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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2: 2. The Literature

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2

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2. The Literature

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Of the literature of the Mahāyāna itself and of schools with Mahāyānist leanings much indeed has been preserved, but infinitely more has disappeared, and of what has been left a great part as yet exists only for us in Chinese or Tibetan versions. Unfortunately, the Chinese records render it extremely difficult to determine the precise condition of the texts translated and, despite the numerous notices which we have of the dates when translations were made, it is not always easy to ascertain to what precise text the date is applicable. The texts, which are preserved in mixed Sanskrit, or Sanskrit, present also grave difficulties of chronology; the impression is often inevitable that they are conglomerates, in which old matter and new are confused, and to which therefore it is impossible to ascribe any one period.

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The most important text to shed a light on the origin of Mahāyāna ideas is doubtless the Mahāvastu,¹ claiming to be the Vinaya of the Lokottaravādin school of the Mahāsānghikas, a style which it deserves only in so far as, like the Mahāvagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka it does give an account of the first conversions and of the founding of the community of monks, following upon an immense narrative of the life of the Buddha, in the main in accord with the Pali tradition. Distinctively Mahāyāna is undoubtedly the account of the ten stages of the Bodhisattva’s progress to Buddhahood; we find also the doctrine of the existence of many Buddhas, and the view that the worship of the Blessed One is sufficient to win Nirvāṇa. Unhappily, we cannot ascertain the date of the text; its Hunnish and Chinese references, its recognition of the halo, introduced from Greek art into the art of Gandhāra, prove comparatively late redaction, though much may be older, as is suggested by the fact that the whole is composed in mixed Sanskrit without the addition of passages in purer Sanskrit as in the Mahāyāna Sūtras proper.

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¹ Ed. É. Senart, Paris, 1882-97; Barth, Journal des Savants, 1899, pp. 459 ff., 517 ff., 623 ff.; E. Windisch, Die Composition des Mahāvastu (1909); Oldenberg, GN. 1912, pp. 123 ff.; Winternitz, Ind. Litt. ii. 187 ff. (the reference, p. 193, to Yogācāras (i. 120) as a sect is erroneous).

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Equally vague in date is the famous Lalitavistara,² whose title, ‘Full account of the Play’ of the Buddha marks its full acceptance of the supramundane character of the Buddha. It is clearly the biography of the master according to the Sarvāstivādin school, remodelled finally as a Mahāyāna Vaipulyasūtra as it expressly calls itself, in which the humanity of the founder of the faith has disappeared. Its date is uncertain, since we do not know how far our text represents what was translated into Chinese about A. D. 300. But the parallelism between the text and Gandhāran art¹ suggests that Buddha worship flourished in the second century A. D. and much of the Lalitavistara may go back to that date; it contains probably still older material. More precise dating would be possible, if we could be sure that it was from it, as it stands, that Açvaghoṣa derived the material for his Buddhacarita, but that is far from certain.

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² Ed. S. Lefmann, Halle a. S. 1902-8; trs. Ed. Foucaux, Paris, 1884-92; Winternitz, ii. 194 ff. Possibly originally composed in language akin to that of the Mahāvastu; F. Weller, Zum Lalitavistara, Leipzig, 1915.

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¹ Foucher, L'Art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhāra, i. 324 ff., 616 ff.; for dates, i. 40 ff.; Grünwedel, Buddh. Kunst, p. 81; Waddell, JRAS. 1914, pp. 140 ff. dates the art earlier, but on dubious grounds.

