Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s1.5

c19.s1.5

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