these aforementioned phonetic expressions”). One of them died, and the other, now alone, forgot the texts he had recited and could not recite them fluently. Unable to find a companion, he became distressed and reported this to the Buddha. The Buddha said: “From now on, reciting the Buddha’s scriptures using the sounds of external texts (外書音聲, literally “phonetic expression of external texts”) is an offense of wrongdoing.”(Sarvāstivāda Vinaya)

The Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya parallel is virtually identical to the text we just cited, so we will not look at it separately. Also, there are relevant parallels in Sanskrit manuscripts, but I cannot find them available anywhere to analyze.

What is important to note here is that the prohibition does not seem to apply to translation per se and likely doesn’t prohibit the use of Sanskrit as such. What is prohibited is not the use of the Sanskrit language but rather the use of Vedic prosody, or converting Buddhavacana into metric poetry so that it can be chanted in the same manner as brahminical scriptures are. It’s guidance about how to pronounce and recite the sutras, not about translation per se. What is important here is that the discourse in question is not addressing translation or language per se. It is not necessarily a prohibition on standardizing the text or translating it into written language. If we wanted a more modern analogy, you might say, “Don’t recite my words in Old English to make them sound more religious.”

If this discourse prohibited the kind of literary standardization that writing in Hybrid Sanskrit entailed, it would also likely have applied also to Pali. Pali isn’t really the exact dialect that Buddha would have spoken. In fact, it’s not really clear that there was a single dialect used by Shakyamuni. There was not a single unified dialect throughout the region he was teaching in. It’s possible that he even spoke different languages and dialects depending on who he was speaking to, but people in the region probably would have been able to understand him even if he spoke a slightly different dialect than the one they were most familiar with. Magadhi Prakrit proper is not the language that Shakyamuni spoke either. Pali, Magadhi, and Ardhamagadhi are three standardized languages that developed out of the various dialects historically spoken in the Magadha region. Whatever dialect (or dialects) that Shakyamuni spoke are completely lost to history. What exists now is various standardized derivatives that developed during the process of trying to write down the texts that had been orally preserved in earlier times. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit developed alongside these in another attempt to record oral traditions in written form.

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit doesn’t have tonal or pitch components like Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, and it doesn’t enforce rigid meter. Buddhist Sanskrit, like Pali, was used for recording the Buddha’s words in written form, not for formalizing particular pronunciation and practice when reciting the texts.

And, when you look at various manuscripts in Prakrits, like Pali, and in Hybrid Sanskrit they are arguably not truly different translations in the modern sense. They are more like transliterations. There’s some differences in spelling and grammar, but speakers of these different dialects probably would have been able to communicate together just fine. They are using different scripts and there are some variations in spelling and grammar, but they aren’t exactly different languages. They are different dialects, much like the way that the Jacobean English of the King James Bible is a different dialect from modern American English — it’s not exactly a different language, as we can still read and understand it fairly well. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is more of a dialectical variation than a strictly different language.

As the user Kare explains on the Dhamma Wheel forum:

“The question is: How different should dialects be in order to classify them as separate languages? Linguists have no clear answer to this question. “Let me use Scandinavia as an example. We have three political units here: Norway, Denmark and Sweden. In these three countries there is a continuum of different dialects spoken, most of them mutually intelligible (apart from the Saami dialects, who belong to a different language family). As for myself, as a Norwegian, I understand Swedish and Danish, although some dialects — even some Norwegian dialects — strain my ears a bit. Therefore one might say that from a purely linguistic point of view, the continuum of Scandinavian dialects are ONE language. From a political point of view there are three languages, or in fact four, since Norwegian appears in two versions (there are historical and political reasons for this bizarre situation). “If I speak with a Swede or a Dane, I understand most of his conversation without any problem. I might ask him to repeat a word or to clarify his meaning now or then. I would speak in my normal Norwegian, but maybe I would modify a word a little now or then in order to get my meaning across. And if let’s say a Swede told me a good story, I might retell it to a Norwegian friend. I would naturally concentrate on telling the contents in my own dialect, not trying to reproduce the grammatical forms of Swedish. I would not really be conscious of having “translated” anything. “Now, back to India at the time of the Buddha. I suppose the dialects of the Majjhimadesa were no more different than the different Scandinavian dialects are today. They would thus be mutually intelligible. A person who travelled around a bit, like the Buddha did, would be used to hear[ing] different dialects, and he would understand them without any problem. His listeners would understand him, even if they happened to speak a slightly different dialect. After he had left, they would probably tell their friends the contents of the speech of the Buddha. They would probably use their own dialect, not trying to reproduce the exact grammatical forms of the Buddha. They would not really be conscious of having translated anything. “I think this is the most probable scenario for how the words of the Buddha came to be transmitted in several dialects.”

