One response to this—variously expressed in a range of Mahāyāna texts and variously understood by those interpreting them as Buddhism spread from India through Central Asia and into China—was that all sentient beings have “within” them a “seed” or “embryo” (garbha) of enlightenment: the innate capacity to be like the Buddha himself, a “thus come one” (tāthagatha). Texts espousing some version of this tāthagatha-garbha thesis—the Nirvāṇa, Śrimālādevimhanāda and Lankāvatarā sutras, for example, and the apocryphal commentary, the Awakening of Mahayana Faith—became some of the most influential Buddhist texts in China, and especially in the development of Chan. Many of these texts also drew connections between tāthagatha-garbha teachings and the notion of buddhadhātu, literally “buddha-element”, “buddha-substance” or “buddha-realm”. This concept seems to have developed through a merger of justifications for relic veneration practices and assertions about the originally luminous nature of the mind that are found in both very early Pali-language and Mahayana Buddhist texts. These texts maintain that mind is originally pure and that it only appears impure because of experiential pollutants (kleśas) caused by actions undertaken in ignorance or out of anger, hatred and greed. This idea of the original luminosity of mind was seemingly grafted onto the idea of an ineradicable “element” or “substance” (dhātu) of enlightened being, eventually resulting in claims that all sentient beings have already within them a seed of enlightenment—a luminous capacity for awakening (budh).