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1. THE MAHĀYĀNA IN INDIA

About the beginning of the Christian era a new trend took shape in Buddhism, known as the Mahāyāna, literally “the great vehicle”. It was prepared by the exhaustion of the old impulse which produced fewer and fewer Arhats, by the tensions within the doctrines as they had developed by then and by the demands of the laity for more equal rights with the monks. Foreign influences also had a great deal to do with it.

The Mahāyana developed in North-West India and South India, the two regions where Buddhism was most exposed to non-Indian influences, to the impact of Greek art in its Hellenistic and Romanized forms and to the influence of ideas from both the Mediterranean and the Iranian world. This cross-fertilization incidentally rendered the Buddhism of the Mahāyāna fit for export outside India.

So that it should be able to travel outside India, Buddhism had first to be somewhat modified by foreign influences, had to undergo a preliminary phase of de-Indianization. Before it could be received by alien cultures it had first to receive an impression from them. Roughly speaking only in its modified Mahāyāna form has it been able to live outside India.

In due course the Mahāyāna has conquered the entire northern half of the Buddhist world, and the Buddhists of Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea and Japan are nearly all Mahayanists.

The Mahāyāna developed in two stages: first in an unsystematic form, which went on between 100 BC and AD 150, and then, after AD 150, in a systematized philosophical form, which led to two distinct schools, the Madhyamikas and the Yogacarins.

We must first of all explain the main features of the early Mahāyāna. About 100 BC a number of Buddhists felt that the existing statements of the doctrine had become stale and useless. In the conviction that the Dharma requires ever new re-formulations so as to meet the needs of new ages, new populations and new social circumstances, they set out to produce a new literature.

The creation of this literature is one of the most magnificent outbursts of creative energy known to human history and it was sustained for about four to five centuries. Repetition alone, they believed, cannot sustain a living religion. Unless counterbalanced by constant innovation, it will become fossilized and lose its life-giving qualities.

So far the Mahayanistic attitude seems quite logical. What is more difficult to understand is that they insisted in presenting these new writings, manifestly composed centuries after the Buddha’s death, as the very words of the Buddha Himself.

In order to make room for the new dispensation, they followed the Mahasarighikas in minimizing the importance of the historical Buddha dakyamuni, whom they replaced by the Buddha who is the embodiment of Dharma (dharmakdya). In the “Lotus of the Good Law” we are told that the Buddha, far from having reached His enlightenment at Bodhgaya, about 500 BC or whenever the date may have been, abides for aeons and aeons, from eternity to eternity, and that He preaches the Law at all times in countless places and innumerable disguises. In the “Diamond Sutra” occurs the famous verse:

Those who by my form did see me,
And those who followed me by voice,
Wrong the efforts they engaged in,
Me those people will not see!

From the Dharma-body should one see the Buddhas,
From the Dharma-bodies comes their guidance.
The conception of the Buddha as the timeless embodiment of all Truth allowed for a successive revelation of that truth by Him at different times.

Not content with this, the Mahayanists tried to link their own new writings with the historical Buddha by a number of mythological fictions. They asserted that they had been preached by the Buddha in the course of His life on earth, that parallel to the Council at Rajagrha, which codified the Sutras of the Hmayana, the Mahāyāna Sutras had been codified by an assembly of Bodhisattvas on the mythical mountain of Vimalasvabhava; that the texts had been miraculously preserved for five centuries and stored away in the subterranean palaces of the Nagas, or with the king of the Gandharvas, or the king of the Gods. Then, as Nagarjuna puts it, “five hundred years after the Buddha’s Nirvāṇa, when the Good Law, after having gradually declined, was in great danger”, these treasures from the past were unearthed, revealed and made known, so as to revivify the doctrine.

What then were the main doctrinal innovations of the Mahāyāna? They can be summarized under five headings:

1. As concerns the goal there is a shift from the Arhat-ideal to the Bodhisattva-ideal;

2. A new way of salvation is worked out, in which compassion ranks equal with wisdom, and which is marked by the gradual advance through six “perfections” (paramiia);

3. Faith is given a new range by being provided with a new pantheon of deities, or rather of persons more than divine;

4. “Skill in means” (upāyakausalya), an entirely new virtue, becomes essential to the saint, and is placed even above wisdom, the highest virtue so far;

5. A coherent ontological doctrine is worked out, dealing with such items as “Emptiness”, “Suchness’, etc.

We will now consider these five points one by one.

1. The goal of Arhatship, which had motivated Buddhism in the first period, is now relegated to the second place. The Mahayanistic saint strives to be a “Bodhisattva” - from bodhi, “enlightenment”, and sattva, “being” or “essence”. A Bodhisattva is distinguished by three features:

a. In his essential being he is actuated by the desire to win the full enlightenment of a Buddha, which, from this point of view, implies complete omniscience, i.e. the knowledge of all things at all times in all their details and aspects,

b. He is dominated by two forces, in equal proportion, i.e. by compassion and wisdom. From compassion he selflessly postpones his entrance into the bliss of Nirvāṇa so as to help suffering creatures. From wisdom he attempts to win insight into the emptiness of all that is. He persists in his compassionate solidarity with all that lives although his wisdom shows him that living beings and all their woes are purely illusory,

c. Although intent on ultimate purity, a Bodhisattva remains in touch with ordinary people by having the same passions they have. His passions, however, do not either affect or pollute his mind.

2. A Bodhisattva’s compassion is called “great”, because it is boundless and makes no distinctions. A Bodhisattva resolves to become the saviour of all, whatever may be their worth or their claim to his attention. In the first period the wisdom of the saints had been fully emphasized, but now their selfless desire to make others happy is said to rank equal in value with it. Enlightenment is the thorough and complete understanding of the nature and meaning of life, the forces which shape it, the method to end it, and the reality which lies beyond it. This enlightenment, the Mahayanists agreed, does not automatically entail the desire to assist others. Among the enlightened they distinguished three types, two of them “selfish”, one “unselfish”. The “selfish” types are the Arhats and Pratyekabuddhas, who are said to represent the idea of the Hīnayāna, of the “inferior vehicle”. They are described as aloof from the concerns of the world and intent on their own private salvation alone. The “unselfish” ones are the Buddhas, and the pursuit of the unselfish quest for enlightenment on the part of a Bodhisattva is called the “Buddha-vehicle”, of the “Great Vehicle” (maha-yana).