A lot of passages in Buddhist Sanskrit and Pali are virtually identical, with just slight variations as a product of their respective standardization. For instance, let’s compare parallel passages from a manuscript in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and one in Pali:

Source: here

As far as I’m concerned, these are basically just the same text in the same language. In the world of Greek and Latin literature, if we came across two manuscripts like this that were so similar, we wouldn’t really even consider them to be two distinct languages. So I think the extent to which Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Pali are “different languages” is debatable.

Reframing the Question of Authenticity

The dominant scholarly narrative presents a stark choice: If the Pali Canon preserves the Buddha’s authentic teachings, then Mahayana sutras, like the Lotus Sutra, are later inventions. The historical authenticity of both is ruled out. This does not survive close scrutiny. The Pali Canon itself bears marks of sectarian editing, doctrinal bias, and historical distance from the Buddha’s spoken words. Its authority, while real, is not absolute. And belief in the authenticity and relative reliability of the Pali texts does not rule out the possibility of the authenticity of the Lotus Sutra.

At the same time, the Lotus Sutra cannot be straightforwardly equated with the earliest strata of Buddhist literature. Its doctrinal self-consciousness and meta-historical awareness suggest composition in a mature Buddhist environment. Yet none of this decisively rules out the possibility that it preserves authentic teachings of the Buddha that were developed later in his career, transmitted in a restricted form and, perhaps, later expanded. Nevertheless, while Pali isn’t the exact words of the Buddha, a lot of times the Pali Canon might be virtually identical to what the Buddha may have said historically.

In the end, belief in the Lotus Sutra as a historical discourse of the Buddha is not refuted by the evidence. What emerges is not a reason to discard historical criticism, but a reason to apply it evenly, without assuming too much in advance.

The Weaker Case For the Other Mahayana Sutras

The question of whether the Lankavatara Sutra is a late Mahāyāna composition or preserves something much older is often framed too narrowly. In modern scholarship, the default assumption is that the text took shape several centuries after the Buddha, largely because it contains doctrines associated with Yogācāra philosophy. Yet this assumption risks mistaking philosophical systematization for philosophical invention. When we look more closely at the development of Buddhist thought, a different possibility emerges. It may be that the Lankavatara is not introducing radically new ideas at all, but rather preserving older contemplative insights that were later formalized by philosophers such as Asanga and Vasubandhu.

One reason to consider this possibility is that the core insights associated with Yogācāra do not appear out of nowhere in the fourth century. The tradition speaks of consciousness constructing experience, of karmic conditioning carried within the stream of mind, and of the transformation of consciousness through insight. These themes already exist in earlier Buddhist discourse. The early Buddhist concept of the mind-stream, known in the scholastic literature of the Sautrāntika as citta-saṃtāna, describes a continuity of mental events that carries karmic tendencies forward moment by moment. Yogācāra later elaborates this into the theory of ālaya-vijñāna, the so-called storehouse consciousness that contains the latent seeds of experience. It is entirely plausible that this development represents a refinement of an older explanatory model rather than a completely new doctrine. Philosophical traditions rarely invent such frameworks from scratch; more often they clarify and systematize ideas that have been circulating for generations.

From this perspective, the Lankavatara can be read not as a product of mature Yogācāra scholasticism but as a witness to a transitional stage in Buddhist thought. The text speaks repeatedly about the primacy of mind in experience, the illusory nature of conceptual projections, and the transformation of consciousness through direct realization. Yet it does not present these ideas with the neat technical precision found in the later treatises of Vasubandhu. Instead, the language is fluid and sometimes inconsistent, suggesting that the philosophical vocabulary had not yet fully stabilized. This is precisely what we might expect if the text reflects an earlier contemplative tradition that was later absorbed into the Yogācāra system.

