CHRONOLOGY OF THE MAHAYANA
In the previous chapters I have enumerated some features of
Mahayanism, such as the worship of Bodhisattvas leading to mythology,
the deification of Buddhas, entailing a theology as complicated as the
Christian creeds, the combination of metaphysics with religion, and
the rise of new scriptures consecrating all these innovations. I will
now essay the more difficult task of arranging these phenomena in some
sort of chronological setting.
The voluminous Chinese literature concerning Buddhism offers valuable
assistance, for the Chinese, unlike the Hindus, have a natural
disposition to write simple narratives recording facts and dates. But
they are diarists and chroniclers rather than historians. The Chinese
pilgrims to India give a good account of their itinerary and
experiences, but they have little idea of investigating and arranging
past events and merely recount traditions connected with the places
which they visited. In spite of this their statements have
considerable historical value and on the whole harmonize with the
literary and archaelogical data furnished by India.
The Tibetan Lama Taranatha who completed his History of Indian
Buddhism[163] in 1608 is a less satisfactory authority. He merits
attention but also scepticism and caution. His work is a compilation
but is not to be despised on that ground, for the Tibetan translations
of Sanskrit works offer a rich mine of information about the history
of the Mahayana. Unfortunately few of these works take the historical
point of view and Taranatha's own method is as uncritical as his
materials. Dire confusion prevails as to chronology and even as to
names,[164] so that the work is almost useless as a connected account,
though it contains many interesting details.
Two epochs are of special importance for the development of later
Indian Buddhism, that of Kanishka and that of Vasubandhu and his
brother Asanga. The reader may expect me to discuss at length the date
of Kanishka's accession, but I do not propose to do so for it may be
hoped that in the next few years archaelogical research in India or
Central Asia will fix the chronology of the Kushans and meanwhile it
is waste of time to argue about probabilities or at any rate it can be
done profitably only in special articles. At present the majority of
scholars place his accession at about 78 A.D., others put it back to
58 B.C. and arrange the Kushan kings in a different order,[165] while
still others[166] think that he did not come to the throne until the
second century was well advanced. The evidence of art, particularly of
numismatics, indicates that Kanishka reigned towards the end of his
dynasty rather than at the beginning, but the use of Greek on his
coins and his traditional connection with the beginnings of the
Mahayana are arguments against a very late date. If the date 78 A.D.
is accepted, the conversion of the Yueeh-chih to Buddhism and its
diffusion in Central Asia cannot have been the work of Kanishka, for
Buddhism began to reach China by land about the time of the Christian
era.[167] There is however no reason to assume that they were his
work. Kanishka, like Constantine, probably favoured a winning cause,
and Buddhism may have been gradually making its way among the Kushans
and their neighbours for a couple of centuries before his time. In any
case, however important his reign may have been for the Buddhist
Church, I do not think that the history of the Mahayana should be made
to depend on his date. Chinese translations, supported by other
evidence, indicate that the Mahayanist movement had begun about the
time of our era. If it is proved that Kanishka lived considerably
later, we should not argue that Mahayanism is later than was supposed
but rather that his relation towards it has been misunderstood.[168]
The date of Vasubandhu has also been much discussed and scholars have
generally placed him in the fourth or fifth century but Peri[169]
appears to have proved that he lived from about 280 to 360 A.D. and I
shall adopt this view. This chronology makes a reasonable setting for
the development of Buddhism. If Kanishka reigned from about 78 to 123
A.D. or even later, there is no difficulty in supposing that
Asvaghosha flourished in his reign and was followed by Nagarjuna. The
collapse of the Kushan Empire was probably accompanied by raids from
Iranian tribes, for Persian influence appears to have been strong in
India during the confused interval between the Kushans and Guptas
(225-320). The latter inaugurated the revival of Hinduism but still
showed favour to individual Buddhists, and we know from Fa-Hsien that
Buddhism was fairly flourishing during his visit to India (399-415).