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Of the Mahāyāna or Vaipulya Sūtras proper, vasts texts of which some were probably first written in Prakrit but later turned into Sanskrit, while others from the first were composed in the language which had become dominant for all literary purposes, the most important for the doctrine of negativism or the void (çūnyatā) is the series of Prajñāpāramitās,² extolling the perfection of intuition, the highest perfection which a Buddha can have. The texts are of various size; tradition asserts on the one hand that the original was in 125,000 çlokas or lines of thirty-two syllables; then was reduced to 100,000, 25,000, 10,000 and 8,000, while another version makes the 8,000 line text the original of which the others are mere amplifications; a large variety extending from 100,000 lines to 700 lines is indeed known to us. The length in fact is unimportant; the substance is given in the short Vajracchedikā, the intuition ‘which cuts like a diamond’, which translated into Chinese in A. D. 401 forms with the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, in which the metaphysics is neatly packed into a magic formula, the leading text of the Shin-gon sect in Japan. It is impossible to extricate the real facts of the composition of the text; some form in 10,000 lines existed in Chinese by A. D. 179. The doctrine of the void is here taught without argument merely in the form of the dogmatic negation of every concept both in its positive and in its negative form on the authority of the Buddha.

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² See Walleser's trans. of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā and Vajracchedikā, Göttingen, 1914, pp. 15 ff. The latter is trans. Max Müller, SBE. XLIX. ii. 109 ff.; the former ed. BI. 1888; the Çatasāhasrikā, ibid. 1902 ff.; the Vajracchedikā in Buddhist texts from Japan, I, Oxford, 1881; it exists in whole or part in many renderings; Winternitz, ii. 249, n. 1.

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The *Samādhirāja*¹ deals with the supreme meditation which produces the highest knowledge, the recognition of the vacuity of all things; in meditation the Buddha is to be conceived as the law, the beginning of all things, of endless might and goodness. The *Suvarṇaprabhāsa*,² rendered into Chinese in the fifth century (c. 420), A. D., maintains the doctrines of the void and the law as the true body of the Buddha as against the search for corporeal relics of a human Buddha, but its great renown in Nepal, Tibet, and Mongolia is due to its character as a glorification of the power of spells (*dhāraṇīs*) in the style of the Hindu Purāṇas and Māhātmyas. The *Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā*,³ translated into Chinese between 589 and 618 A. D., describes the characteristics of a Buddha, illustrating them with Jātaka tales, and is interesting for the censure it conveys on the degeneracy of a Buddhism in which celibacy has disappeared.

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¹ NBL., pp. 207 ff.; or *Candrapradīpa Sūtra*; cited in MKV.; Ç.; and BCAP. viii. 106.

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² Ed. Sarad Chandra, Calcutta, 1898; NBL., pp. 241 ff.; Winternitz, ii. 245.

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³ Ed. L. Finot, Petrograd, 1901; Poussin, *Muséon*, iv (1903), 306 ff.

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For the idealist or Vijñānavāda or Yogācāra school of Buddhism there is important evidence in the *Laṅkāvatāra*⁴ which was rendered into Chinese in 443 and 513 A. D., though perhaps our text was later interpolated. It is, indeed, our best authority in Sanskrit for the Vijñānavāda, together with the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda* which, however, possesses individual features of its own. Moreover, it is important in giving us polemical disquisitions on the doctrines of the Sāmkhya, Vaiçeṣika and Pāçupata schools among others. Its quaint title is derived from the fiction that the discourse was delivered by Buddha to the demon Rāvaṇa, lord of Laṅkā, both, of course, as the Sūtra is careful to remind us, utterly non-existent. The ten stages of the progress of the Bodhisattva described here are also expounded in a form accepted by both the Madhyamaka and the Vijñānavāda schools in the *Daçabhūmaka*,⁵ styled in one version *Daçabhūmīçvara*, translated into Chinese between 265 and 316 A. D.

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⁴ The ed. of the Buddhist Text Society (1900) is very imperfect. Cf. NBL., pp. 113 ff.; JASB. 1905, pp. 159 ff.; JRAS. 1905, pp. 831 ff.

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⁵ NBL., pp. 81 ff.

