Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c34.s2.1

v2.c34.s2.1

If, according to the Mahāsaṅghikas, Buddhas are *lokottara*, and if the Buddhas, we *puthujjanas* know of, are only created forms of the real Buddha, the Bodhisattvas also cannot be average human beings—they must also be supramundane. In Vasumitra's treatise the following account of the Bodhisattvas is given: The Bodhisattvas do not pass through the embryonic stages. They assume the form of white elephants when they enter their mothers' wombs and come out of the same by the right side. The above opinion is the natural outcome of the legendary belief that came to be woven around the person of the great man about a century after his actual existence. In the *Lalitavistara*,² the Bodhisattva is placed not only in a crystal casket put within the womb but while in that state he is said to be preaching his dharma to the heavenly beings that flocked around him. The stories of the white elephant seen by Māyā in a dream at the time of her conception and the birth of the Bodhisattva by bursting through the right side of the mother's womb are too well-known to need any comment. The incorporation of these legends in the doctrines of the Mahāsaṅghikas shows that the Bodhisattva conception of the Mahāyānists was yet in the course of development.