A similar dynamic may be visible in the relationship between Mahāyāna ideas about Buddha-nature and earlier debates among Buddhist schools about personal continuity. The Pudgalavada philosophers proposed the concept of pudgala, a “person” that is neither identical with nor separate from the aggregates, in order to account for karmic continuity without asserting a permanent self. Later Mahāyāna texts speak of tathāgata-garbha, the inherent potential for Buddhahood present within sentient beings. While these ideas are not identical, they respond to many of the same philosophical pressures within Buddhist thought. Rather than representing a sharp doctrinal break, the Mahāyāna formulations may represent a reinterpretation of problems already being debated in early Buddhist communities.

If this is the case, the Lankavatara may preserve fragments of a much older intellectual environment. It is not difficult to imagine that teachings originally expressed using the conceptual language of early Buddhist schools were later reframed in the terminology of emerging Yogācāra philosophy. The text may have been “translated” during transmission or updated in the modern language used by Buddhist philosophy over time, replacing more archaic terms like citta-saṃtāna with more widely used terminology like ālaya-vijñāna. If the (lost) older Lankavatara text is thought of like the King James Version of the Bible, then these later manuscripts that use proto-Yogacara terminology can be seen as revised translations like the Revised Standard Version, which updated some of the archaic terms and grammar from the earlier translation. Buddhist scriptures were transmitted orally for centuries and later copied across diverse communities. During this process, terminology could easily shift as scribes and teachers adapted inherited teachings to the philosophical frameworks that had become dominant in their own time. The result would be a text whose doctrinal vocabulary reflects later developments while its underlying insights may reach back much further.

This possibility becomes even more intriguing when we consider the meditative orientation of the Lankavatara. The sutra places overwhelming emphasis on direct realization of mind rather than on ritual, cosmology, or elaborate metaphysical speculation. Its central concern is the experiential transformation of consciousness that leads to awakening. Such a focus aligns closely with what we would expect from early contemplative communities devoted to meditation practice. In this sense, the Lankavatara may represent the voice of a lineage of practitioners whose insights were later articulated more systematically by philosophers.

None of this proves that the Lankavatara in its current form is a verbatim discourse of the historical Buddha. The text clearly shows signs of editorial layering and doctrinal development across centuries. But it does open the door to a more nuanced possibility. Rather than dismissing the sutra as a late invention, we might see it as a vessel that preserves older streams of Buddhist thought, refracted through later philosophical language. If so, the teachings found in the Lankavatara could well trace their roots back to the earliest generations of the Buddhist tradition, perhaps even to the Buddha’s own explorations of the nature of mind and the illusion of conceptual construction. In that light, the sutra stands not as a departure from early Buddhism but as one of its most intriguing and philosophically daring continuations.

Another point that deserves consideration is whether the same kind of historical reevaluation applied to the Lankavatara might also apply to other Mahāyāna scriptures. It is often assumed that the early Buddhist canon preserved in the Pali Canon represents the only authentic record of the Buddha’s teaching, while Mahāyāna sutras must therefore be later inventions. But this assumption rests on a historical simplification. Early Buddhism did not consist of a single unified textual tradition. For several centuries, the teachings of the Buddha were transmitted orally by multiple monastic communities across India. Different schools maintained different recitation lineages, and these lineages did not preserve identical collections of texts. When we remember that the canon itself was not written down until centuries after the Buddha’s death, it becomes far less certain that the surviving Theravāda recension represents the full range of teachings circulating in the earliest Buddhist world.

This broader historical context makes it plausible that some Mahāyāna sutras may preserve traditions that developed within early Buddhist communities but were transmitted outside the textual lineages that eventually produced the Theravāda canon. The Ratnakūṭa Sūtra is especially interesting in this respect because it is not a single text but a large compilation of independent sutras that appear to originate from different doctrinal and historical settings. Among the works preserved in this collection are the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, the Ugra-paripṛcchā, and the Amitābha Sūtra. These texts differ widely in tone and emphasis, yet many of them share a striking characteristic: they lack the elaborate philosophical systems that dominate later Mahāyāna thought. Instead, they focus on ethical discipline, renunciation, meditation, and the cultivation of bodhisattva qualities in a way that often feels much closer to the atmosphere of early Buddhist discourse.

The diversity within the Ratnakūṭa collection suggests that it may preserve fragments of several early streams of Buddhist thought that were later gathered together under a Mahāyāna framework. Some of these texts appear to represent communities that were exploring the bodhisattva path while still operating within the broader doctrinal environment of early Buddhism. The Ugra-paripṛcchā, for example, presents a vision of the bodhisattva life that emphasizes simplicity, ascetic discipline, and detachment from worldly status. Its tone is strikingly austere, and it lacks the grand cosmological imagery often associated with later Mahāyāna literature. Rather than sounding like a product of elaborate scholastic speculation, it reads more like the voice of a renunciant movement rooted in early monastic ideals.

Even texts that later became central to distinct devotional traditions may preserve older layers of thought. The Amitābha Sūtra, for example, is often associated with the later development of Pure Land Buddhism, yet its core message is relatively simple: the recollection of a Buddha and the aspiration for rebirth in a realm conducive to awakening. Devotional elements of this kind are not foreign to early Buddhism. The Pāli discourses themselves contain practices of recollecting the Buddha and contemplating the qualities of enlightened beings. Seen in this light, the Amitābha tradition may represent an expansion of devotional tendencies that were already present in the earliest layers of Buddhist practice.

The same pattern may also apply to the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, which famously articulates the doctrine of tathāgata-garbha or Buddha-nature. While this teaching is often regarded as a hallmark of later Mahāyāna philosophy, it addresses questions that were already central to early Buddhist debates. How does the potential for awakening persist within beings who remain trapped in ignorance? How can liberation arise within a world characterized by impermanence and non-self? The language of Buddha-nature can be understood as one attempt to articulate this problem, much as earlier Buddhist schools proposed concepts such as the continuity of the mind-stream to explain karmic inheritance across lifetimes. Rather than introducing an entirely foreign doctrine, the text may be participating in a long-standing conversation within the Buddhist tradition about the nature of awakening and the continuity of spiritual potential. As with the Lankavatara, it is plausible that the language of this sutra was updated to match the language used in later Buddhist philosophy, so the existence of terms like tathāgata-garbha don’t necessarily prove that it was a later work.

When viewed from this perspective, the Ratnakūṭa collection begins to look less like a late anthology of imaginative scriptures and more like a repository of diverse early traditions that were gradually woven into the Mahāyāna literary world. The texts we possess today undoubtedly contain layers of interpretation, expansion, and doctrinal clarification added by later generations. But beneath those layers we may still glimpse the outlines of early communities experimenting with ways to express the Buddha’s teaching in new forms. If this is correct, then at least some of the sutras preserved in the Ratnakūṭa may trace their origins back to the formative centuries of Buddhism, perhaps even to oral traditions that circulated before the canonical collections themselves were written down. For those of us who approach the Mahāyāna sympathetically, this possibility invites us to read these texts not as departures from the Buddha’s teaching but as part of the living and evolving stream through which that teaching has been transmitted.

A similar line of reasoning can also be applied to the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa. Modern scholarship usually places the composition of this text somewhere around the first or second century CE, which leads many readers to assume that it represents a relatively late development within Buddhist literature. Yet this dating tells us only when the text likely reached its present literary form, not when the ideas it contains first began circulating. As with other Mahāyāna scriptures, it is entirely possible that this sutra preserves teachings and narrative traditions that are considerably older than the surviving manuscript tradition.

One of the most striking features of the Vimalakirti Sutra is its setting within a social world that closely resembles the environment of early Buddhism. The central figure, the layman Vimalakīrti, is not portrayed as a distant cosmic bodhisattva inhabiting mythological realms but as a householder living in an ordinary Indian city. He engages monks, nuns, and lay followers in philosophical discussion and demonstrates that profound realization is not limited to monastic life. While this theme later became associated with Mahāyāna, the prominence of spiritually advanced lay followers is already visible in early Buddhist literature. Figures such as the great lay disciples described in the early discourses show that the earliest Buddhist communities did not see spiritual attainment as the exclusive domain of the monastery. In this sense, the narrative premise of the Vimalakirti Sutra may reflect a strand of early Buddhist culture in which highly accomplished lay practitioners were already recognized.

The philosophical tone of the text also resonates strongly with themes that appear in early Buddhist teachings. Much of the dialogue revolves around the limitations of conceptual thinking and the need to move beyond dualistic categories in order to realize the true nature of reality. The famous episode in which bodhisattvas offer increasingly subtle explanations of non-duality illustrates a point that is already present in early Buddhist discourse: ultimate truth cannot be fully captured by conceptual language. The Buddha himself frequently warned that attachment to views and conceptual elaborations can become obstacles to awakening. In this light, the Vimalakirti Sutra may be amplifying an insight that was already central to early Buddhist contemplative practice.