A Bodhisattva must be a patient man. He wants to become a Buddha, but his distance from the transcendental perfection of a supreme Buddha, Who both knows and is everything, will obviously be nearly infinite. In one life it could not possibly be traversed. Countless lives would be needed and a Bodhisattva must be prepared to wait for aeons and aeons before he can reach his goal. Yet, he is separated from Buddhahood only by one single small obstacle, i.e. his belief in a personal self, his assumption that he is a separate individual, his inveterate tendency towards “I-making and Mine-making” (ahamkāra-mamakāra). To get rid of himself js the Bodhisattva’s supreme task. By two kinds of measures he tries to remove himself from himself - actively by self-sacrifice and selfless service, cogni-tively by insight into the objective non-existence of a self. The first is due to his compassion, the second to wisdom, defined as the ability to penetrate to the true reality, to the “own-being” of things, to what they are in and by themselves. It is believed that action and cognition must always go hand in hand to bring forth their spiritual fruits.

The unity of compassion and wisdom is acted out by the six “perfections”, or pdramitd, the six “methods by which we go to the Beyond”. A person turns into a Bodhisattva when he first resolves to win full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Thereafter, until his attainment of Buddhahood, aeons and aeons are devoted to the practice of the Paramitas. So important is this concept that the Mahāyāna often refers to itself as the “Vehicle of the Paramitas”. The six are: the perfections of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation and wisdom.

The first enjoins generosity, a willingness to give away all that one has, even one’s own body, and the second the scrupulous observance of the moral precepts, even at the risk of one’s own life. As for “patience”, the Mahāyāna has much more to say about it than the Hinayana and it uses the word in a wider sense than is usual. As a moral virtue it means the patient endurance of all kinds of suffering and hostility and the absence of any feeling of anger or discontent when meeting with them. In addition, “patience” is here also considered as an intellectual virtue and as such it means the emotional acceptance, before one has fathomed the whole of their depth, of the more incredible and anxiety-producing ontological doctrines of the Mahāyāna, such as the non-existence of all things. Vigour means that the Bodhisattva indefatigably persists in his work over the ages and never feels discouraged; his perfection of meditation enables him to gain proficiency in trances “numerous as the sands of the Ganges”. The perfection of wisdom finally is the ability to understand the essential properties of all processes and phenomena, their mutual relations, the conditions which bring about their rise and fall, and the ultimate unreality of their separate existence. At its highest point it leads right into the Emptiness which is the one and only reality.

3. Another distinctive contribution of the Mahāyāna is the distinction often stages which the Bodhisattva must traverse on his way to Buddhahood. This aspect of the doctrine reached its final formulation in the third century in the “Sutra on the Ten Stages”. The first six of these stages correspond to the six “perfections” and each of them is marked by the intensive practice of one of them. The sixth stage therefore corresponds to the perfection of wisdom and with it the Bodhisattva has by his understanding of emptiness come “face to face’ (abhimukhi) with Reality itself. At that point he would be able to escape from the terrors of this world of birth-and-death and he could, if he wanted to, enter into Nirvāṇa. Out of compassion he nevertheless makes no use of this possibility, but stays on in the world for a long time so as to help those in it. Although in the world, he now is no longer of it.

During the last four stages a Bodhisattva gains what the texts call “sovereignty over the world”, and he becomes a kind of supernatural being endowed with miraculous powers of many kinds. From the ordinary Bodhisattvas as they exist on the first six stages, the “celestial Bodhisattvas” of the last four stages differ in that they were well suited to becoming objects of a religious cult. Soon the faithful increasingly turned to all kinds of mythical Bodhisattvas, such as Avalokitesvara, Manjusri, Maitreya, Kshitigarbha, Saman-tabhadra and others. Though conceived in India some of these Bodhisattvas show strong non-Indian, and particularly Iranian influences.

The development of mythical Bodhisattvas was accompanied, and even preceded by, that of mythical Buddhas, Who were held to reside in the heavens in all the ten directions. In the East lives Akshobhya, the “Imperturbable”. In the West is the kingdom of the Buddha of “Infinite Light”, Amitabha, not always clearly distinguished from Amitayus, the Buddha who “has an infinite life-span”. Amitayus is a counterpart to the Iranian Zurvan Akaranak (Unlimited Time), just as the cult of Amitabha owed much to Iranian sun worship and probably originated in the Kushana Empire in the borderland between India and Iran. There are many other celestial Buddhas, in fact infinitely many, and most of them have a “kingdom” of their own, a world which is not of this world, a land which is “pure” because free from defilements and adverse conditions.

4. Next we must say a few words about the “skill in means”, a virtue which is indispensable to a Bodhisattva at all times, but which he possesses in its fullness only late, on the seventh stage, after the “perfection of wisdom” has thoroughly shown him the emptiness of everything that seems to be. “Skill in means” is the ability to bring out the spiritual potentialities of different people, by statements or actions which are adjusted to their needs and adapted to their capacity for comprehension. If the truth be told, all that we have described so far as constituting the doctrine of the Mahāyāna is just “skill in means” and nothing more. It is a series of fictions elaborated to further the salvation of beings. In actual fact there are no Buddhas, no Bodhisattvas, no perfections, and no stages. All these are products of our imagination, just expedients, concessions to the needs of ignorant people, designed to ferry them across to the Beyond. Everything apart from the One, also called “Emptiness” or “Suchness”, is devoid of real existence, and whatever may be said about it is ultimately untrue, false and nugatory. But nevertheless it is not only permissible, but even useful to say it, because the salvation of beings demands it.

5. So far we have spoken about the way to the Beyond. Now we come to the Beyond itself. Wisdom teachings about ontology, or the nature of reality, constitute the inner core of the Mahāyāna doctrine. These teachings are extremely subtle, abstruse and elusive and defy any attempt at summarizing them, because they are not meant as definite statements about definite facts and because it is said expressly that they do not explain anything, do not say anything in particular, for the ultimate transcendental reality is held to lie beyond the grasp of intellectual comprehension and verbal expression. Be that as it may, the peculiar ontological doctrines of the Mahāyāna developed logically from the philosophy of the Mahasarighikas and in direct and conscious opposition to that of the Sarvastivadins.

