The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.98

c28.98

The appearance of the Buddha among a crowd of heterogeneous deities would have appeared strange, in fact would have been inconceivable to Asoka, while it seemed quite natural to Kanishka. The newer Buddhism of his day, which may be traced back to an earlier period and was designated as the Mahāyāna, or Great Vehicle, must have been largely of foreign origin, and its development was the result of the complex interaction of Indian, Zoroastrian, Christian, Gnostic, and Hellenic elements, which had been made possible by the conquests of Alexander, the formation of the Maurya empire in India, and, above all, by the unification of the Roman world under the sway of the earlier emperors.¹ In this newer Buddhism the sage Gautama became in practice, if not in theory, a god, with his ears open to the prayers of the faithful, and served by a hierarchy of Bodhisattvas and other beings acting as mediators between him and sinful men.² Such a Buddha rightly took a place among the gods of the nations comprised in Kanishka's widespread empire,³ and the monarch, even after his 'conversion', probably continued to honour both the old and the new gods, as, in a later age, Harsha did alternate reverence to Siva and Buddha.