Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (reconstructed Sanskrit title: Mahāyāna śraddhotpādaśāstra; ) is a text of Mahayana Buddhism. Though attributed to the Indian master Aśvaghoṣa, no Sanskrit version of it exists and it is now widely regarded by scholars as a Chinese composition. Origin and authorship While the text is traditionally attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, no Sanskrit version of the text is extant. The two earliest existing versions are written in Chinese, and contemporary scholars widely accept the theory that the text is a Chinese composition. However, D.T. Suzuki accepted its Indian Sanskrit origin, while acknowledging that it was unlikely the historical Aśvaghoṣa () was the author, and that it was more likely that the attribution to Aśvaghoṣa was an honorific appellation due to the profundity of the treatise. Suzuki saw the Awakening of Faith as being "inspired by the same spirit" as the Lankavatara (), Avatamsaka (), and the Mahayana Parinirvana () Sutras, and regarded its identification as a Chinese text as "not well grounded". Suzuki's views were written before modern computer assisted analysis could be undertaken by scholars. Paramartha (; 499–569) was traditionally thought to have translated the text in the 6th century CE in 553. However, some modern scholars opine it was composed by Paramartha or one of his students. King remarks that, although Paramartha undoubtedly was among the most prolific translators of Sanskrit texts into Chinese, he may have composed the Buddha-nature Treatise () as well as the Awakening of Faith. Other experts dispute that it has anything to do at all with Paramartha. The authors of a recent translation write that "there is now wide consensus that the author of the Treatise was strongly influenced by the terminology and language of Bodhiruci (d. ca. 535)." The Awakening of Faith draws on much of the ideas and specific terms found in Bodhiruci's translations, such as his Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra and his translation of Vasubandhu's Commentary on the Ten Stages Sutra. As such "one theory is that the Treatise was written by someone in Bodhiruci’s circle." A candidate for the authorship of the Awakening of Faith is Tanlin 曇 林, who was "an amanuensis of Bodhiruci and a scholar of Tathāgatagarbha material." A later translation or reedited version was attributed to the Khotanese monk (; active 695–700). Title The term Mahayana points not to the Mahayana school, but to tathatā "suchness" or "the Absolute": Charles Muller argues that the terminology