Setting Out on the Great Way - Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism - Paul Harrison
Abhidharma in Early Mahāyāna
Setting Out on the Great Way - Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism - Paul Harrison
Johannes Bronkhorst [+]
University of Lausanne (retired)
Johannes Bronkhorst is retired professor of Sanskrit, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is interested in the history of Indian thought, broadly conceived. Some of his recent books are: Greater Magadha (Leiden, 2007), Buddhist Teaching in India (Boston, 2009), Language and Reality (Leiden, 2011), Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism (Leiden, 2011), Karma (Honolulu, 2011), Absorption (Paris, 2012), and How the Brahmins Won (Leiden, 2016).
Description
This chapter argues that Abhidharma as it was developed in Greater Gandhāra, i.e. the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, during the final centuries preceding the Common Era exerted a determining influence on Mahāyāna right from its beginnings. What is more, there are reasons to think that Mahāyāna as it finds expression in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā and other texts underwent the influence of Abhidharma in that same region.