Another noteworthy feature is the text’s emphasis on wisdom rather than on elaborate metaphysical systems. Later Mahāyāna philosophy developed sophisticated frameworks such as Yogācāra and Madhyamaka to analyze the nature of consciousness and emptiness. The Vimalakirti Sutra, however, presents these ideas primarily through dialogue and paradox rather than systematic argument. The emphasis falls on direct realization and the transformation of perspective rather than on scholastic analysis. This style of teaching is closer in spirit to the dialogical method found throughout early Buddhist literature, where insight often emerges through questioning, analogy, and the dismantling of mistaken assumptions.

Even the sutra’s celebrated treatment of emptiness can be read as an extension of themes already present in the early tradition. Early Buddhist teachings repeatedly stress that phenomena lack a permanent essence and arise only through dependent conditions. The Mahāyāna concept of emptiness expands this insight into a more universal philosophical principle, but its roots clearly lie in the earlier doctrine of dependent origination. When the Vimalakirti Sutra explores the non-dual nature of reality, it may therefore be articulating implications that were already implicit in the earliest Buddhist analysis of conditioned existence.

From a sympathetic perspective, it is not unreasonable to imagine that stories about a brilliant lay disciple like Vimalakirti may have circulated in early Buddhist communities long before the sutra reached its present literary form. Such stories could easily have grown over time as successive generations elaborated on their philosophical significance. As Mahāyāna ideas developed, editors may have incorporated these older narrative traditions into a new textual framework that emphasized the bodhisattva ideal and the universality of awakening.

Seen in this light, the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa need not be viewed simply as a creative literary production of a later era. Instead, it can be understood as part of a broader stream of Buddhist reflection that stretches back to the earliest centuries of the tradition. The text we possess today almost certainly contains layers of interpretation added over time, but the insights at its core may reflect living conversations within early Buddhist communities about the nature of wisdom, the limitations of conceptual thought, and the possibility that awakening is accessible to all who truly understand the Dharma. In that sense, the figure of Vimalakīrti may represent not a departure from early Buddhism but one of its most provocative and illuminating voices.

Alteration of the Vinaya Pitaka, Forgery of the Abhidhamma Pitaka, and the Place of Disputed Sutras

I believe the above arguments make a case for believing in the plausibility of the Mahayana Sutras being authentic Buddhavacana, “words of the Buddha.” The case for the Lankavatara, Ratnakuta, Nirvana, and Vimalakirti sutras is certainly weaker than the arguments for the other sutras that I made earlier in this post, but it is still within the realm of possibility that these are early Buddhist texts, even if they were considerably expanded and elaborated upon in later editions. I think a somewhat plausible case for the main Mahayana sutras has been made.

Nevertheless, even if you regard all of these Mahayana Sutras as total forgeries, the Theravada Canon can also be regarded as containing a significant number of forgeries on a similar scale. One of the “baskets” of the Pali Tripitaka contains seven texts, roughly 6,000 pages, for which there are no extant parallels in any Northern recensions of the Tripitaka. The entire Abhidhamma Pitaka of the Pali Canon is generally regarded by scholars as a later addition. The Theravada lineage traces back to the Sthavira Nikaya branch of early Buddhism. But the Sthavira Nikaya of early Buddhism did not originally have an Abhidharma Pitaka at all. Even once the Abhidhamma Pitaka developed, each sub-group within the Sthavira Nikaya had their own Abhidharma Pitaka and they were completely different texts without parallels in other early traditions. Within the Sthavira there was also Sarvāstivāda, Pudgalavāda, and Dharmaguptaka, alongside Theravada and they all had their own versions of the Abhidharma Pitaka. Within the early Sthavira Nikaya, there was also another faction called the Sautrāntika (“sutra only school”) which rejected all of the various Abhidharma texts as forgeries. But the Sautrāntika did have their own abhidharma tradition. The difference was that they didn’t claim that it was “the word of the Buddha.” Early accounts, such as the Dīpavaṃsa, indicate that the Mahāsāṃghika also originally rejected the various Abhidharma corpuses. There is some indication that sub-groups within the Mahāsāṃghika, such as the Ekavyāvahārika and Lokottaravāda, may have developed their own versions of the Abhidhamma Pitaka. However, like the Sautrāntika, they did not regard the Abhidharma as representing the “word of the Buddha.”

