Asanga and Vasubandhu: Founders of the Yogacara School

Yogacara, also called Vijnanavada ("the doctrine of consciousness") or Cittamatra ("mind-only"), crystallized as a distinct school of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy in Gandhara, in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, during the 4th century CE, largely through the work of the half-brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. According to the traditional biography preserved by the 7th-century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang in his Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, Asanga (c. 300–370 CE) was born in Purusapura, present-day Peshawar, and, after early training as a Sarvastivada monk, is said to have ascended in meditation to the Tushita heaven to receive teachings directly from the bodhisattva Maitreya, whom later Tibetan tradition credits as the source of five foundational Yogacara treatises: the Mahayanasutralankara, the Madhyantavibhaga, the Dharmadharmatavibhaga, the Abhisamayalankara, and the Ratnagotravibhaga. Modern scholars remain divided over whether "Maitreya" names a historical human teacher of Asanga's or is a literary device attributing revelation to the future Buddha, but the five texts themselves are undisputed and form the earliest systematic layer of Yogacara literature.