Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c5.s2.t2.1

c5.s2.t2.1

Besides the efforts of the old and the new schools to vie with one another in the field of literature, one notices also a keen competition among them for propagating among the masses the tenets of their respective schools, which, as a matter of fact, resulted in a great measure in the wide propagation of Buddhism.⁵ It is a well-known fact that the Jātakas and the *Avadānas* were meant for inspiring in the minds of the people a faith in Buddhism and thus popularising the religion.¹ The *Jātakas* were only an afterthought of the Theravādins. They originally did not form part of their scriptures (*Buddhavacana*). The *Jātaka Book*² or the floating mass of *Jātakas*, some of which found their way into the famous stone-monuments of India, belongs certainly to an ancient date as is proved by scholars like Rhys Davids, Cunningham, Oldenberg, and Winternitz, but still all of them are not considered to be of the same age as the *Nikāyas*. Rhys Davids' suggestion that the stories found both in the *Nikāyas* (i.e., *Suttanta-Jātakas* of the *Cullaniddesa*) and in the *Jātaka* collection form the oldest type of *Jātaka* stories and may be called pre-*Jātaka* is of great value.³