There is nothing improbable in supposing that Vasubandhu, who is
stated to have lived at Court, was patronized by the early Guptas. The
blank in Buddhist history which follows his career can be explained
first by the progress of Hinduism at the expense of Buddhism and
secondly by the invasions of the Huns. The Chinese pilgrim Sung-Yuen
has left us an account of India in this distressful period and for the
seventh century the works of Hsuean Chuang and I-Ching give copious
information.
In investigating the beginnings of the Mahayana we may start from the
epoch of Asoka, who is regarded by tradition as the patron and
consolidator of the Hinayanist Church. And the tradition seems on the
whole correct: the united evidence of texts and inscriptions goes to
show that the Buddhists of Asoka's time held the chief doctrines
subsequently professed by the Sinhalese Church and did not hold the
other set of doctrines known as Mahayanist. That these latter are
posterior in time is practically admitted by the books that teach
them, for they are constantly described as the crown and completion of
a progressive revelation. Thus the Lotus[170] illustrates the
evolution of doctrine by a story which curiously resembles the parable
of the prodigal son except that the returned penitent does not
recognize his father, who proceeds to reveal gradually his name and
position, keeping back the full truth to the last. Similarly it is
held in the Far East that there were five periods in Sakyamuni's
teaching which after passing through the stage of the Hinayana
culminated in the Prajna-paramita and Amitabha sutras shortly before
his death. Such statements admit the historical priority of the
Hinayana: it is rudimentary (that is early) truth which needs
completion and expansion. Many critics demur to the assumption that
primitive Buddhism was a system of ethics purged of superstition and
mythology. And in a way they are right. Could we get hold of a
primitive Buddhist, we should probably find that miracles, magic, and
superhuman beings played a large part in his mind and that the Buddha
did not appear to him as what we call a human teacher. In that sense
the germs of the Mahayana existed in the life-time of Gotama. But the
difference between early and later Buddhism lies in this, that the
deities who surround the Buddha in the Pali Pitakas are mere
accessories: his teaching would not be affected if they were all
removed. But the Bodhisattvas in the Lotus or the Sutra of the Happy
Land have a doctrinal significance.
Though in India old ideas persist with unusual vitality, still even
there they can live only if they either develop or gather round them
new accretions. As one of the religions of India, Buddhism was
sensitive to the general movement of Indian thought, or rather it was
a part of that movement. We see as clearly in Buddhist as in
non-Buddhist India that there was a tendency to construct philosophic
systems and another tendency to create deities satisfying to the
emotions as well as to the intellect and yet another tendency to
compose new scriptures. But apart from this parallel development, it
becomes clear after the Christian era that Buddhism is becoming
surrounded by Hinduism. The influence is not indeed one-sided: there
is interdependence and interpenetration but the net result is that the
general Indian features of each religious period overpower the
specially Buddhist features and in the end we find that while Hinduism
has only been profoundly modified Buddhism has vanished.
If we examine the Pali Pitakas, including the heresies mentioned in
the Kathavatthu, we find that they contain the germs of many
Mahayanist ideas. Thus side by side with the human portrait of the
Buddha there is the doctrine that he is one in a series of
supernatural teachers, each with the same life-history, and this life
is connected with the whole course of nature, as is shown by the
sympathetic earthquakes which mark its crises. His birth is
supernatural and had he willed it he could have lived until the end of
the present Kalpa.[171] So, too, the nature of a Buddha when he is
released from form, that is after death, is deep and unfathomable as
the ocean.[172] The Kathavatthu condemns the ideas (thus showing that
they existed) that Buddhas are born in all quarters of the universe,
that the Buddha was superhuman in the ordinary affairs of life, that
he was not really born in the world of men and that he did not preach
the Law himself. These last two heresies are attributed by the
commentary to the Vetulyakas who are said to have believed that he
remained in the Tushita heaven and sent a phantom to preach on earth.
Here we have the rudiments of the doctrine afterwards systematized
under the name of the three bodies of Buddha. Similarly though Nirvana
is regarded as primarily an ethical state, the Pali Canon contains the
expression Nirvanadhatu and the idea[173] that Nirvana is a sphere or
realm (_ayatanam_) which transcends the transitory world and in which
such antitheses are coming and going, birth and death, cease to exist.
