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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s1: 1. The Origin of the Mahāyāna

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s1

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1. The Origin of the Mahāyāna

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Is it possible to deduce the origin and development of the Mahāyāna from factors immanent in the Hinayāna, or must we allow for the introduction of an element of influence of foreign thought on India? There are facts which tell in favour of the latter hypothesis. It is clear that the rise of Mahāyāna was rapid in the first and second centuries A. D., and this was the time when after Greek and Parthian and Çaka princes the Kuṣan dynasty was reigning in India. Matters had greatly changed since the days of the Buddha; foreigners had freely penetrated the country, commerce had grown, and it is not without importance that the most metaphysical of the treatises of early Buddhism the Milindapañha purports to be a dialogue between an Indian sage and a Greek ruler. The most important of all Madhyamaka texts, the foundation in a sense of the Mahāyāna is the Prajñāpāramitā, the book of the perfection of intuition or knowledge, twin sister of the Sophia or the Gnosis of Asiatic Greece. The doctrine of the Trikāya, the three bodies of a Buddha, seems to appear so abruptly as to suggest borrowing from without. Moreover, the sudden activity of the Mahāyāna, its conviction of the necessity of the preaching of salvation, and the doctrine of the duty of man to lay aside the dream of swift release from transmigration for himself, and to choose instead the career of a Buddha to be for the sake of the release of the world from tribulation, suggest the introduction of a new spirit, which India was eager and able to assimilate, but which could not have arisen in such a form unless there had been external influences at work.¹

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¹ S. Lévi, MSA. ii. 16 ff. Manichaean influence on the doctrine of defilement of thought and Neoplatonic on the idealist system are suggested. Contrast Kennedy, JRAS. 1902, pp. 377 ff.; Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, iii. 445 ff.

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Such in effect is the case which can be presented for foreign influence, nor is it possible to deny that such influences may have been at work. The fact of the introduction of new peoples and new ideas to India is obvious enough in the field of art where actual remains exist to tell a conclusive tale. To deny the same influence in other spheres, because it is less easy to prove it, is clearly illegitimate. The development of the Mahāyāna was parallel with the introduction of Greek astrology² into India; we cannot assert that Āryadeva who apparently knew the latter must have been ignorant of any other side of Asianic thought. What we can establish, and that with a considerable degree of probability, is that there existed in India itself, partly even in early Buddhism the germs of the results which are revealed in the Mahāyāna; we cannot deny that these seeds may have been stirred to active life by the intellectual ferment which must have been caused by the introduction of new peoples to India. History has shown us how able are Indians to assimilate in their own distinctive manner foreign conceptions, in ways which it is difficult or impossible effectively to trace, and from this fact we may be warned not to deny foreign influences in the past, because the traces of them are slight. When India appropriated, it was with an activity of its own, which made the borrowing appear an integral part of the ancient thought.

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² As to the drama cf. Lindenau, Festschrift Windisch, pp. 38 ff.; Lévi, JA. 1902, i. 123; as to logic, Keith, ILA., p. 18; as to romance, Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 784 ff.

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The view of the Mahāyāna itself is simple; it wholly denies that it is anything save the true doctrine of the Buddha, which, however, as too important and abstruse, was not made known generally by the master, a fact which accounts for its non-appearance in the Pali Canon or at least for its comparative insignificance. In point of fact it is present even there; the Kātyāyanavāda in the *Samyutta Nikāya*¹ is acclaimed as asserting the doctrine of the vacuity of things, since it denies the reality of either existence or non-existence. Moreover, the Pūrva- and the Apara-ṣaila schools are asserted to have had the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra and other Mahāyāna texts written in Prakrit. The *Mahāvastu*, again, which is a Mahāsānghika text, contains the essentially Mahāyāna doctrines of the ten stages of the Bodhisattva’s progress as well as of the perfections. The doctrine of the magic body of a Buddha, and therefore also of the three bodies, is necessitated by the stories related of the Buddha by the Hīnayāna itself; how else could he have acted, as is there reported of him? On the contrary, their own doctrine does not in any way depart from the true teaching of the Buddha; the systems of the Hīnayāna need not be utterly rejected, but they represent merely an inferior stage of truth, suited for minds unable to appreciate the true reality.²

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¹ ii. 17; MKV., p. 269.

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² Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 264 f.; MA., pp. 21, 134; Ṣaṅkara, BS. ii. 2, 32; SDS., p. 7; BCA. ix. 45-7; MK. xxvii.

