Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s1.16

c19.s1.16

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.