This foreshadows the doctrine of Bhuta-tathata and we seem to hear a
prelude to the dialectic of Nagarjuna when the Kathavatthu discusses
whether Sunnata or the void is predicable of the Skandhas and when it
condemns the views that anything now existing existed in the past: and
that knowledge of the present is possible (whereas the moment anything
is known it is really past). The Kathavatthu also condemns the
proposition that a Bodhisattva can be reborn in realms of woe or fall
into error, and this proposition hints that the career of a
Bodhisattva was considered of general interest.
The Mahayana grows out of the Hinayana and in many respects the
Hinayana passes into it and is preserved unchanged. It is true that in
reading the Lotus we wonder how this marvellous cosmic vision can
represent itself as the teaching of Gotama, but the Buddhacarita of
Asvaghosha, though embellished with literary mythology, hardly
advances in doctrine beyond the Pali sutras describing the marvels of
the Buddha's nativity[174] and the greater part of Nagarjuna's
Friendly Epistle, which purports to contain an epitome of the faith,
is in phraseology as well as thought perfectly in harmony with the
Pali Canon. Whence comes this difference of tone in works accepted by
the same school? One difficulty of the historian who essays to account
for the later phases of Buddhism is to apportion duly the influence of
Indian and foreign elements. On the one hand, the Mahayana, whether we
call it a development or perversion, is a product of Indian thought.
To explain its trinities, its saviours, its doctrine of self sacrifice
it is not necessary to seek abroad. New schools, anxious to claim
continuity and antiquity, gladly retained as much of the old doctrine
as they could. But on the other hand, Indian Buddhism came into
contact with foreign, especially Iranian, ideas and undoubtedly
assimilated some of them. From time to time I have drawn attention to
such cases in this work, but as a rule the foreign ideas are so
thoroughly mastered and indianized that they cease to be obvious. They
merely open up to Indian thought a new path wherein it can move in its
own way.
In the period following Asoka's death Buddhism suffered a temporary
eclipse. Pushyamitra who in 184 B.C. overthrew the Mauryas and
established the Sunga dynasty was a patron of the Brahmans. Taranatha
describes him[175] as a ferocious persecutor, and the Divyavadana
supports the story. But the persecution, if it really occurred, was
probably local and did not seriously check the spread of Buddhism,
which before the time of Kanishka had extended northwards to Bactria
and Kashmir. The latter territory became the special home of the
Sarvastivadins. It was in the reign of Pushyamitra that the
Graeco-Bactrian king Menander or Milinda invaded India (155-3 B.C.) and
there were many other invasions and settlements of tribes coming from
the north-west and variously described as Sakas, Pahlavas, Parthians
and Yavanas, culminating in the conquests of the Kushans. The whole
period was disturbed and confused but some general statements can be
made with considerable confidence.
From about 300 B.C. to 100 A.D. we find inscriptions, buildings and
statues testifying to the piety of Buddhist and Jain donors but hardly
any indications of a similar liberality to Brahmans. In the second and
third centuries A.D. grants of land to Brahmans and their temples
begin to be recorded and in the fourth century (that is with the rise
of the Gupta Dynasty) such grants become frequent. These facts can
hardly be interpreted otherwise than as meaning that from 300 B.C. to
100 A.D. the upper classes of India favoured Buddhism and Jainism and
did not favour the Brahmans in the same way or to the same extent. But
it must be remembered that the religion of the Brahmans continued
throughout this period and produced a copious literature, and also
that the absence of works of art may be due to the fact that their
worship was performed in sacrificial enclosures and that they had not
yet begun to use temples and statues. After the first century A.D. we
have first a gradual and then a rapid rise in Brahmanic influence.