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Definitively religious is the famous *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka*,¹ the Lotus of the Good Law, translated in the same period, written in Gāthās, verses in mixed Sanskrit, and in moderately correct Sanskrit prose, which is often later than the Gāthās, though in some cases the Gāthās are themselves mere late patchwork based on the older style. Çākyamuni here appears deprived of his humanity, as a great god, who teaches Buddhahood as the best of paths, in preference to the Hīnayāna, and inculcates every form of worship, even in play, as leading to Nirvāṇa. Chapters XXI to XXVI are later additions, though included in the Chinese rendering, and in chapter XXIV is a eulogy of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara, the saviour of creatures *par excellence*. His merits form the subject of the *Avalokiteçvaraguṇakāraṇḍavyūha*, usually shortened to *Kāraṇḍavyūha*,² ‘full account of the basket’ of the virtues of the lord which exists in a prose and a verse tradition, and was rendered into Chinese by A. D. 270. This text is remarkable for its patronage of the doctrine of an Ādi Buddha, the *prius* of all things, while the cult of Avalokiteçvara was known to the Chinese pilgrim, Fa-Hian, in A. D. 400. Another Bodhisattva, the incarnation of knowledge is Mañjuçrī, whose merits are the subject of the *Gaṇḍavyūha* or *Avataṃsaka Sūtra*,³ translated between 317 and 420 A. D. The *Sukhāvatīvyūha*,⁴ translated in some form between 148 and 170 A. D., and preserved in two Sanskrit versions, is devoted to the praise of the Buddha Amitābha or Amitāyus, and his paradise; the *Amitāyurdhyāna Sūtra*⁵ inculcates mediation on Amitāyus as the mode of gaining this paradise, and the three texts are of historical importance since they are the scriptures of two Japanese sects, the Jo-do-shū and the Shin-shū, of which the latter claims the largest number of adherents of any Japanese Buddhist sect. The *Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka*,⁶ translated in the sixth century, similarly glorifies the Buddha Padmottara and his paradise, while the Buddha Akṣobhya is the theme of the Akṣobhyavyūha, translated before A. D. 186. But the number of Sūtras known by name and citation or existing in Chinese versions is extremely large; the Ratnakūṭa Sūtra is said to have been translated before A. D. 170, and, without paying too great attention to the exact dates, there is sufficient evidence that the Sūtra literature must have been abundant by the second century A. D. and presumably somewhat earlier.

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¹ Ed. H. Kern and B. Nanjio, BB. x, Petrograd, 1908 ff.; trans. SBE. xxi; cf. JRAS. 1916, pp. 269 ff. ² Prose version ed. Satyavrata Sāmaçrami, Calcutta, 1873; NBL., pp. 95 ff.; Burnouf, Intr., pp. 196 ff.; ERE. ii. 256 ff. ³ NBL., pp. 90 ff.; a section, the *Bhadracarī*, is ed. K. Watanabe, with trans. by Leumann, Leipzig, 1912; cf. Pelliot, JA. 1914, ii. 118 ff. ⁴ Ed. Oxford, 1883; trans. SBE. XLIX. ii. ⁵ Trans. from Chinese, SBE. XLIX. ii. 159 ff.; Walleser, Heidelberg, 1916. ⁶ Ed. Calcutta, 1898; NBL., pp. 285 ff.

