In the last decades, research on Mahāyāna Buddhism has intensified.Some more specific topics have been discussed within an adequate and limited context.Particular texts have been edited and translated.It became clear that Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, which lies at the bottom of all later developments of the Mahāyāna across Asia, is far less a homogenous entity than it had been supposed before when the idea of Mahāyāna as a unified reform movement was prevalent.Even though today many new insights have started to shed a more differentiated light on the early stages of Mahāyāna Buddhism, we are not sure about the social, intellectual and institutional origins of Mahāyāna Buddhism.The paper will illustrate the different conceptions which constitute what is termed "Mahāyāna Buddhism" by the example of Indian texts on buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha, buddhadhātu) on the one hand and the early stages of Yogācāra Buddhism in India on the other.Whereas it is clear that both of these strands share a considerable number of ideas and metaphysical assumptions, it is equally undeniable that at their initial stage both traditions took their inspiration from fairly different fields.The voluminous Yogācārabhūmi, being a central and early treatise of the followers of Yogācāra Buddhism in India, proves to be in large parts framed by a systematic and scholastically inspired structure which has its roots in the early expositions of Buddhist doctrines as they are found in the conservative schools that had unfolded after the demise of the Buddha.Characteristic for some parts of the Yogācārabhūūmi seems to be the aim of cautiously introducing the followers of the old Buddhist schools to new doctrinal positions reflecting Mahāyānist convictions, embedded in a dominantly scholastic and exegetical setting.If, on the other hand, we turn to the early expositions of buddha-nature thought in India, we will find an approach which is quite opposite and seems to pay no heed to the followers of the old conservative schools.The early writings on buddha-nature display little interest in scholastically well-thought-through positions.They try to inspire Buddhists by straight-forward claims of the universal buddhahood of all sentient beings.The Ratnagotravibhāga(vyākhyā), the highly influential and only treatise from India on buddha-nature, largely draws from other Mahāyāna sūūtras in an attempt to strengthen and elaborate its own positions.There seems to be little room for allowing more conservative elements to co exist without clearly degrading them to an inferior level.The comparison between the early textual exponents of these two strands of Mahāāyāāna Buddhism will show that we have to deal with two different factions of Mahāyāna followers.They distinguish themselves in terms of their aims and visions, in terms of their openness to more conservative segments of the Buddhist community, and in terms of their preferred parts of the hitherto Buddhist transmission from which they drew their immediate inspiration for composing their literature.