Inscriptions as well as books indicate that a linguistic change
occurred in the same period. At first popular dialects were regarded
as sufficiently dignified and current to be the medium for both
scripture and official records. Sanskrit remained a thing apart--the
peculiar possession of the Brahman literati. Then the popular language
was Sanskritized, the rules of Sanskrit grammar being accepted as the
standard to which it ought to conform, though perfect conformity was
impracticable. In much the same way the modern Greeks try to bring
Romaic into line with classical Greek. Finally Sanskrit was recognized
as the proper language for literature, government and religion. The
earliest inscriptions[176] in correct Sanskrit seem to date from the
second century A.D. Further, the invaders who entered India from the
north-west favoured Buddhism on the whole. Coins indicate that some of
them worshipped Siva[177] but the number and beauty of Buddhist
monuments erected under their rule can hardly be interpreted except as
a sign of their patronage. And their conversion was natural for they
had no strong religious convictions of their own and the Brahmans
with their pride of caste shrank from foreigners. But Buddhism had no
prejudice of race or class: it was animated by a missionary spirit and
it was probably the stronger creed at this period. It not only met the
invaders on their entry into India but it sent missionaries to them in
Bactria and Afghanistan, so that to some extent they brought Buddhism
with them. But it was a Buddhism combined with the most varied
elements. Hellenic art and religion had made the figures of Apollo,
Herakles and Helios familiar in Bactria, and both Bactria and northern
India were in touch with Zoroastrians. The mixed cults of these
borderlands readily professed allegiance to the Buddha but, not
understanding Indian ideas, simply made him into a deity and having
done this were not likely to repudiate other Indian deities. Thus in
its outward form the Buddhism of the invaders tended to be a compound
of Indian, Greek and Persian ideas in which Sun worship played a large
part, for not only Indian myths, but Apollo and Helios and the Persian
Mithra all entered into it. Persian influence in art is discernible as
early as the architecture of Asoka: in doctrine it has something to do
with such figures as Vairocana and Amitabha. Graeco-Roman influence
also was powerful in art and through art affected religion. In Asoka's
time likenesses of the Buddha were unknown and the adoration of
images, if not entirely due to the art of Gandhara, was at least
encouraged by it.
But though coins and sculpture bring clearly before us a medley of
deities corresponding to a medley of human races, they do not help us
much in tracing the growth of thought, phases of which are preserved
in a literature sufficiently copious though the record sometimes fails
at the points of transition where it would be of most interest. It is
natural that sacred books should record accepted results rather than
tentative innovations and even disguise the latter. But we can fix a
few dates which enable us to judge what shape Buddhism was taking
about the time of the Christian era. The Tibetan historian Taranatha
is not of much help, for his chronology is most confused, but still he
definitely connects the appearance of Mahayanist texts with the reign
of Kanishka and the period immediately following it[178] and regards
them as a new phenomenon. Greater assistance is furnished by the
Chinese translators, whose dates are known with some exactitude. Thus
the earliest Buddhist work rendered into Chinese is said to be the
sutra of forty-two sections, translated by Kasyapa Matanga in 67 A.D.
It consists of extracts or resumes of the Buddha's teaching mostly
prefaced by the words "The Buddha said," doubtless in imitation of the
Confucian Analects where the introductory formula "The master said"
plays a similar part. Its ideas and precepts are Hinayanist:[179] the
Arhat is held up as the ideal and in a remarkable passage[180] where
the degrees of sanctity are graded and compared no mention is made of
Bodhisattvas. This first translation was followed by a long series of
others, principally from the Sutra-Pitaka, for very little of the
Vinaya was translated before the fifth century. A great number of
Hinayanist sutras were translated before 300 A.D. but very few after
450. On the other hand portions of the sutra about Amida's Paradise,
of the Prajna-paramita, and of the Avatamsaka were translated about
150 A.D. and translations of the Lotus and Lalita-vistara appeared
about 300.
