Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c2.4

c2.4

You have not denied yourself the trouble of giving expositions of the topics on which you have some new observations to make. I wish you had expanded the portion dealing with the history of Buddhism into three or more independent chapters. One can well see from your volume that the Buddhism of the most ancient sūtras differs from that of the philosophical sūtras; the Buddhism of the Mahā-sānghikas is not the Buddhism of the Sarvāstivādins, which again is not identical with that of the Sthaviras; the Mahāyānic tendencies, both doctrinal and religious, are of great antiquity and the Mahāyānic writings refer to aspects of Buddhism very different from one another, e.g., the Lalita, the Puṇḍarīka, the Prajñās, and the treatises of Asaṅga, not to speak of the Śraddhotpāda and such other works, in which the archaic Śakyamuni disappears giving place to the five Jinas. The researches which will give a little of chronology and geography have hardly been begun. Accordingly you do not pretend to write the history of Hinayāna-Mahāyāna, that is to say, the history of Buddhism.