Four basic propositions are common to all Mahayanists:

a. All dharmas are “empty” in the sense that each one is nothing in and by itself. Any dharma is therefore indistinguishable from any other dharma. In consequence all dharmas are ultimately non-existent and the same.

b. This Emptiness can be called “Suchness”, when one takes each thing “such as it is”, without adding anything to it or subtracting anything from it. There can be only one Suchness and the multiple world is a construction of our imagination.

c. If all is one and the same, then also the Absolute will be identical with the Relative, the Unconditioned with the conditioned, Nirvāṇa with Samsara.

d. True Knowledge must rise above the duality of either subject and object, or of affirmation and negation.

These four propositions get near to the Beyond, but they do not quite reach it. The inmost sanctum of the whole doctrine is filled with nothing but silence.

We now come to the systematized Mahāyāna, which falls into two main philosophical schools, the Madhyamikas and the Yogacarins.

The Mādhyamika school was founded by Nagarjuna (c AD 150), a South Indian and one of the greatest minds India has produced. The school persisted for many centuries and has had a vigorous life also in China and Tibet. The Madhyamika philosophy is primarily a logical doctrine which aims at an all-embracing scepticism by showing that all statements are equally untenable. This applies also to statements about the Absolute. They are all bound to be false and the Buddha’s “thundering silence” alone can do justice to it. Soteriologically, everything must be dropped and given up, until absolute Emptiness alone remains, and then salvation is gained.

At the time of Nagarjuna the shadowy beginnings of Yogācārin thinking could already be discerned, but the philosophy itself was clearly formulated only in the fourth century. Vasubandhu and Asanga are the greatest names here and modern historical research has so far not yet succeeded in sorting out the many conflicting data we have on their chronology, writings and activities.

The Yogacarins propounded a primarily psycholo-gical theory and believed that the Absolute can usefully be described as “Mind”, “Thought” or “Consci-ousness”.

Theirs was a metaphysical idealism, according to which consciousness creates its objects out of its own inner potentialities. Mind can, however, exist quite by itself, without any object whatever. Soteriologically, the Yogacarins aimed at achieving “an act of cognition which no longer apprehends an object”. Salvation is won when we can produce in ourselves an act of thought which is “Thought-only”, pure consciousness, and altogether beyond the division between subject and object.

The two systems were clearly quite distinct in their interests and intentions. The polemics which they occasionally directed against each other had therefore little effect and occupy little space in their writings. On the whole each school was content to elaborate its own tenets, without paying too much attention to its rivals. To the Madhyamikas, the Yogacarin doctrine appeared as a quite incomprehensible perversity, whereas the Yogacarins regarded the Madhyamika doctrine as a preliminary stage of their own, which however missed the true and esoteric core of the Buddha’s teaching.

The Yogacarin school is further noteworthy for having elaborated the final formulation of the doctrine of the three Bodies of the Buddha. The Buddha is said to exist on three distinct levels. As the Dharma-body He is the Absolute, Truth and Reality itself. In His “communal body”, or His “enjoyment body” (sāmbhoga-kaya), the Buddha shows Himself to the celestial Bodhisattvas and other superhuman beings and preaches in unearthly realms the Dharma to them, generating joy, delight and love for it. Finally there is the fictitious, or conjured up body (nirmdna-kaya) which is the one that human beings see appearing at certain times on earth and which is a phantom body sent by the real Buddha to do His work in the world. By way of scholastic refinement, many Yogacarins still added a fourth Body, the Substantial Body (svdbhdvika-kaya), which is the basis of the other three.

Yet a note of caution must here be sounded. It is generally said that this doctrine of the Three Bodies was first formulated by the Yogacarins about AD 300, but basically there is nothing really new about it. All three bodies had been known centuries before. The identification of one side of the Buddha with the Dharma had often been made in the first period and is of the essence of Buddhism. As to the second body, there had been a long-standing tradition about the “thirty-two marks of the superman”, which were obviously not attributes of the body visible to all, but adhered to some glorified body which is visible only to the eyes of faith and manifests itself only to the community of the saints.

Although the assumption of such a “glorified” body had been made for a long time, all references to it until about AD 300 are vague and elusive. It may be that the doctrine on this subject was not fully developed before the third century. It may also be, however, that this was regarded as a particularly sacred, and therefore secret, subject, which could be explained only orally to those who were spiritually qualified to hear of it, while the remainder had to content themselves with a few vague hints. It is likely that the continuous decline of which we spoke before was accompanied by an increasing profanizatign of the doctrine.

In early times, as we saw, a monk was even forbidden to recite the actual text of the Sutras to laymen. We hear of Anathapindada, one of the greatest early benefactors of the Order, that only on his death-bed, after having for many years honoured the Lord and helped the Sańgha, he was allowed to hear from Sariputra a sermon on the unsatisfactory nature of sense-objects, because, as Sariputra told him, such subjects were reserved for the yellow-robed monks and were not normally taught to the men in white robes, to the laymen. Later on, first the Sutras ceased to be secret and further on also the more secret teachings hidden behind them were divulged one by one. As a matter of fact the Yogacarins always claimed that all they did was to explain the “esoteric” meaning, known all along, but never broadcast to all and sundry.

If this is so, then what in the history of Buddhist thought seems to be doctrinal innovation may very often be nothing but the gradual shifting of the line between esoteric and exoteric teachings. At first, even up to Aśoka, the bulk of the doctrine, except for some moral maxims and so on, was esoteric. By the time of the Tantra, in the third period, even the most esoteric doctrines were written down. This process can be understood as one of compensation for the increasing admitted failure to achieve the spiritual goals aimed at. The monks who were unable to succeed inwardly in their self-realization would then indulge in the extraverted activity of spreading their doctrines among the general population. From the fact that a statement is attested only at a later date we cannot therefore conclude with any cogency that it was actually invented at that time. It is just as well possible that it ceased at that time to be the prerogative of the initiated and became more or less public property.

2. HĪNAYĀNA DEVELOPMENTS IN INDIA

In spite of the growth of the Mahāyāna, the old Hīnayāna schools held their own. The new developments naturally had some influence on them. They adopted some Mahāyāna theories, either by direct borrowing or because they were exposed to the same influences which shaped the Mahāyāna.