Great caution is necessary in using these data and the circumstances
of China as well as of India must be taken into account. If
translations of the Vinaya and complete collections of sutras are late
in appearing, it does not follow that the corresponding Indian texts
are late, for the need of the Vinaya was not felt until monasteries
began to spring up. Most of the translations made before the fifth
century are extracts and of indifferent workmanship. Some are retained
in the Chinese Tripitaka but are superseded by later versions. But
however inaccurate and incomplete these older translations may be, if
any of them can be identified with a part of an extant Sanskrit work
it follows that at least that part of the work and the doctrines
contained in it were current in India or Central Asia some time before
the translation was made. Applying this principle we may conclude that
the Hinayana and Mahayana were flourishing side by side in India and
Central Asia in the first century A.D. and that the Happy Land sutras
and portions of the Prajna-paramita already existed. From that time
onwards Mahayanist literature as represented by Chinese translations
steadily increases, and after 400 A.D. Hinayanist literature declines,
with two exceptions, the Vinaya and the Abhidharma books of the
Sarvastivadins. The Vinaya was evidently regarded as a rule of life
independent of theology, but it is remarkable that Hsuean Chuang after
his return from India in 645 should have thought it worth while to
translate the philosophy of the Sarvastivadins.
Other considerations render this chronology probable. Two conspicuous
features of the Mahayana are the worship of Bodhisattvas and idealist
philosophy. These are obviously parallel to the worship of Siva and
Vishnu, and to the rise of the Vedanta. Now the worship of these
deities was probably not prevalent before 300 B.C., for they are
almost unknown to the Pali Pitakas, and it was fully developed about
the time of the Bhagavad-gita which perhaps assumed its present form a
little before the Christian era. Not only is the combination of
devotion and metaphysics found in this work similar to the tone of
many Mahayanist sutras but the manifestation of Krishna in his divine
form is like the transformation scenes of the Lotus.[181] The chief
moral principle of the Bhagavad-gita is substantially the same as that
prescribed for Bodhisattvas. It teaches that action is superior to
inaction, but that action should be wholly disinterested and not
directed to any selfish object. This is precisely the attitude of the
Bodhisattva who avoids the inaction of those who are engrossed in
self-culture as much as the pursuit of wealth or pleasure. Both the
Gita and Mahayanist treatises lay stress on faith. He who thinks on
Krishna when dying goes to Krishna[182] just as he who thinks on
Amitabha goes to the Happy Land and the idea is not unknown to the
Pali texts, for it finds complete expression in the story of
Matthakundali.[183]
The idea of a benevolent deity to be worshipped with devotion and
faith and not with ceremonies is strange to old Buddhism and old
Brahmanism alike. It was a popular idea which became so strong that
neither priests nor Bhikshus could ignore it and in its ultimate
result it is hard to say whether Buddhist or Brahmanic elements are
more prominent. Both Avalokita and Krishna are Devas. The former has
the beauty of holiness and the strength which it gives, but also the
weakness of a somewhat abstract figure: the latter is very personal
and springs from the heart of India but to those who are not Hindus
seems wanting in purity and simplicity. The divine character of both
figures is due to Brahmanism rather than Buddhism, but the new form of
worship which laid stress on a frame of mind rather than on ceremonial
and the idea of Avataras or the periodic appearance of superhuman
saviours and teachers indicate the influence of Buddhism on
Brahmanism.
There is a similar parallel between the newer Buddhist philosophy and
the Vedantist school represented by Sankara, and Indian critics
detected it. Sankara was called a Pracchanna-bauddha or
crypto-buddhist by his theological opponents[184] and the resemblance
between the two systems in thought, if not in word, is striking. Both
distinguish relative and absolute truth: for both the relative truth
is practically theism, for both absolute truth is beyond description
and whether it is called Brahman, Dharma-kaya or Sunyata is not
equivalent to God in the Christian or Mohammedan sense. Just as for
the Vedantist there exist in the light of the highest knowledge
neither a personal God nor an individual soul, so the Madhyamika Sutra
can declare that the Buddha does not really exist. The Mahayanist
philosophers do not use the word Maya but they state the same theory
in a more subjective form by ascribing the appearance of the
phenomenal world to ignorance, a nomenclature which is derived from
the Buddha's phrase, "From ignorance come the Sankharas."