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The defence of the Mahāyāna cannot be accepted as wholly convincing. As regards their allegation of early Mahāyāna Sūtras in Prakrit certainty is unattainable, but we have no possible reason to treat the Pūrva- or Apara-ṣaila schools as early, and the existence of a Prakrit *Prajñāpāramitā* at an early date is quite unproved. The insistence of the school on attributing to a Bodhisattva like Maitreya its most important texts suggests an uneasy consciousness of posterity, and, unless we are devout Buddhists, we are not called on to believe that the teaching of Nāgārjuna is inspired by the Buddha himself. Historically we may reasonably say in view of the Chinese translations of the second century A. D. that the Mahāyāna movement became effective in the first century A. D.³ and, as will be seen, it rested largely on elements present in primitive Buddhism.

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³ *Ratnakūṭa Sūtra* before 170 A. D.; *Akṣobhyavyūha*, *Daṣasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā*, *Mahāsukhāvatī* before 186 A.D.; Poussin, *Bouddhisme*, p. 260, n. The earlier work (trs. 67 A.D.) of Kāṣyapa Mātaṅga, *Sūtra of 42 sections*, does not clearly contain any Mahāyāna doctrine; Eliot, *Hinduism and Buddhism*, ii. 71, n. 2.

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It is clear, indeed, that the doctrine of vacuity or in the Vijñānavāda of empty thought is a development, natural and perhaps inevitable of the insistence of primitive Buddhism on the transitory character and non-substantiality of all things, and of the Buddha's long list of indeterminates. Granted that early Buddhism was realistic in a naïve way, it contained within itself the seeds of negativism; if the chain of causation, as the *Saṃyutta Nikāya*¹ boasts, overthrows the doctrine that the misery of existence is made by self, by another, by both or by neither, it is not a difficult step to assert the invalidity or vacuity² of every possible idea, as does the *Prajñāpāramitā*, with an elaboration of repetition which suggests the fascination of the theorem for philosophically immature intellects. There was a sense also in which this negativism has more affinity to early Buddhism that the Sautrāntika doctrine, which doubtless most nearly affected the growth of the Mahāyāna. The Sautrāntika and Sarvāstivādin theory accepted the world as the product of the unstable combinations of seventy-five stable elements; they had thus indirectly assailed the true doctrine of impermanence, for, though they admitted constant change, they recognized the changing forms as having beneath them something real and permanent.

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¹ ii. 113.

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² In KV. xix. 2 void as a synonym of Nirvāṇa is assumed by the Theravādin, who rejects vacuity as part of the dispositions aggregate; so also iii. 2; x. 3. The world, however, is only void of soul; i. 1. 241 (SN. iv. 54); Nirvāṇa allows of no positive concept, but voidness in the Pali texts seems to have specific reference to soul; DN. iii. 219; DS., §§ 121, 344 ff., 514 ff.; KV. i. 1. 241; SN. iv. 54; ADS. ix. 9; vi. 14.

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The Vijñānavāda again could fairly argue that its doctrine was a mere legitimate development in an improved form of the conception of the ego-series of the Sautrāntika. The receptacle intellect or consciousness (*ālaya-vijñāna*), as contrasted with the individual intellectual acts (*pravṛtti-vijñāna*), expressed more clearly than could the Sautrāntika the fundamental fact that each moment in the intellectual series is charged with the whole accumulated experience of the individual from endless time. Nor could it be said that the metaphysical conception of the void intellect as the *prius* of all things was wholly incompatible with the Hīnayāna; the earlier Buddhist thought would have denied the possibility of such an assertion, but it did not wholly exclude it.

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It is less easy at first to trace the transition from the narrow ideal of the Arhant to the generous conception of the Bodhisattva who seeks not Nirvāṇa, but Buddhahood for the salvation of the world. But we cannot doubt that from the first there was a party in the faith which felt that the ideal of the Arhant was narrow and rather selfish; that some doubted whether true release could so easily be won; that some were by no means assured that release was what they desired, and would have preferred to be assured of a life of greater bliss in the future. India has always been the home of fervent devotion¹ and we find in the Jātakas the lively expression of the conception of the Buddha as one who in a series of past lives has practised with devotion the highest perfections; granted that the Bodhisattva ideal did not penetrate deeply into the Pali Canon in its older parts, it was too strong to be entirely excluded, and the Mahāyāna conception cannot be said to be inconsistent with a natural development of the idea. The argument is all the stronger when it is remembered that in the period of the growth of the Mahāyāna there must have been developing the doctrine of the Avatārs of Viṣṇu, animated by the desire to bring succour to mankind. It is possible also that the doctrine of the stages of Bodhisattva’s advance are really borrowed by the Mahāyāna from the Mahāsānghikas, and not a Mahāyānist interpolation in the Mahāvastu, and the Sautrāntikas may have entertained the doctrine independently.

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¹ The parallelism of the Bhakti of the Bhagavadgītā and the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka is patent; Kern, SBE. XXI. xxv. ff., Ind. Buddh., p. 122.