The idea of a Bodhisattva now becomes prominent in the vast popular Jataka literature which tells stories about the Buddha’s former lives. Originally these tales were fables, fairy-tales, anecdotes, etc., taken from the vast fund of Indian folklore. These current tales were then adapted to Buddhist uses by being represented as incidents in the lives of the historical Buddha. For a long time they were just told to illustrate the Buddha’s moral precepts, or for the purpose of proclaiming the glory and spiritual stature of the Lord (Bhagavari). Only at a later age were they recast into the form of stories about the Bodhisattva. In connection with the Jatakas a set of 10 “perfections” was elaborated, parallel to the six perfections of the Mahāyāna. Also the compassion and the loving-kindness, which in older literature is a minor and very subordinate virtue, becomes more prominent in these tales of the Bodhisattva’s deeds, the “Bodhisattva” always being The Buddha in His previous lives. Likewise the doctrine of “emptiness” is now stressed more than it was in the past. A recognition of the fact that the times are bad and the days for the Arhats have passed, gives greater respectability to the aspiration after the secondary goals, such as the rebirth among the gods, or with Maitreya, the future Buddha, now in the Tushita heaven.

But on the whole these concessions are made rather grudgingly. Our Hīnayāna sources practically never mention the Mahayanists, either posilively or negatively. They were somewhat incredulous of all these innovations and they refused to take seriously the claim that the many new Mahāyāna works gave the Buddha’s actual words. In fact they rejected these works as just so many “concoctions” and unworthy of serious consideration. The eloquent testimony of the complete and total silence of all Hīnayāna doctors on the subject of the Mahāyāna shows clearly what they thought of all this splendour.

Undeterred by the Mahāyāna, the Hinayanists went on with their own doctrinal development, which consisted in working out the logical implications of their Abhidharma. The elaboration and systematization of the Abhidharma occupied the first four centuries of our era. After that time it was completed for the two principal schools of which we have any precise knowledge, i.e. by Vasubandhu for the Sarvastivadins and by Buddhaghosa for the Theravadins.

About AD 400 the Hinayanists reached the perfection of which they were capable. After that there was no more to come and the Indian Hīnayāna, although it persisted for another 800 years, has left us few records of further creative intellectual activity. Vasubandhu himself felt that he had reached the end of an epoch and he concludes his “Abhidharmakosa” with the famous words:

The times are come
When flooded by the rising tide of ignorance
Buddha’s religion seems to breathe its last.

The creation of the Abhidharma was one of the greatest achievements of the human intellect. I have explained to some extent the sense in which the word “dharmas” was used. In our second period one attempted to determine systematically how many kinds of “dharmas”, or ultimate constituents of experience, had to be assumed. The Sarvastivadins arrived at a list of 75 dharmas, whereas the Theravadins believed that 174 were necessary. The difference between the two lists is much less serious than it appears to be. The Theravadin list is so much longer chiefly because they subdivided one item of the Sarvastivadins (i.e. no. 14, Thought) into the 89 kinds of consciousness. Otherwise the lists mainly differ in their arrangement, order of enumeration and terminology, as well as in a number of trifling details too wearisome to enumerate here. The basic factors were already worked out while the two schools were still united and only the final touches were added at a later period.

The astounding range of Abhidharma studies can be appreciated when we look at the topics which Vasubandhu discusses in his Abhidharmakosa. It falls into eight chapters, dealing with the elements, the powers and faculties, cosmology, i.e. the origin, arrangement and destruction of the universe, with karma, the passions, the various kinds of saints and the paths which lead to salvation, concluding with a survey of sacred cognition and meditational attainments. In addition an appendix is devoted to the refutation of the views of Buddhists and non-Buddhists who postulate the existence of an ego, the abolition and eradication of all such views being Vasubandhu’s main object in the composition of his treatise.

The final synthesis was preceded by many lengthy and extensive discussions of which we have for the Sarvastivadins some documents left. In the first century of our era they fixed their Canon, about AD 100 there is the Vibhdshd, a commentary to the Abhidharma, and about AD 200 the enormousMahdvibhdsha, a commentary to thejndnaprasthdna composed by 500 Arhats of Kashmir, which gives the name of Vaibhdshika to the most orthodox school of the Sarvastivadins. The word vibhasha can be translated as “option” and the works just mentioned derived their name from the fact that different opinions of the leading teachers of the school are carefully recorded, so that the reader may be able to choose those which seem most likely to him.

The chief adversaries of the Vaibhashikas were the Sautrantikas who did not believe that the seven basic Abhidharma texts had been preached by the Buddha, and regarded the statements on Abhidharma which are scattered in the Sutras as the only reliable scriptural basis for that subject.

The doctrines of the Sautrantikas are often simpler and more obviously reasonable than those of the Sarvastivadins. The controversies between the two schools dealt with such subjects as the possibility of self-consciousness, or that of the direct perception of objects. Or one debated in what sense external objects really exist, or what it is that does the “seeing” (the eyes, or the consciousness, or mind), or whether destruction has a cause or comes about automatically of itself in the very nature of things.

Vasubandhu made many concessions to the Sautrantika point of view, and his Kosa was in consequence assailed by the orthodox Vaibhashikas. He found an able and powerful opponent in Sańghab-hadra, who commented on the Kosa from the traditional point of view. Nevertheless theKosa was increasingly recognized as the last word on the subject and numerous commentaries testify to its enduring popularity in subsequent centuries.

The creative activities of the Hīnayāna were, however, not entirely confined to the Abhidharma. Constant additions were made to the Birth Stories and Edifying Tales. The life and personality of the Buddha claimed the attention of the devotees. Asvaghosa (c. 100), a very fine poet, used the devices of Indian Sanskrit poetics to popularize the life of the Buddha by his Buddhacarita, into which he introduced much Hindu learning. His work is marked by great devotional feeling, but there is no reason to assume that Asvaghosa was a Mahayanist in any precise sense of the term and his views show more affinity to those of the Mahāsānghikas than to any other known school.

Asvaghosa also wrote dramas, which have since his time been favourite means of popularizing Buddhist sentiments.

In Burma and Tibet some of the longer Jatakas, like the famous story of Vessantara, who gave away all he had, are still popular subjects of dramatic performances. In the fifth century a biography of the Buddha from the period aeons ago when he first decided to attain Buddhahood, down to the beginning of His teaching, was compiled in Ceylon, in the form of an to the Pali Jataka book. We also have Matrceta’s (c. 150) “Hymn in 150 Verses”, lauding “the Buddha’s great and profound virtues”, which was taught to all monks. Piety and not wisdom was the aim of this kind of literature.

