[8][6] Over half of the text is composed of Jātaka and Avadāna tales, accounts of the earlier lives of the Buddha and other bodhisattvas.
Another parallel Bahubuddhaka sūtra is the Chinese translation Fo benxing ji jing (Taisho 190).
According to Vincent Tournier, this text was grafted into the Mahāvastu (which itself does not contain any teaching on bodhisattva stages) during the last period of textual formation (ca.
[6] The Mahāvastu is considered a primary source for the notion of a transcendent (lokottara) Buddha, common to all Mahāsāṃghika schools.
"[11] In spite of this school affiliation however, the Theravadin Bhikkhu Telwatte Rahula concludes in his study of the text that its depiction of the Buddha is not that much different than the depiction of the Buddha in the Pali Canon, since the more docetic and transcendent ideas common to the Lokottaravāda are not widely present in the text.