I am not an authority but did significantly extend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Bu

I am not an authority but did significantly extend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_t... and have studied Buddhist history relatively extensively. I am unaware of any reference to infinite worlds or eternity in very early Buddhist scriptural traditions. As far as I am aware these ideas only arrive through the later schools of Mahayana/Vajrayana and possibly some contributing precursors like Mahāsāṃghika. In those traditions one could argue that certain sutras discussing for example Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin 观音, often depicted as thousand-hand/thousand-eye, from Tibet through China to Japan, Korea and Vietnam) referenced to some extent infinite worlds. Note that as far as we can tell from scriptural evidence, the historical Buddha answered difficult questions in particular ways, suggesting that debating some questions was a waste of time (relative to the central goal of Buddhism - working to escape suffering and rebirth and achieve englightenment) since no authoritative answer could be meaningfully sought. 'Right speech' is a central pillar of Buddhism's noble eightfold path http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-subject.html#eightfold http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-subject.html#eightfold, and it means considering all speech and only speaking when it contributes to your path to enlightenment and/or alleviating suffering in others through sharing the dhamma. He also questions the motivation behind those asking answerless questions. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-subject.html#questions http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-subject.html#questions He specifically dealt with the question of world-origin in the Acintita Sutta: "Conjecture about [the origin, etc., of] the world is an unconjecturable that is not to be conjectured about, that would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about it." http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.077.than.html http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.077.tha... As far as Chinese philosophy goes, if you have access to paywalled academic articles http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6253.2008.00503.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6253.... looks to be a good recent review of the emergence of various concepts of the infinite. Less authoritatively, Daoism included direct reference to concepts of the infinite in its key texts (circa 600BCE) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_(philosophy) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiji_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiji_(philosophy) These concepts were expanded upon by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Names however most of their work is lost. They were an interesting early school of formal logic based to some extent on a sort of primitive set theory, classification, categorization, and the discovery of formal systems proving statements in informal language anomalous: "a white horse is not a horse", "a dog is not a hound", etc. where the ontological coherence of the statement is based upon disparate formal interpretations of accepted informal senses of the verb to be. (Not enhanced in clarity by the need for translation)