The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c10.s10.33

c10.s10.33

3. Early *Mahāyāna* Buddhism (c. B.C. 100-300 A.C.). This is the Buddhism of the ideals associated with the *Bodhisattva* and the *Pāramitā* which had been initiated in the *Avadānas*. The *Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajnāpāramitā* is taken to have been compiled some time in the first century B.C. The *Kulturkampf* or the conflict of cultures between the old and the new is the chief feature of this period. Nāgārjuna, Aśvaghoṣa and Asaṃga are some of the leading exponents of the new as against the old in the evolution of “social metabolism.”