Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c7.s2.t5: II. Lalitavistara
Aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Relation to Hīnayāna c7.s2.t5
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II. Lalitavistara
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The *Lalitavistara* gives us a picture of Buddha more superhuman than human and yet far from the Mahāyānic conceptions of the Sambhogakāya and Dharmakāya, though in the last two chapters it dwells on the doctrine of Tathatā. In the *Lalitavistara* Buddha is deified but there are no traces of the Trikāya conception. It says in many places that Buddha appears in the world of men for *lokānuvartana*⁴ (i.e. to follow the ways of the world), which, if he so desired, he could avoid by remaining in one of the heavens and attaining emancipation there. The running account of Buddha's life is interrupted at times—probably they are afterthoughts of the complier—by dialogues between Buddha and Ānanda, in order to make the treatise appear Mahāyānic and not Hinayānic. At one place Buddha explains to Ānanda that, unlike human beings, he did not stay in the filth of mother's womb but in a jewel-casket (ratnavyūha)⁵ placed in the womb, which was as hard as adamant but soft to the touch like the down of a Kācilindika bird, and that his birth and other events connected with it were all superhuman. At the same time he prophesies that there will be, in the future, men unrestrained in act, thought and speech, ignorant, faithless, proud, believing without deliberation what is heard by them, who will not believe in the superhuman nature of his birth.¹ One can perceive through the poetical exaggerations of the Lalitavistara that it has in view the historical Buddha endowed with the major and minor signs—a human being after all, who requires to be reminded by the heavenly musicians of the acts of his past lives and his resolution to become a Buddha and rescue beings from misery, and who needs a stimulus to renounce the world in order to fulfil his resolution.² In connection with the offer of houses which was made by the gods to the Bodhisattva when he was in the womb, it is said that in order to please all the gods who offered houses he caused the appearance of his pregnant mother Māyādevī in each of those houses by means of the Mahāvyūha samādhi. This does not clearly reflect any idea of Nirmāṇakāya—it appears more like some of the miracles mentioned in the Nikāyas. In the last chapter of the Lalitavistara where Buddha’s attributes are mentioned, he is called the great tree (mahādruma), because he possesses a body of Dharmakāyajñāna (the knowledge of Dharmakāya).³ As this chapter is very likely a Mahāyāna addition, we may reasonably say that the Lalitavistara in its original form as a treatise of the Sarvāstivādins viewed Buddha as a human being with superhuman attributes.
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⁴ E.g., *Mtu*., I, pp. 168, 170.
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⁵ *Lal. Vis*., pp. 88, 105, 106. This formed one of the points of contention of the Mahāsānghikas. See Masuda, *Early Origin etc.*, in the *Asia Major*, Vol. II.
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¹ Lal. Vis., pp. 87ff. This goes against the Sarvāstivāda and Theravāda conceptions.
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² The descriptions gave opportunity to the Mahāyānists to invent Upāyakauśalya Pāramitā, the duties of Adhyeṣaṇā, Yācanā, etc.
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³ Lal. Vis., p. 428.
Linked texts (1)
- Mahāvastu — Sanskrit