3. NEPAL AND KASHMIR

In Nepal the religion seems to have existed for a long time, probably from the beginning of Buddhism onwards. Little is, however, known of the period before the seventh century AD, and the Buddhism of Nepal was in all probability not substantially different from that of Northern India. In the legendary history of the Svayambhupurqna a great role is assigned to Manjusri, who came from China to Svayambhu, made the great lake disappear which up to then had filled the valley, founded the city of Kathmandu and placed there as a ruler the king Dharmikara whom he had brought with him from Maha-Clna. The Buddha Himself was born in Nepal, at Lumbini, and Aśoka is known to have visited His birthplace, where he erected an inscribed pillar.

Although probably known in Kashmir before Aśoka, Buddhism really made its influence felt only during his rule, when Kashmir formed part of his Empire. The bhikshu Madhyantika was sent to convert the country. Aśoka is said to have built 500 monasteries for the Arhats, and to have given the valley itself as a gift to the Sańgha. Thereafter the fate of Buddhism fluctuated with the attitude of the rulers.

Under Kanishka a Council is said to have been held which fixed the Sarvastivadin Canon. From that time onwards the Sarvastivadin writings were normally in Sanskrit, and this fact by itself would increase the relative weight of the Brahmin converts who alone would be fully conversant with the complications of this language.

After the Kushana kings a Hindu reaction set in, under King Kinnara many monasteries were destroyed, the rulers in general were Shivaites, and royal patronage was therefore withdrawn.

During our period Kashmir gained a high reputation as a centre of Buddhist learning and nearly all the great Buddhist scholars between Asvaghosa and Asanga are reported to have resided there at some time or other. Harivarman about 250 wrote his Satyasiddhi, an interesting synthesis of Mahāyāna and Hlnayana views. Kashmiri monks went to Khotan, China and the Andhra country, and it was a Kashmiri monk, Gunavarman, who converted Java at the beginning of the fifth century.

4. CEYLON

At the beginning of our period a most significant discussion took place about the question whether learning or practice is the more important. The Dhammakathikas who stressed learning rather than practical realization were victorious and as a result the whole character of Ceylonese Buddhism changed. The learned monks were greatly honoured and in consequence all able and intelligent monks applied themselves to book-learning. The full-time practice of meditation was normally taken up by elderly monks of weak intellect and feeble physique. Book learning soon included not only the Tipitaka, but also languages, grammar, history, logic, medicine, etc., the Buddhist monasteries became centres of learning and culture, and they were also made artistically attractive.

In the first century BC Saddhatissa, the king’s brother, had asked the monks to name even one holy man who deserved his veneration. The Sinhalese commentaries, on the other hand, assume that at that time the island was full of Arahants and for a long time afterwards many monks continued to live a strictly disciplined and austere spiritual life. As we know from Fa Hien and Yuan Tsang, Ceylon enjoyed a high reputation in other Buddhist lands.

During the fifth century three scholars, all non-Ceylon-ese from Southern India, translated the old Sinhalese commentaries into Pali. They were Buddhadatta, Buddha-ghosa and Dhammapala. The most famous of them, Buddhaghosa, gave in his “Path to Purity” (yisuddhi-magga) a splendid survey of Buddhist doctrine. The book is a compendium of the Tipitaka, and one of the great masterpieces of Buddhist literature which describes authoritatively, lucidly and in great detail the principal meditational practices of the Buddhist Yogin.

At the end of the fifth century also a council revised the text of the Tipitaka. From this time onwards the doctrine and tradition of the Theravadins has been definitely fixed. And about 400 the Pali Suttas had for the first time been translated into Sinhalese.

For its vitality the Buddhism of Ceylon continued to depend on its contact with India, but the nature of this contact had altered in the second period. The commu-nications with the Western ports were now abandoned, and communications went through the ports at the mouth of the Ganges. In this way the influence of the monks of Magadha, particularly the Mulasar-vastivadins, made itself felt.

There was during this period much discord and controversy between the two principal monasteries, the Mahavihara and the Abhayagirivihara, the latter having been founded in 24 BC.

The Abhayagiri monks had a more democratic attitude to laymen, had more contact with India, were liberal in their views, welcomed new ideas from abroad, and were more progressive than the conservative Mahavihara monks. Soon after their foundation they received Vatslputriya monks from India. Later on they added to the basic Theravada a superstructure of Mahāyāna doctrines and scriptures. At the end of the third century we hear of a new school among them, called Vai-tulyavada. This was probably a form of Mahāyāna, and in the fourth century Sańghamitra, an Indian Mahayanist “versed in the exorcism of spirits”, won the support of the king, and the Mahavihara was closed for a time. But Sańghamitra was soon killed by a carpenter, and after 362 the Mahavihara began to function again. At this time, in AD 371, the left eye tooth of the Buddha was brought to Ceylon from Dantapura in Kalinga, and this precious relic was entrusted to the Abhayagiri monastery which because of its Mahāyāna leanings was more willing to encourage bhaktic piety. In the beginning of the fifth century Fa-Hien counted 60,000 monks in Ceylon, of whom 5,000 belonged to the Abhayagiri, and 3,000 to the Mahavihara. The Ceylonese orthodoxy has succeeded in suppressing the entire literature of the Abhayagirivadins, but one of their works is preserved in a Chinese translation. It is Upatissa’s Vimut-timagga, which has the same theme as Buddhaghosa’s “Path to Purity”, and was written before his time. It is curious to observe that it does not depart from Theravadin doctrines on any fundamental issues.

5. EXPANSION INTO GREATER ASIA

Five whole centuries had to elapse before Buddhism had penetrated the Indian subcontinent, about as long as it took Rome to conquer the Italian peninsula. Now, about 500 years after the Buddha’s Niryana, His religion could begin to expand into Greater Asia. Gandhara, in the North-West of India, was the birthplace of Buddhism as a world religion. It was from here that the monks in the saffron robe gradually filtered into Central Asia, and from there into China, and further on. And it was chiefly the Mahāyāna form of Buddhism which took root outside India.