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Apart from the Sūtras, and of not less importance, are works by authors whose personality is more or less known to us. The earliest in time perhaps is Aṣvaghoṣa, son of Suvarṇākṣī, educated as a Brahmin, then an adherent of the Sarvāstivādins and later a precursor of the Mahāyāna. His date is obscure, for the tradition of his connexion with Kaniṣka is not altogether supported by the tone of the references to that king contained in the Sūtrālaṃkāra, but it is not improbable that he flourished under or shortly after that prince, whose own date, however, still remains in controversy; a date about A. D. 100 is not improbable for the poet. His great epic, the Buddhacarita¹ is based either on the Lalitavistara or on the same materials, and, save in its spirit of devotion to the Buddha, is not markedly different from the Hīnayāna. The Sūtrālaṃkāra,² even through the medium of a translation from the Chinese, shows much merit; it is a collection of edifying legends of the Jātaka type, in which Aṣvaghoṣa applies the resources of his poetic spirit to adorn the teachings of the faith. The Vajrasūcī,³ a polemical tract in which the author seeks to overthrow the Brahmanical caste system on the score of citations from the Veda, the Mahābhārata and the Mānava Dharmaśāstra, is of dubious origin, for by one source it is attributed to Dharmakīrti. Far more important is the issue regarding the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda*,¹ the Rise of Faith in the Mahāyāna, which is one of the best of Buddhist philosophical treatises, and worthy even of Açvaghoṣa’s fame. The doctrine in this work, however, distinctly advanced; it represents a form of the Vijñānavāda in which the ideas of suchness and the Tathāgatagarbha, womb of the Tathāgata, are developed in an absolutist sense. It is, of course, illegitimate *a priori* to hold that such doctrines could not be adopted or promulgated by Açvaghoṣa, but the evidence for his authorship is not very convincing; the work was rendered into Chinese in 554 and 710 A. D. and our knowledge of it is derived from a translation of this later version. An older Chinese tradition does not contain the attribution to Açvaghoṣa, and it is easy enough to understand how the work was attributed to him later, while it is remarkable, if he were the true author of it that we should not have more convincing evidence of his authorship. We have possibly some ground for doubting the attribution in the fact that we find the doctrine of vacuity alluded to in the *Saundarananda*² which deals with the conversion of Buddha’s half brother Nanda very much against his will, and incidentally gives much information on the faith, and the same doctrine, together with the distinction of absolute and apparent truth, is found in another treatise attributed on Chinese authority to Açvaghoṣa.³ The question is of some historical importance; if Açvaghoṣa were really the author of the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda*, then we must assume that the doctrine of idealism developed effectively before that of vacuity. This seems contrary to tradition, and even to probability; the idealism of the Vijñānavāda presents rather the appearance of an effort to render more plausible the negativism of the Madhyamaka. But the material is clearly inadequate to permit of certainty.

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¹ Ed. Cowell, Oxford, 1893; trans. SBE. XLIX. ii.; Formichi, Bari, 1912; Über die chinesische Version von Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita, Leipzig, 1916. On Kaniṣka's date see reff. in Winternitz, ii. 375; Rapson, CHI. i. 583 ff. The Rāja Aṣvaghoṣa (EI. viii. 171 f.; JRAS. 1912, pp. 701 ff.) is probably different.

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² Trans. Ed. Huber, Paris, 1908; Lévi, JA. 1908, ii. 57 ff. Sanskrit title, Kalpanāmaṇḍinikā, acc. to Lüders, DLZ. 1919, p. 474; cf. Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen, p. 63; Poussin, Muséon, x (1909), 86 ff.

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³ Weber, Über die Vajrasūcī (1859); Lévi, JA. 1908, ii. 90 ff.

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¹ Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, by T. Suzuki, Chicago, 1900. Cf. Winternitz, ii. 211; Ui, VP., p. 44, n. 3.

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² Ed. Haraprasād Shāstrī, BI. 1910; cf. Baston, JA. 1912, i. 79 ff.; Hultzsch, ZDMG. lxxii. 111 ff.; lxxiii. 229 ff.

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³ Cf. Vidhushekhara, JRAS. 1914, pp. 747 f.; Keith, ibid., p. 1092; he knew the Prajñāpāramitā doctrine, Ui, UV., p. 44, n. 3.

