The Lokottaravâdins were an ancient sect, precursors of the Mahayana rather than a branch of it, and much of the Mahâvastu is parallel to the Pali Canon and may have been composed a century or two before our era.
The name occurs in the Mahâvastu as the designation of an otherwise unknown Buddha of luminous attributes and in the Lotus we hear of a distant Buddha-world called Vairocana-rasmi-pratimandita, embellished by the rays of the sun.
There are a dozen or more collections of Avadânas of which the most important are the Mahâvastu and the Divyâvadâna.
It is the only part of the Mahâvastu which can be called definitely Mahayanist.
See also my remarks on the Mahâvastu under the Mahayanist Canon.
The language of the Mahâvastu and some Mahayanist texts, often called the language of the Gâthâs, seems to be another vernacular brought more or less into conformity with Sanskrit.
Hiouen Thsang relates that there is a Vihara at Kapila-vastu indicating the spot 'where the Bodhi-sattva descended spiritually into the womb of his mother,' and that there is a representation of this scene drawn in the Vihara.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "vastu" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
