An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c8.s2.t2.1

c8.s2.t2.1

§ 123. These movements, coupled with new ideas and practices which had been gaining ground in the old sects for two centuries, found their culmination in the creation of a new Buddhism called the Mahāyāna, or great vehicle, in contrast with the old Buddhism, which was depreciated as the Hīnayāna, or small vehicle.¹ The Mahāyāna is, on one side, the acute Hinduizing of Buddhism, the on the other, the humanizing of the old discipline, so as to make Buddhism more suitable for the cultured Indian layman and for the men of many races now crowding into the community. The rise of this system is probably to be placed in the reign of Kanishka (perhaps A.D. 78-123), towards the end of the first and the beginning of the second century; for all tradition points to that time, and many Mahāyāna texts were translated into Chinese before A. D. 170.¹