By all scholarly accounts (even those of modern Theravadin scholars), the Abhidharma texts are not considered to be the authentic words of the historical Buddha. The forging and alteration of texts, and subsequent attribution of them to the historical Buddha, may actually have been (at least partially) a cause of the first schism in the Buddhist sangha. The Theravada account says that the schism resulted over disputes regarding the Vinaya, which is a plausible explanation. Various groups within the Sthavira Nikaya seem to have added to the Vinaya Pitaka. The Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya seems to be the oldest and simplest version. The various groups within the Sthavira Nikaya seem to have inserted additional, stricter rules into the Vinaya. The Vinaya Pitaka of the Theravadins is longer, with more rules, than the Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya, and the other Sthavira Nikaya sub-groups, such as the Dharmaguptaka and Sarvāstivāda, had even more rules in their versions. And the textual evidence seems to suggest that it was the Sthavira factions that added to the Vinaya rather than the Mahāsāṃghika subtracting from it.

It’s pretty well established that the Pali Canon was altered for doctrinal reasons, especially in the Vinaya Pitaka, and that the “third basket” is likely a complete forgery. The Sthavira Nikaya’s alterations to the canon seem to have led to the schism in the early sangha, causing the split between the Sthavira and Mahāsāṃghika factions. There are two possible narratives that can be told about the formation of the Mahayana corpus. The first is the Mahayana account, which claims that the Mahayana Sutras are authentic discourses of the Buddha that were originally written down during the time of the Buddha (not necessarily orally preserved but potentially actual texts) but were “hidden” or secret teachings that only began to be publicly preached later. The alternative theory, which most scholars would likely be inclined towards, is that later, when the Mahayana philosophy developed as an interpretative framework for understanding the Buddha’s discourses, they systematized doctrines by putting them into written form in these Mahayana sutras. The Mahayana corpus was a direct response to the Abhidhamma Pitaka. The core Mahayana corpus — Avatamsaka, Mahaprajnaparamita, Lotus, Ratnakuta, Lankavatara, Nirvana, and Vimalakirti sutras — can be roughly grouped into seven “books,” the same way the Abhidhamma Pitaka is. The overall length of these texts is roughly equivalent to the length of the Abhidhamma Pitaka. Moreover, the texts serve roughly the same purpose — they offer a more developed philosophical framework as a lens through which to interpret the rest of the Buddhist canon.

So, I would argue that it’s not entirely established that the Mahayana corpus is forged. A lot of the arguments for the inauthenticity of these texts start from an uncritical stance that regards the Theravada account of early Buddhist events as being mostly accurate. But there is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that most, if not all, of the Mahayana corpus existed in some form already when the Theravadins formally closed the Pali Canon and wrote it down for the first time. It probably wasn’t the case that the Theravadins were unaware of these texts but rather that they excluded these texts because they disagreed with the contents of them. Perhaps they regarded them as forgeries because the content seemed foreign to them. But, even if the Mahayana corpus is completely forged, the bulk of the Mahayana Canon from the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese recensions that are available, is mostly identical to the Pali Canon. If the Mahayana Corpus is treated simply as a Mahayana version of the Abhidhamma Pitaka, then it seems less outrageous even if it is forged. It’s roughly the same size and scope as the part of the Pali Canon that is generally regarded as a forgery (or, at least, disputed). There is virtually no case to be made that Theravada is more authentically Buddhist than Mahayana Buddhism is. There genuinely were disputed texts in the days of early Buddhism. The Theravadins, like the Mahayanists, and like most of the other early sects, accepted certain disputed texts and incorporated them into their own canon, while rejecting other disputed texts. These decisions seem to have almost universally been made for doctrinal reasons rather than on the basis of the authenticity of the text in question.

The Mahayana Corpus as Abhidhamma Literature

If we read the Mahayana sutras as Abhidharma literature, as more advanced Buddhist philosophical texts through which to interpret the canonical sutras, then the question of whether they constitute the literal “word of the Buddha” becomes mostly irrelevant. There are two ways in which we can look at these texts.

