Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s1.8

c19.s1.8

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.