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The break between the Buddhology of the Hinayāna and that of the Mahāyāna at first presents a graver problem, but there is a real sense in which the Mahāyāna returns in its Buddhology to a position in closer harmony with the views of the Buddha than was the developed Hinayāna school. We certainly have the impression in the early texts that there is no very essential difference between the disciples and the master so far as attaining the goal of release is concerned, although the master has the inimitable privilege of revealing the way. But the later Hinayāna seems to place a great gulf between the mere Arhant and the Buddha, a distinction which the Mahāyāna in a sense minimizes by encouraging every one to aim at Buddhahood as a just endeavour. In general, however, the Mahāyāna, perhaps in accord with a very early movement in Buddhism, is intent on magnifying the personality of the Buddha, and in minimizing his humanity. There are for this obvious precedents in the Hinayāna itself. We have the out-and-out docetism of the Vetulyakas, who hold that the Buddha abode in the Tuṣita heaven while a magic shape taught to Ānanda the doctrine on earth.¹ We have the claim of the Andhakas that in all his speech the Buddha was ultramundane, and that he had power (iddhi) to reverse even the rules of causality, while the Mahāsānghikas held the doctrine of the omnipresence of the Buddha.² The Sautrāntikas agree with the Mahāyāna in the doctrine of the ten powers peculiar to the Buddhas and are asserted to accept the theory of a body of bliss (sambhogakāya), which is an essential element of the doctrine of the Trikāya.³ Moreover, the conception of the law as the body of the Buddha is foreshadowed in the Canon, so that in germ the whole conception of the three bodies of a Buddha, which certainly at first sight seems strange, is latent in the Hinayāna. The motive power which accounts for this development of theism is simple; the age was one of the predominance in the popular mind of the great sectarian gods with the doctrine of devotion and salvation by grace, and it was inevitable that a faith which sought to be popular, since its votaries essentially depended for their subsistence and all their comforts on the generosity of lay supporters, should find it necessary to supply the need of its adherents. We may surmise that at no time was the popularity of Buddhism unaffected by its religious associations, and in the Mahāyāna we find this element frankly and effectively developed in the doctrine of the grace of the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, and the possibility of the transference of merit. It is characteristic that in the new faith the deity Amitābha assumes a high place; he is clearly a sun god transferred to Buddhist use, a striking sign of the interpenetration of Buddhism with popular religion. It is important to remember also that, side by side with the doctrine of the Arhant, there existed the devotion of the people to relic and shrine worship, attested in art, which in the Gandhāra sculpture passes into the open veneration, not of symbols merely, but of representations of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The practice of personal representation was doubtless borrowed from Greek art,¹ but it proved acceptable because the idea of the divinity of the Buddhas was already prevalent.

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¹ KV. xviii. 1, 2; Kashgar fr. of Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, JRAS. 1907, p. 434.

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² KV. ii. 10; xxi. 4; 6.

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³ Poussin, Bouddhisme, p. 290. Cf. ch. xvi. § 2 for the doubt on this point. They accepted the Dharmakāya which is preluded in the Canon.

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¹ Foucher, RHR. xxx. 340; JA. 1903, ii. 208 f., 319 f., 327; L'Art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhāra (1905); Beginnings of Buddhist Art, pp. 111 ff.

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There are also in minor details coincidences between the Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna which show the continuity of development of Buddhist thought. The doctrine of the double form of teaching of the Hīnayāna² is repeated in the strengthened form of degrees of reality and truth in the Mahāyāna. While the Hīnayāna is not convinced that everything is void, it permits meditations on things as void,³ and the Vetulyakas, that mysterious sect, even appears on one reading as champions of the great void.⁴ Moreover, the Uttarāpathakas are credited with a doctrine of thusness⁵ or suchness (tathatā, from tatha, ‘true’) as indicating the unconditioned element at the bottom of things which may well be a precursor of the system of the Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda.

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² The person (pudgala) is thus taught; it is a sammuti-sacca, truth by general consent, but really erroneous; Poussin, JA. 1903, ii. 262, n. 3; KV. comm. i. 68.

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³ DN. ii. 319; DS., §§ 121, 344, 514 ff.; ADS. ix. 9; cf. vi. 14 and p. 67.

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⁴ Comm. on KV. xvii. 6, v.l. Mahāpuṇṇavādins. We cannot prove them, or KV. xvii. 6, to be pre-Mahāyāna.

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⁵ KV. xix. 5. Hints of the receptacle consciousness, Ālayavijñāna, are to be seen in the Mahāsāṅghika doctrine of a root (mūla) consciousness and the Mahīśāsaka doctrine of something over and above the aggregates; Suzuki, Muséon v. (1904) 376 f. An interesting example of the way of changing alleged Sūtras is seen in MKV., p. 389 as against TRD., p. 46; Nirvāṇa being made unreal. Cf. MKV., p. 176, n. 3; SN. v. 430.

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