Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c5.s2.t4.1

c5.s2.t4.1

The efforts of the various schools to propagate their particular faith met with success, as is evidenced by the early stone monuments of India. Every school no doubt increased the number of its adherents and we have evidence of this in some of the inscriptions, belonging to a period little later than that with which we are here concerned. These inscriptions are records of gifts made specially to a particular school ³. But along with these we find inscriptions in which no particular sect is mentioned, but gifts are made for the benefit of the saṅgha of the four regions (cāturdiśa saṅgha).¹ This shows clearly that the devotees might have had faith in the tenets of one of the schools but they supported all the schools, i.e., Buddhism in general. As the dates of these inscriptions do not help us much with regard to the period under review, we have to confine ourselves to the scanty evidence yielded by the few works, whose dates of composition might be a little later, but which may be regarded as yielding materials for this period.