We must give some explanation why the Mahayanists were so much more effective missionaries than the Hinayanists. It was not that the latter were deficient in missionary zeal, but they were handicapped by the fact that they were rather inflexible literalists, whereas the Mahāyāna claimed much greater freedom in interpreting the letter of the Scriptures. This applied to both monastic rules and doctrinal propositions. For instance, if the rules about eating meat are strictly interpreted, nomadic populations will remain without the consolations of the Dharma, because among them the Vinaya rules cannot be strictly observed. Mahāyāna monks quickly found a way round unworkable rules, and reinter-preted them to fit the circumstances. Of particular importance for the success of their missionary enterprises was their attitude to the Vinaya rule which forbids monks to practise medicine. The history of Christian missions in recent centuries shows that, violence apart, the medical missionaries effected more conversions than anyone else. The sword was the one method which the Buddhists disdained to use, but the scalpel, the herb and the potion opened to the Mahayanists the houses of the poor and rich alike. They convinced themselves that compassion and their responsibilities to their fellow-men counted for more than a well-meant monastic rule and they zealously gave themselves over to the study and practice of medicine, which formed part of the curriculum for instance at Nālandā University and also at the monastic institutions of Tibet.

The same latitudinarianism was practised with regard to doctrinal questions. Great care was taken to minimize the differences between Buddhist and non-Buddhist opinions, to absorb as much of the pre-existing views of their converts as was possible, be they Taoist, Bon, Shinto, Manichean or shamanis-tic. This latitudinarianism is of course in danger of lapsing into laxity in the moral and into arbitrary conjectures in the doctrinal field. The latter danger was on the whole more effectively avoided than the former and the best Mahāyāna literature contains little, if anything, that to any fair-minded Buddhist can appear as positively unorthodox. There was one factor which limited and restrained the “skill in means” of these men, and that was the fact that before they wrote their books their minds had been remoulded and disciplined by many years of meditation on traditional lines.

China was the first large country to be penetrated by Buddhist thought. As in Japan and Tibet later on, Buddhism went through five stages, which will act as our guides for the arrangement of our material.

1. There was first a period of consolidation, marked by translations of the basic texts.

2. This was followed by a preliminary attempt at coming to terms with the material. Buddhism did not move into a spiritual vacuum, but everywhere it encountered people formed by some previous tradition - by Taoism and Confucianism in China, Shinto in Japan, Bon in Tibet.

3. After this, the next, or third phase, is marked by a more mature assimilation of the doctrine, but still largely in dependence on Indian models. In China, for instance, this took the form of either numerous, generally brief, commentaries, or of original doctrinal treatises which were passed off as translations from the Sanskrit. Two of these are very well known. The one is the famous “Awakening of Faith”, wrongly attributed to Asvaghosa, and the other the so-called Surangama Sutra, said to have been brought from Nālandā, but actually written in China by Fang Jong.

4. We now come to the fourth phase, which is perhaps the most important of all and normally took 600 years to reach. A truly Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism, which no longer did violence to the national character, asserted itself in China with the Ch’an sect, in Japan in the Kamakura period, in Tibet with the Kahgyudpas and Gelugpas.

5. Then finally there is the period of decay.

The first phase, as we saw, was one of bare copying; in the second one asserted one’s independence, some-what wilfully, as a child in its second year; in the third one attained some true independence, without however quite daring to, as in adolescence; in the fourth phase the native genius at last fully asserted itself. This child had grown up. The creative manhood of Buddhism lasted for several centuries. Manhood is followed by old age, and after a time the creative powers of Buddhism waned.

6. CENTRAL ASIA

Spreading from the Indo-Greek Bactrian kingdoms, Buddhism had by the second century BC been well established in Central Asia. Khotan, Kucha, Turfan, etc., were at that time flourishing centres of culture, owing to the caravan routes which went through them. The establishment of Buddhism on the great silk routes was an event of decisive importance for its future propagation in Eastern Asia.

Among the schools, the Sarvastivada and Mahāyāna were most strongly represented. They brought their Scriptures with them and in the course of the twentieth century European travellers have made many invaluable finds in the sands of Turkestan, which yielded both Indian books imported into Central Asia and translations of the Scriptures into the local languages, such as Sogdian, Khotanese, Kuchean, etc. We have also, in Kuchean, several works written in Kucha itself, imitating the Buddhist Sanskrit writings of India, but no really original works of local origin have come down to us.

In addition these expeditions, carried out between 1900 and 1915, have brought to light a highly eclectic Buddhist art which offers a curious blend of Greco-Buddhist influences from Gandhara with others from the Roman Empire, and from Arsaco-Sassanid and Chinese Art. Through it the Greco-Buddhist art spread to China, where it led to the Wei art of the fifth century.

In these cosmopolitan centres of intercontinental trade Buddhism was exposed to new religious influences which it had not encountered so far. It not only met with Christianity in its Nestorian form, but also with the Manicheans who were very active in that area, particularly among the Sogdians, and who left some traces on the Buddhist doctrines evolved there.

7. CHINA

From Central Asia Buddhism was brought, by a natural transition, to China, which had conquered that region in the first century BC and kept it until the end of the Han dynasty (AD 220). The beginnings are said to go back to somewhere between 70 and 50 BC, and the religion slowly spread under the Han dynasty. But at first it was a foreign religion of the non-Chinese populations in China’s outlying marches. In 148 a Parthian, Ngan Che Kao, and in 170 an Indian, Tshou Cho-fo, and a Yueh-chi, Tche tsh’an, arrived in China from Central Asia and established a monastery in Lo-yang, the capital of the Han.

It was only in the period of disunity (221-589) which followed on the collapse of the Han, that Buddhism really became a major force in China itself. Only in 355 were Chinese for the first time permitted to become monks, at least in the realm of the Eastern Ts’in rulers. In the second century foreigners from Central Asia - Parthians, Sogdians, Indians, etc. - did some translations. In the third and fourth centuries Buddhism gained momentum among the people and at the Court, and some emperors clearly favoured it. By AD 400 1,300 works had been translated. Then came Kumarajiva, whose translations, made with the help of Chinese literati, were classical works and are still being read. By 500 Buddhism was firmly established throughout the whole of China and in a flourishing condition, with countless monasteries, temples, and sculptured grottoes for the monks.