Here, as elsewhere, Buddhist and Brahmanic ideas acted and reacted in
such complex interrelations that it is hard to say which has borrowed
from the other. As to dates, the older Upanishads which contain the
foundations but not the complete edifice of Vedantism, seem a little
earlier than the Buddha. Now we know that within the Vedantist school
there were divergences of opinion which later received classic
expression in the hands of Sankara and Ramanuja. The latter rejected
the doctrines of Maya and of the difference between relative and
absolute truth. The germs of both schools are to be found in the
Upanishads but it seems probable that the ideas of Sankara were
originally worked out among Buddhists rather than among Brahmans and
were rightly described by their opponents as disguised Buddhism. As
early as 520 A.D. Bodhidharma preached in China a doctrine which is
practically the same as the Advaita.
The earliest known work in which the theory of Maya and the Advaita
philosophy are clearly formulated is the metrical treatise known as
the Karika of Gaudapada. This name was borne by the teacher of
Sankara's teacher, who must have lived about 700 A.D., but the high
position accorded to the work, which is usually printed with the
Mandukya Upanishad and is practically regarded as[185] a part of it,
make an earlier date probable. Both in language and thought it bears a
striking resemblance to Buddhist writings of the Madhyamika school and
also contains many ideas and similes which reappear in the works of
Sankara.[186] On the other hand the Lankavatara Sutra which was
translated into Chinese in 513 and therefore can hardly have been
composed later than 450, is conscious that its doctrines resemble
Brahmanic philosophy, for an interlocutor objects that the language
used in it by the Buddha about the Tathagatagarbha is very like the
Brahmanic doctrine of the Atman. To which the Buddha replies that his
language is a concession to those who cannot stomach the doctrine of
the negation of reality in all its austerity. Some of the best known
verses of Gaudapada compare the world of appearance to the apparent
circle of fire produced by whirling a lighted torch. This striking
image occurs first in the Maitrayana Upanishad (VI. 24), which shows
other indications of an acquaintance with Buddhism, and also in the
Lankavatara Sutra.
A real affinity unites the doctrine of Sankara to the teaching of
Gotama himself. That teaching as presented in the Pali Pitakas is
marked by its negative and deliberately circumscribed character. Its
rule is silence when strict accuracy of expression is impossible,
whereas later philosophy does not shrink from phrases which are
suggestive, if not exact. Gotama refuses to admit that the human soul
is a fixed entity or Atman, but he does not condemn (though he also
does not discuss) the idea that the whole world of change and
becoming, including human souls, is the expression or disguise of some
one ineffable principle. He teaches too that the human mind can grow
until it develops new faculties and powers and becomes the Buddha
mind, which sees the whole chain of births, the order of the world,
and the reality of emancipation. As the object of the whole system is
practical, Nirvana is always regarded as a _terminus ad quem_ or an
escape (nissaranam) from this transitory world, and this view is more
accurate as well as more edifying than the view which treats Brahman
or Sunyata as the origin of the universe. When the Vedanta teaches
that this changing troubled world is merely the disguise of that
unchanging and untroubled state into which saints can pass, it is, I
believe, following Gotama's thought, but giving it an expression which
he would have considered imperfect.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 163: Translated by Schiefner, 1869. Taranatha informs us (p.
281) that his chief authorities were the history of Kshemendrabhadra,
the Buddhapurana of Indradatta and Bhataghati's history of the
succession of the Acaryas.]
[Footnote 164: The Tibetans generally translate instead of
transliterating Indian names. It is as if an English history of Greece
were to speak of Leader of the People instead of Agesilaus.]
[Footnote 165: They place Kanishka, Vasishka, Huvishka and Vasudeva
before Kadphises I and Kadphises II.]
[Footnote 166: _E.g._ Stael Holstein who also thinks that Kanishka's
tribe should be called Kusha not Kushan. Vincent Smith in his latest
work (_Oxford History of India_, p. 130) gives 120 A.D. as the most
probable date.]
