Our search for the origins of the three-period system has brought us, then, to the following conclusions. The notions of saddharma and saddhanna-pratirūpaka were well established in Indian Mahāyāna literature by the middle of the 2nd century CE at the latest. Meanwhile, the term Paścimakāle (“latter age”) had also entered Indian Buddhist literature, likewise in a Mahāyāna context, as a reference to the period following the death of the historical Buddha. Most often the latter term was used in contexts in which the Buddha was described as recommending the acceptance, preservation, dissemination, and so forth of the sūtra in question during the time after his death, sometimes in conjunction with a discussion of the difficulties that might attend those who do so. By the latter half of the 3rd century CE Buddhist scriptures containing all of these terms were being translated into Chinese by Dharmarakṣa, who appears to have introduced the two vital terms hsiang-fa (as a translation of saddharma-Pratirūpaka) and mo-shih (as a translation of Paścimakāle) into Chinese Buddhist discourse.

Around the same time the notion of two periods in the history of the Buddhist religion (found in such Indian texts as the Lotus Sūtra) was becoming well established in Chinese Buddhist circles. In light of this twofold time system some Chinese Buddhists began to interpret the term mo-shih, which would naturally be understood in Chinese as “final age,” as the name of a third such period. Based on this understanding, certain Buddhist translators (of whom the most influential, and probably the earliest, was Kumārajīva) began to use the term mo-fa as an occasional substitute for mo-shih, thus bringing the latter into greater symmetry with its “predecessors,” the periods of cheng-fa and hsiang-fa, respectively. Having thus entered the scriptural corpus, the term mo-fa took on a life of its own, and Chinese commentators undertook with enthusiasm the task of describing the nature and duration of this anticipated third period. That they chose for its duration the quintessentially Chinese figure of 10,000 years (with its underlying implication of “an eternity”) demonstrates that they were free from any constraints encountered in Indian documents, for while mo-shih (Skt. paścimakāle) is often described as comprising the “latter five hundred years,” the newly coined term mo-fa was subject to no such restrictions. Likewise it reveals their profound sense of optimism (or, at the very least, of wishful thinking), for in assigning to this newly created period of mo-fa a duration of 10,000 years these Chinese commentators expressed the hope that Śākyamuni’s teachings would last forever, albeit in a reduced and less accessible form.