This was a remarkable success for a religion which offended Chinese official sentiment at many points, for it seemed indifferent to the perpetuation of the family, showed little loyalty to the country and seemed to encourage baseless superstitions. The Buddhist clergy, on the ground that they had withdrawn from the world, refused to make the socially recognized signs of outward respect to the Son of Heaven and his representatives. All through its history, in fact, the Buddhist Church tended to develop into a state within the state. Their opponents blamed them for enjoying the benefits of the rule of the Son of Heaven without doing anything in return. The Buddhists claimed that on the contrary it is the monk, if anyone, who dispenses munificence, for enormous benefits accrue to the whole of society from his practice of the way of the Buddha. In fact, the benefits bestowed by the Son of Heaven are as but a drop of water when compared to the favours dispensed on all mankind by the Buddhist clergy.

The state, however, always insisted on controlling,the Buddhist Church through the Ministry of Worship and saw to it that to some extent the monks lived up to their claim that they were sacrificing themselves for the good of the people.

The traditionalist opponents also stressed the foreign origin of Buddhism, which came from “barbarian lands”, and the doctrine of reincarnation seemed to them quite incredible, because they believed that when a man dies his soul also perishes.

The problem of survival after death aroused intense interest at the time. In their polemics the Chinese Buddhists were apt to spray away from the orthodox denial of an individual soul and to postulate some enduring “spiritual something of the finest essence”, which transmigrates from existence to existence. They quoted either Lao Tzu or the Yellow Emperor as having said that “the body suffers destruction, but the soul undergoes no change. With its unchangingness it rides upon changes and thus passes through endless transformations”. This did not really well agree with Buddhism as it had been understood up to then.

The success was of course largely due to the fact that Buddhism contained a message which the indigenous teachers could not provide. For, as Seng-yu expressed it in the fifth century, “none of them have measured the shape of Heaven or peered into the mind of the Sage”.Both the ruling classes and the people supported the” new religion. The Emperors would be pleased to number as many peace-loving Buddhists as possible among their subjects, because Chinese society never knew universal conscription, and has always valued Peace very highly.

The ruling layers of society would find the Buddhist priests more amenable than their Taoist rivals who were continually fomenting rebellions among the peasantry and whose churches were supported by contributions of the members who constituted them. The Buddhists, on the other hand, relied on the donations of wealthy laymen, and could therefore be relied upon not to pursue unwelcome political schemes of their own. The masses, finally, were greatly attracted to the Bodhisattva ideal which opened the highest possibilities even for those low on the social scale; the Buddhist pantheon, with merciful deities like Kuan Yin and others, brought encouragement and comfort; and from the support of the Buddha and Sańgha they expected rewards in an after-life.

It was widely believed in China that thereby one could influence Yama, the God of the Nether World. Some Buddhist priests, like for instance Buddha Matahga in the third century, performed miracles, prophesied and cured diseases by means of their spells.

The development of Chinese Buddhist thought was largely determined by the choice of the sacred texts which were translated into Chinese. Among the first and most influential were the Sutras on Prajnaparamita. The mentality of the Chinese is said to be rationalistic, positivistic, matter-of-fact and anti-metaphysical. That this is only one side of their national character is shown by the enthusiastic reception which they gave to the highly metaphysical Prajnaparamita literature from Han times onwards. The Bible was not studied with greater avidity in Protestant Europe than these very abstract writings on perfect wisdom and emptiness in China.

Other works which gained a great popularity, and often became the nucleus of separate schools, were the Lotus of the Good Law (translations 250 onwards), which attracted the Chinese by the splendour of the scenery and by its parables, the story of Vimalakirti (translations 188 onwards), which fascinated by the noble picture of a “white-robed” layman who took the sickness of the world upon himself, and the Nirvāṇa Sutra (translation of 423) which seemed interesting for its teaching about the Buddha-nature within each of us.

Between 200 and 450 there developed a strong interest in the technical details of Buddhist meditation, and many handbooks were translated during that period.

The rise of Buddhism coincided with the revival of Taoism, and many Chinese stressed the similarity in outlook between these intellectual trends. Few doubted that the Truth as it had been seen by the Buddha and the sages of China, by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu in particular, was one and the same. Until the fifth century, many Taoists considered Buddhism as one more method of reaching Taoist goals. In the third century Wang Fo wrote a famous pamphlet, in which he represented Buddhism as the result of “the conversion of the Barbarians by Lao-tzu”.

Taoist terminology was often deliberately used to explain Buddhist concepts and in any case many of the Chinese equivalents of Sanskrit technical terms had first been used with a Taoist meaning, which to some extent influenced their use also in Buddhist contexts. A word like tao, used to translate mdrga, or “Path”, would automatically carry with it many Taoist connotations and overtones quite unforeseen and unintended in the Sanskrit scriptures of India. Shou-yi, the equivalent of satipaṭṭhāna, was often equated with the Taoist Shou-yi meaning the retention of the flame of life; or nairātmya, translated as the “absence of shen (body)”, was easily misunderstood as existence without a body, or in a spirit body; and “Emptiness” was identified wiihpen-wu, the “Original Non-existence” of Lao-tzu, the “Void filled to the brim”, which, like a womb, carries all existence within it. To a representative thinker like Hui-Yuan the Dharmakaya is equivalent to the Highest Being, Personified Nature, the Sage or Great Man of the Neo-Taoists, the Buddha, the Spirit in the Centre of Existence, and the World Soul. Buddhist ideas were freely interpreted by the use of phrases taken from Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu and the Book of Changes and it was quite usual to read the Taoist world-view into the Buddhist system.

Less pronounced was the influence of Confucianism, which nevertheless made itself felt in the translation of the Sutras. During this period great care was taken to alter any sentiments or phrases which would offend the Confucian sense of propriety in such matters as family ethics, the relation between the sexes and the attitude to social superiors.

The main problem which interested the indigenous Buddhists during this period was taken from the Taoist tradition and concerned the relationship of being (yw) and non-being (wu)) which later they identified with the “emptiness” (Sunyatd) of the Sanskrit writings. The discussion of this problem led to the emergence of “the seven schools”. Among these Tao-an’s (312-85) School of Original Non-being taught that “non-being lies prior to the myriad kinds of evolution, and emptiness is at the beginning of the multitudinous shapes of physical things”. The variations of this doctrine are counted as the second school.

The third concentrated on the question of the emptiness of matter. The fourth teaches “the non-being of mind” which means “that the sage lacks any deliberate mind toward the ten thousand things; it does not mean that these things themselves are ever non-existent”. This leads to the demand that we should “stop the activities of the mind within, and not let it be impeded by external matter”, which is re-echoed in Chinese Buddhism again and again.