[Footnote 167: My chief difficulty in accepting 78-123 A.D. as the
reign of Kanishka is that the Chinese Annals record the doings of Pan
Ch'ao between 73 and 102 in Central Asia, with which region Kanishka
is believed to have had relations, and yet do not mention his name.
This silence makes it _prima facie_ probable that he lived either
before or after Pan Ch'ao's career.
The catalogues of the Chinese Tripitaka state that An-Shih-Kao
(148-170 A.D.) translated the Margabhumi-sutra of Sangharaksha, who
was the chaplain of Kanishka. But this unfortunately proves nothing
except that Kanishka cannot have been very late. The work is not a
scripture for whose recognition some lapse of time must be postulated.
An-Shih-Kao, who came from the west, may very well have translated a
recent and popular treatise.]
[Footnote 168: In this connection we may remember Taranatha's
statement that Kanishka's Council put an end to dissentions which had
lasted about a century. But he also states that it was after the
Council that Mahayanist texts began to appear. If Kanishka flourished
about 50 A.D. this would fit in with Taranatha's statements and what
we know of the history of Buddhism.]
[Footnote 169: _B.E.F.E.O._ 1911, 339-390. Satischandra Vidyabhushana
arrived at the same conclusion in _J.A.S.B._ 1905, p. 227.]
[Footnote 170: Chap. IV.]
[Footnote 171: Mahaparinib. Sut. III.]
[Footnote 172: Majj. Nik. 72.]
[Footnote 173: Udana. VIII. 1-4.]
[Footnote 174: Accariyabbhutasuttam. Majj. Nik. 123.]
[Footnote 175: Chap. XVI.]
[Footnote 176: That of Rudradaman at Girnar, dated 72 in the Saka Era,
has hitherto been considered the oldest, but it is now said that one
discovered at Isapur near Muttra is older. See _J.R.A.S_ 1912, p.
114.]
[Footnote 177: _E.g._ Kadphises II and Vasudeva.]
[Footnote 178: Chaps. XII, XIII.]
[Footnote 179: The last section (42) as translated by Teitaro Suzuki
in the _Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot_ may seem an exception, for it
contains such statements as "I consider the doctrine of sameness as
the absolute ground of reality." But the translation seems to me
doubtful.]
[Footnote 180: Sec. 11.]
[Footnote 181: Just as all gods and worlds are seen within Krishna's
body, so we are told in the Karanda-vyuha (which is however a later
work) that in the pores of Avalokita's skin are woods and mountains
where dwell saints and gods.]
[Footnote 182: Bhag. G. VIII. 5.]
[Footnote 183: _Commentary on Dhammapada_, P.T.S. edition, pp. 25 ff.
especially p. 33.]
[Footnote 184: See Ramanuja, Sribhashya, II. 2, 27 and Padma-Purana
uttarakanda 43 (quoted by Suhtankar in _Vienna Oriental Journ._ vol.
XXII. 1908). Mayavadam asacchastram pracchannam bauddham ucyate. The
Madhvas were specially bitter in their denunciation of Sankara.]
[Footnote 185: Or as itself forming four separate Upanishads. For
other arguments in favour of an early date see Walleser, _Aelterer
Vedanta_, pp. 14 ff. He states that the Karika is quoted in the
Tibetan translations of Bhavaviveka's _Tarkajvala_. Bhavaviveka was
certainly anterior to the travels of Hsuean Chuang and perhaps was much
earlier. But if he died about 600 A.D. a work quoted by him can hardly
have been later than 550 and may be much earlier. But see also Jacobi
in _J.A.O.S._ April, 1913, p. 51.]
[Footnote 186: For the resemblances to Nagarjuna see _J.R.A.S._ 1910,
pp. 136 ff. Especially remarkable are II. 32 na nirodho na cotpattir,
etc., and IV. 59 and the whole argument that causation is impossible.
Noticeable too is the use of Buddhist terms like upaya, nirvana,
buddha and adibuddha, though not always in the Buddhist sense.]