The Cult
Maitreya was worshipped as a promise, and the practice organized itself around waiting. The earliest evidence is Gandhāran: Kuṣāṇa-period donor images inscribed with prayers to meet the future Buddha — the classic gesture, repeated along the Silk Road for a millennium, of dedicating his image so the donor might be present at the descent. The other pole was heaven: rebirth in Tuṣita, where the bodhisattva waits, became an explicit devotional goal, and the Yogācāra school built its foundation myth on the visit — Asaṅga is said to have ascended to Tuṣita to receive the Five Treatises from Maitreyanātha. When the age turned dark, waiting radicalized: Chinese rebellions of the sixth and tenth centuries marched under the cry that Maitreya had already descended. In the oases the descent itself became liturgy in paint — the cave temples of Dunhuang and beyond staged his arrival as a court pageant, whole walls sponsored by donors who knew they would not live to see it.