First, we can regard these Mahayana texts as philosophical fiction, not unlike the Dialogues of Plato. Socrates was a real historical character, the actual teacher of Plato, yet Plato’s writings turn him into a more imaginary literary figure. The words of Socrates in Plato’s Dialogues were never meant to be taken as a literal historical account. Socrates becomes transmogrified into a medium through which Plato himself speaks and explores philosophical ideas. Plato’s philosophy does have some basis in the ideas of Socrates, as he continues to reflect on themes and elaborate upon ideas that Socrates himself addressed. However, Plato’s works are a higher philosophical development that doesn’t actually trace back, in its entirety, to the historical Socrates. Some of it is present in an embryonic form in the teachings of Socrates but they don’t represent a philosophical system that he himself actually developed. If we read the Mahayana sutras in this way, we can see the Buddha as a fictional character in a philosophical drama. Sometimes the literary figure of the Buddha in these texts just examines Buddhist doctrine and pushes it to its logical conclusion. After reading these more fully-developed Buddhist philosophical dramas, we are then able to better understand and interpret the ideas that we run across in the canonical discourses. So I don’t think you even need to believe in the literal authenticity of the Mahayana Sutras as historical discourses of the Buddha in order to be a Mahayanist. You can read them as Abhidharma texts and interpret them as literary dramas or dialogues meant to elucidate Buddhist teachings.

Secondly, I would like to point out that many of the Mahayana texts don’t even claim to be the historical words of Shakyamuni Buddha. Sometimes the person speaking in these sutras isn’t the historical Buddha but some other bodhisattva or buddha. The Platform Sutra was literally spoken by the monk Huineng, whom Zen Buddhists regard as a fully-enlightened being or “buddha.” In this way, since all Buddhas are equal and essentially interchangeable, this text is regarded by many Mahayanists as Buddhavacana, “the word of the Buddha,” even though it is a different buddha speaking. Other Mahayana texts record the words of Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara, and other bodhisattvas, or even of other buddhas like Amitabha, Vairocana, and, again, Huineng. The authenticity of such texts, therefore, cannot really be predicated on whether they trace back to the historical figure of Shakyamuni. Furthermore, many of these texts take the form of visions or revelations, things that were mystically revealed in altered states of consciousness. Once you accept the possibility that the Buddha can communicate with his followers in this way, it becomes plausible that these texts were later revelations that the Buddha revealed after his parinirvana. The texts don’t even have to trace back to the time of Shakyamuni in order to be authentic. So you can also read the Mahayana sutras as mystical revelations that the Buddha (or even another buddha) revealed for the first time after Shakyamuni’s death.

It is certainly possible that these texts are all complete forgeries, as the Theravadins claim, but the above explanations are also quite plausible unless you first make the implicit assumption that Mahayana is not true. If you do make that assumption, you aren’t thinking rationally but engaging in circular reasoning.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out my post on *The Continuity Between Original Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, where I make the case that nearly all of the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism were present, in some form, within the teachings of the early Buddhist sects. The early Buddhist community split apart after the second council, forming the Sthavira and Mahāsāṃghika sects as separate lineages. But each sect was comprised of different sub-groups with their own respective interpretations of the dharma. Theravada represents just one of many sub-groups within the Sthavira Nikaya branch. As such, the Theravada tradition represents only the view of a very small faction of early Buddhists. In some ways, Mahayana represents ideas that were taught by the other factions, like the Sautrāntika, Mahāsāṃghika, Dharmaguptaka, Sarvāstivāda, and Pudgalavāda. All of these sects trace back to Original Buddhism and preserved essentially the same scriptures in their Tripitaka collections — the bulk of the Sutta Pitaka and Vinaya Pitaka are practically identical across all early traditions, though there are some variant readings. Nevertheless, roughly 75% of the Buddhist canon is, more or less, identical across all traditions both early and modern. The authenticity of 25% of what Mahayana presents as authentic is disputed, but so is 25% of what Theravadins include in their canon. The Mahayana tradition has philosophical similarities to these other early Buddhist sects, such that most of their ideas can be seen to have already existed in embryonic form within the teachings of some of the early Buddhist sects. The Mahayana, then, can be seen not as an innovation within Buddhism but as a reform *movement that revived a lot of early Buddhist ideas that had fallen into disfavor or been neglected by the Theravadins. They then systematized ideas borrowed from various early Buddhist schools, refined them, and created a single coherent philosophical system from them. None of the Mahayana ideas were entirely novel — all of them are based on, or have parallels in, early Buddhist thought.

You may also be interested in my post on Huayan, Pure Land, and Tendai thought, where I argue that the ideas of these Mahayana traditions do have a basis in early Buddhism and attempt to demonstrate that these systems are entirely compatible rather than mutually exclusive.