Asaṅga (c. 4th century C.E.) was one of the most important spiritual figures of Mahayana Buddhism and the founder of the Yogacara school. Traditionally, he and his half-brother Vasubandhu are regarded as the major classical Indian Sanskrit exponents of Mahayana Abhidharma, Vijñanavada (awareness only; also called Vijñaptivāda, the doctrine of ideas or percepts, and Vijñaptimātratā-vāda, the doctrine of 'mere representation) thought and Mahayana teachings on the bodhisattva path path. He is also traditionally considered as one of the seventeen Nalanda masters who taught at the monastery which is located in modern-day Bihar.
According to later hagiographies, Asaṅga was born in Puruṣapura (present day Peshawar in Pakistan) in a Brahmin family, which at that time was part of the ancient kingdom of Gandhāra. Current scholarship places him in the fourth century CE. He was perhaps originally a member of the Mahīśāsaka school or the Mūlasarvāstivāda school but later converted to Mahāyāna. According to some scholars, Asaṅga's frameworks for Abhidharma writings retained many underlying Mahīśāsaka traits, but other scholars argue that there is insufficient data to determine which school he originally belonged to.
In the record of his journeys through the kingdoms of India, Xuanzang wrote that Asaṅga was initially a Mahīśāsaka monk, but soon turned toward the Mahāyāna teachings. Asaṅga had a half-brother, Vasubandhu, who was a monk from the Sarvāstivāda school. Vasubandhu is said to have taken up Mahāyāna Buddhism after meeting with Asaṅga and one of Asaṅga's disciples.
Asaṅga spent many years in serious meditation and study under various teachers but the narrative of the 6th century monk Paramārtha states that he was unsatisfied with his understanding. Paramārtha then recounts how he used his meditative powers (siddhis) to travel to Tuṣita Heaven to receive teachings from Maitreya Bodhisattva on emptiness, and how he continued to travel to receive teachings from Maitreya on the Mahayana sutras.
Asaṅga went on to write some key treatises of the Yogācāra school. Over time, many different works were attributed to him (or to Maitreya, with Asaṅga as transmitter), although there are discrepancies between the Chinese and Tibetan traditions concerning which works are attributed to him. Modern scholars have also problematized and questioned these attributions after critical textual study of the sources. The many works attributed to this figure can be divided into the three following groups.
The first are three works which are widely agreed by ancient and modern scholars to be by Asaṅga:
- Mahāyānasaṃgraha(Summary of the Great Vehicle), a systematic exposition of the major tenets of the Yogacara school in ten chapters. Considered his magnum opus, survives in one Tibetan and four Chinese translations.
- Abhidharma-samuccaya,a short summary of the main Mahayana Abhidharma doctrines, in a traditional Buddhist Abhidharma style similar to non-Mahayana expositions.
- Xianyang shengjiao lun,variously retranslated into Sanskrit as Āryadeśanāvikhyāpana, Āryapravacanabhāṣya, Prakaraṇāryaśāsanaśāstra, Śāsanodbhāvana, and Śāsanasphūrti. A work strongly based on the Yogācārabhūmi. Only available in Xuanzang's Chinese translation, but parallel Sanskrit passages can be found in the Yogācārabhūmi.
The next group of texts are those that Tibetan hagiographies state were taught to Asaṅga by Maitreya and are thus known as the "Five Dharmas of Maitreya" in Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism. According to D.S. Ruegg, the "five works of Maitreya" are mentioned in Sanskrit sources from only the 11th century onwards. The traditional list is:
- Mahāyānasūtrālamkārakārikā, ("The Adornment of Mahayana sutras", Tib. theg-pa chen-po'i mdo-sde'i rgyan), which presents the Mahāyāna path from the Yogācāra perspective.
- Dharmadharmatāvibhāga ("Distinguishing Phenomena and Pure Being", Tib. chos-dang chos-nyid rnam-par 'byed-pa), a short Yogācāra work discussing the distinction and correlation (vibhāga) between phenomena (dharma) and reality (dharmatā).
- Madhyāntavibhāgakārikā("Distinguishing the Middle and the Extremes", Tib. dbus-dang mtha' rnam-par 'byed-pa), 112 verses that are a key work in Yogācāra philosophy.
- Abhisamayalankara( "Ornament for clear realization", mngon-par rtogs-pa'i rgyan), a verse text which attempts a synthesis of Prajñaparamita doctrine and Yogacara thought. There are differing scholarly opinions on authorship, John Makransky writes that it is possible the author was actually Arya Vimuktisena, the 6th century author of the first surviving commentary on this work. Makransky also notes that it is only the later 8th century commentator Haribhadra who attributes this text to Maitreya, but that this may have been a means to ascribe greater authority to the text. As Brunnholzl notes, this text is also completely unknown in the Chinese Buddhist tradition.
- Ratnagotravibhaga(Exposition of the Jeweled lineage, Tib. theg-pa chen-po rgyud bla-ma'i bstan,k.a. Uttāratantra śāstra), a compendium on Buddha-nature attributed to Maitreya via Asaṅga by the Tibetan tradition.