Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c5.s3.t3.1.1

c5.s3.t3.1.1

Without attaching much importance to the chronology of kings and such other materials presented to us by Tāranātha, we may with sufficient caution utilise some of his statements with regard to the developments in the history of the religion, the geographical distribution of the schools, and the succession of teachers in the various centres. He tells us that according to one tradition, 500 bodhisattvas² took part in the Jalandhara Council of Kaniṣka, that about this time the Mahāyāna texts appeared and were usually preached by monks, who had attained the *Anutpattikadharmakṣānti* ("Geduld in der Lehre des Nichtgeborenerdens"),³ a dogma characteristic of the Mahāyānists. It may be a development of the Hīnayānic Anutpādajñāna (further non-origin of āsravas and hence re-birth) and Kṣayajñāna,⁴ but it bore a completely different sense in the Mahāyāna scriptures. The reference to the existence of a class of monks called Bodhisattvas at the time of Kaniṣka’s Council is also significant, for we read in the *Divyāvadāna* of the existence of a class of monks called *Bodhisattvajātika* along with a hint that they were not looked upon with favour by the Hīnayānists.⁵ Tāranātha expresses his difficulty in accounting for the existence of monks called Bodhisattvas in the Kaniṣkan Council.