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Açvaghoṣa’s literary efforts on behalf of Buddhism extended also to the sphere of drama; fragments of his works are preserved to us, in sufficient extent to show that he was master of the technique of the art and that his drama already manifests most of the characteristics of the Indian theatre.¹ His lyrics were famous, and we possess in the *Gaṇḍistotragāthā*,² restored from Tibetan, a curious specimen of his literary genius. Of literary rather than philosophical interest is the complex question whether Aśvaghoṣa is really identical with the poet Mātr̥ceṭa, to whom I-Tsing attributes the *Catapañcācatanāmastotra*, or with Maticitra, author of a letter to a king Kanika, the question of whose identity with Kaniṣka is no less obscure. Fragments of Mātr̥ceṭa’s work are now in our possession, while his *Varṇanārhavarṇana* is preserved in Tibetan. Of the same type of elaborate Kāvya poetry is the *Jātakamālā* of Āryaśūra or Cūra celebrating the perfections of the Buddha.³

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¹ Lüders, *Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen* (1911) and SBA. 1911, pp. 388 ff. ; Konow, *Das indische Drama*, pp. 50 ff.

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² Ed. A. von Stael-Holstein, BB. xv. Petrograd, 1913; Thomas, JRAS. 1914, pp. 752 ff.

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³ Cf. Thomas, *Kavīndravacanasamuccaya*, pp. 25 ff. ; Winternitz, VOJ. xxvii. 43 f. ; Lüders, SBA. 1914, p. 103.

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Serious doubt exists also as to the date of Nāgārjuna,⁴ who passes for the founder of the Madhyamaka system of the Mahāyāna; the most certain fact, perhaps, is that Āryadeva, who was apparently a younger contemporary, uses in a poem, *Cittaviśuddhiprakaraṇa*, the words *rāci* and *vāraka*, showing therefore a knowledge of Greek astrology which can hardly be supposed to have reached India in this form before A.D. 200, and may possibly be placed later; the argument is not conclusive, since we cannot absolutely prove that the new system of naming days of the week did not spread to India by A.D. 100, since it existed before the end of that century in Italy, but it agrees well enough with tradition to make A.D. 200 a reasonable date for Nāgārjuna. What is certain is that we may regard as his the *Mūlamadhyamakakārikās* memorial verses in which he sets out the doctrines of his system, an absolute negativism. His own comment, the *Akutobhayā*, exists in Tibetan, and in a revised version by an unknown hand was rendered into Chinese by Kumārajīva to whom (*circa* A.D. 405)

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⁴ JAOS. xxxi. 3; Kern, *Ind. Buddh.*, p. 122. Poussin, (*Bouddhisme*, p. 383, n. 1) queries the attribution to Āryadeva of the *Cittaviśuddhiprakaraṇa*.

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we owe a legendary biography of the sage.¹ The work evoked not merely great praise but many commentaries; those of Buddhapālita and Bhāvaviveka exist only in Tibetan, but that of Candrakīrti, the *Prasannapadā*, is preserved in Sanskrit and may be ascribed to the seventh century A. D. We need not, of course, take seriously the conception of Nāgārjuna as the creator of the Śūnyavāda philosophy, though the Hīnayāna ascribes to him the *Śatasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā*. He must rather be counted as the great dialectician who effectively presented and won fame for the school, and whose work therefore threw other authors in the shade. The relation of his work to the various versions of the *Prajñāpāramitā* is wholly indeterminable with the evidence available; these texts are merely dogmatic assertions of the essential character of vacuity, and could be elaborated after Nāgārjuna or exist before him. Of other works of Nāgārjuna we have the *Dharmasaṃgraha*,² a collection of technical terms, which may or may not be his, and the *Suḥṛllekha*,³ addressed to an unknown king, also of dubious authenticity.

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¹ Text ed. with *Prasannapadā* by Poussin, BB., iv. Petrograd 1913; comm. from Tibetan and Chinese by Walleser, Heidelberg, 1911 and 1912. The author of the latter was certainly not Āryadeva, but possibly Piṅgalākṣa, or Vimalākṣa; cf. Ui, VP., p. 45, n. 2.

