Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s1.14

c19.s1.14

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.