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The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn 大乘起信論) is an important text of the East Asian Buddhist tradition. Although it is traditionally attributed to Aśvaghoṣa 馬鳴 (fl. 1st - 2nd centuries CE), the earliest versions appeared in Chinese in the sixth and seventh centuries of the Common Era. Paramārtha 眞諦 is credited with its translation.
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The text is an attempt to reconcile the two notions of Buddha Nature (rúláizàng 如來藏; tathāgatagarbha) and the Yogacara-influenced Storehouse Consciousness (ālàiyēshì 阿賴耶識; ālayavijñāna) into a single soteriological position. It would later be one of the most influential texts in the development of Buddha-nature theory in East Asia.
Several important Buddhist figures wrote commentaries on the text:
According to his biography, Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會 was initially moved to study Buddhism thanks to reading a copy of this text. He would later reprint an edition (Dàshèng qǐxìnlùn zuǎnzhù 大乘起信論纂註) at his Jinling Scriptural Press 金陵刻經處 in Nánjīng 南京.[1] Other editions were also being reprinted in Kyōto, Japan in the 1880s. Tàixū 太虛 was also an avid student of his text during his period of sealed confinement on Mount Pǔtuó 普陀山 in the 1910s.
In the mid 1920s a debate broke out among Chinese Buddhists over whether or not the Awakening of Faith was an apocryphal text composed in China, or whether it had been written in India in Sanskrit as tradition held. See the article on 大乘起信論真偽辯.
The Sanskrit title of the text is often given as Mahāyāna-śraddhôtpāda or Mahāyānâdhimukty-utpāda, though as mentioned above no Sanskrit edition exists. In the Taishō canon, it appears as T 1666.32.575b-583b. There are at least three English translations that have been widely published: