The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature c12.26

c12.26

22 The word yāna is generally translated as “vehicle”, also as “boat”. Hīna is rendered as “lower”, “inferior”, “lesser”, and Mahā as “higher”, “greater”. The Tibetan equivalent is thegpa, which means “vehicle” (Tib. Dicy., Das, 585). According to E. J. Eitel, the Chinese also translate yāna as “conveyance” (p. 90). But it is doubtful if yāna originally meant “vehicle”. It denotes “way, path” in the Vedas and the Upaniṣads, e.g. Chāndogya Upd., v, 3.2 (“pathor deva-yānasya pitṛ-yānasya ca vyāvartanā”). In Buddhism, there are more than two yānas, and the contrast between hīna and mahā is not the fundamental point. There is the yāna of the pratyeka-buddhas, and they surely do not need a “vehicle” for their solitary career. It may be suggested that yāna in Buddhism originally denoted “Way, Career”, and that the connotation was changed after the publication of the Sad. Pu., with its famous parable of the three yānas (chap. iii). That play on words led to the substitution of the idea of “vehicle” for that of “way”.