The term Buddhist mission was invented in the 1830s to explain the religion's diffusion throughout Asia, and "missionary spirit" has been treated as an essential dimension of Buddhist spirituality in virtually all English-language works about Buddhism composed since. By the 1870s "Buddhist mission" had been theorized further by early historians of religions as a key plank in the subsequently ubiquitous disciplinary distinction between "missionary" or "world" religions (Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity) and "national" or "indigenous" religions (all the rest) which did not expand far beyond traditional geographical borders. Two proof-texts were singled out for citation in Western writings on Buddhist mission, namely, the Buddha's so-called great commission, and stories about the transmission of his religion associated with the age of King Aśoka (third century BCE).

The "great commission" is an ancient passage found already reworked in three canonical Buddha biographies, the Mahāvagga of the...