The fifth, the “school of stored impressions”, maintains that all phenomena are apparitions in a dream caused by mind and consciousness and will cease, together with their source, when we awaken from this dream. “Then the triple world is seen to be empty, and although the mind is extinguished, there is nothing it cannot produce.”

The sixth, called the “school of phenomenal illusion”, taught that “all dharmas are equally illusory and, being so, constitute what pertains to ordinary truth. But the spirit (shen) of the mind is genuine and not empty, and as such pertains to the highest truth. For if this spirit were likewise empty, to whom could the Buddhist doctrine be taught and who would be there to cultivate its path, renounce the world and become a Sage? Hence we know that the Spirit is not empty.”

The seventh “school of causal combination” finally asserted that being, or worldly truth, results from the combination of causes and their disconnection leads to non-being, which is the highest truth.

About 400 Kumdrajiva’s scholarly work consolidated Buddhism and gave it greater prestige. He came from Kucha, born in 344 of an Indian father. Carried off as war booty to China in 384, he lived for fifteen years in Leang-chou in Kansu, and was taken in 402 to the capital of Chang-an, where he became Kuo-Shih, or Director of Religious Instruction, and died in 413.

He enlisted the patronage of the emperor Yao Hsing, and translated more than a hundred works. Originally he was a Sarvastivadin monk, but later, while still in Kucha, he was converted to the doctrines of Nagarjuna.

His two most important disciples were Seng-chao (384-414) and Chu Tao-sheng (c. 360-434).

Seng-chao’s writings, collected under the title “Book of Chao”, represent an interesting combination of Buddhism and Neo-Taoism. On this period the basic oppositions within Buddhist thinking were considered equivalent to those of Neo-Taoism. The contrast between the Absolute (bhutatathatd) and the temporal sequence of production and stopping seemed to correspond to that between non-being (wu) and being (yw); that between permanence and impermanence to that between quiescence (ching) and movement (tung)’, and the contrast between Nirvāṇa and Samsara to that of non-activity (wu wei) and having activity (yu wei). Seng-chao discussed the Buddhist philosophy of the Mahāyāna on the basis of these equivalences and his views are the first formulated indigenous Chinese Buddhist philosophical system which has come down to us.

Tao-sheng sounded one of the leitmotifs of Chinese Buddhism when he said: “Ever since the transmission of the scriptures eastward (i.e. to China), their translators have encountered repeated obstacles, and many have been blocked by holding too narrowly to the text, with the result that few have been able to see the complete meaning. Let them forget the fish-trap and catch the fish. Then one may begin to talk with them about the Way (Tao)”

One of the questions which agitated the Chinese Buddhists of that time was that of the destiny of the Icchantikas. Are there any beings called icchantikas (a word of unknown etymological derivation), who are forever excluded from Buddhahood? Tao-sheng asserted, in opposition to most other scholars, that the icchantikas also possess the Buddha-nature and are therefore capable of achieving Buddhahood. During his own lifetime a fuller text of the Great Nirvāṇa Sutra reached China and confirmed his views.

Tao-sheng also taught that “Buddhahood is achieved through instantaneous enlightenment”. To his contemporaries this teaching appeared to be a “new doctrine”, and the denial of a gradual enlightenment continued to be one of the special features of Chinese Buddhism.

In the fifth century already Lu-cheng (425-94), a scholar-official, ascribed this difference in emphasis to a difference in national psychology. “The people of China have a facility for comprehending Truth intuitively or ‘mirroring’ it, but difficulty in acquiring learning. Therefore they close themselves to the idea of accumulating learning, but open themselves to that of one final ultimate. The Hindus, on the other hand, have a facility for acquiring learning, but difficulty in comprehending Truth intuitively. Therefore they close themselves to the idea of instantaneous comprehension, but open themselves to that of gradual enlightenment.”

In fact, Indian Buddhists had made a distinction between “gradual” and “sudden” enlightenment, but had regarded the second as the final stage of the first and nobody had thought of taking sides for one or the other. Tao-sheng now argues that, since the absolute emptiness of Nirvāṇa is absolutely and totally different from all conditioned things, the enlightenment which mirrors it must also be totally different from all mental stages which are directed on other things. In consequence, enlightenment, if it is to be achieved at all, can be achieved only in its totality, and not in a gradual or piecemeal fashion.

Many preparatory stages must, of course, precede the final flash of insight, but those ought to be called “learning”; they remain inside phenomenal existence and are not a part of the actual experience of enlightenment itself. For “when the single enlightenment comes, all the myriad impediments are equally brought to an end”. The final vision is the total extinction of all ties, final liberation from them, for “what is genuine, that is permanent; what is temporary is false”.

From Tao-sheng’s time onwards this theme was constantly debated in China and the theoreticians were divided into supporters of “gradual” or “instantaneous” enlightenment respectively.

So far about metaphysics. Popular faith, in its turn, was preoccupied with rebirth in Paradise. There were at that time three principal Paradises - that of the Buddha Akshobhya in the East, that of Amitabha in the West, and that of Maitreya at a future time on earth.

The cult of Akshobhya is attested for Han times, and the faithful were advised to imitate him in never feeling wrath or anger for any being, in order that they may be reborn in Abhirati, His kingdom far away on a star in the East. In the course of time the cult of Amitabha proved more popular. It is said to have been first made known by the translations and preachings of the Arsacid prince An-Shih-Kao about AD 150.

At the end of the fourth century, Hui-Yuan (334-416), a former Taoist, who even after his conversion to Buddhism still used Chuang-tzu’s writings to explain his new faith, made the Lu-Feng monastery in Hupeh into a centre of the cult. In 402 a group of 124 persons was formed who prayed to be reborn in Amida’s Paradise. This group was later on called the “Fellowship of the White Lotus” and was the prototype of the later Ching-t’u movement.

Like the other Chinese schools, the Ching-t’u or “Pure Land” school was really founded only after AD 500. Akshobhya and Amitabha are cosmic Buddhas known only to the Mahāyāna. Maitreya, on the other hand, is the future Buddha due to appear on this earth, and he is known to both Mahayanists and Hinayanists. Sutras describing the splendour of the earth at the time of His coming were translated into Chinese in this our second period, but Maitreya’s greatest popularity in China lay between c AD 400 and 650 and His cult seems to have been largely stimulated by the Yogacarin school.

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