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² Ed. Oxford, 1885. Cf. H. Stönner, SBA. 1904, pp. 1282 ff.

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³ H. Wenzel, JPTS. 1886, pp. 1 ff.

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Of Āryadeva we now have beside fragments the *Catuḥśataka*,⁴ the *Hastabālaprakaraṇa*,⁵ and the *Cittaviśuddhiprakaraṇa*;⁶ the latter concludes that the mind, when without a touch of imagination, is the true reality, the apparent diversity which it exhibits being explained by the coloration of imagination, just as the limpid crystal is discoloured by the reflection of a coloured object, a doctrine which shows that Āryadeva⁷ was approximating to the views of the Vijñānavāda or the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda*. The foremost authority on the Vijñānavāda, though not necessarily or probably its founder, is Āryāsaṅga, or Asaṅga, the real author of the *Yogācārabhūmiśāstra*, of which the *Bodhisattvabhūmi*⁸ is preserved in Sanskrit. This text, which with others is ascribed to Maitreya, in the manner of the Mahāyāna, attempts to prove the authenticity of its doctrine; it rests on the belief in enlightenment as the supreme reality to be attained by the Yogācāra, the monk who practises the Yoga mysticism which is an essential part even of the Hīnayāna, but is now incorporated definitely in the Mahāyāna, giving the idealist school the alternative name of Yogācāra. The ten stages of the progress of the Bodhisattva to enlightenment are described in the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, in verse with a prose comment by the author. Other works by Asaṅga are enumerated, Mahāyānasamparigrahaśāstra, Madhyāntavibhāga, Mahāyāna Sūtra, various Upadeças, Saptadaçabhūmi Sūtra &c., but it is difficult to ascribe to him any high rank as a philosopher. It would be interesting to ascertain his precise relation to the Laṅkāvatāra; if we could accept the ascription of the Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda to Açvaghoṣa and the identification of a citation in it with the Laṅkāvatāra, we could be sure that Asaṅga was later than the Sūtra, in which case his claim to originality would be very slight. In point of fact, however, originality was not the aim of these writers, but rather effective exposition of a doctrine already in circulation.¹

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⁴ Haraprasād, JASB. vii. 431 ff.

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⁵ JRAS. 1918, pp. 267 ff.

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⁶ JASB. lxvii (1898), pp. 165 ff.

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⁷ On his identity, cf. Péri, BEFEO. xi. 366 ff.

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⁸ *Muséon*, vi (1905), 38 ff. ; vii (1906), 213 ff. ; U. Wogihara, Asaṅga's *Bodhisattvabhūmi*, Leipzig, 1908.

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¹ Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra in ed. and trans. S. Lévi, Paris, 1907–11. The Abhisamayālaṃkāra appears to be by a real Maitreyanātha; Haraprasād, JASB. vi. 425 ff. before A. D. 265, but cf. Walleser, PP., pp. 27 ff.

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Asaṅga’s brother, Vasubandhu, originally like him an adherent of the Sarvāstivāda, and author of the Abhidharmakoça, was converted in late life by Asaṅga to belief in the Mahāyāna, which he illustrated by commenting on the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Prajñāpāramitā, the Vimalakīrti, the Avataṃsaka, the Çrīmālāsiṃhanāda &c., and by composing the Ratnatraya and Vijñānamātrasiddhi. His fame seems to have been extraordinary, and his works to have been studied by both the Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna schools and to have spread far beyond India. He also wrote a Paramārthasaptati attacking the Sāṃkhyasaptati of the mysterious Vindhyavāsa, whose identity with Īçvarakṛṣṇa is still in doubt. The date of the brothers is uncertain, but the Chinese evidence suggests strongly that they flourished up to the middle of the fourth century A. D., a date which suits well all the evidence available.¹

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¹ His *Viṃśakakārikāprakaraṇa* is trans. from Tibetan by Poussin, *Muséon*, 1912, pp. 53 ff. On the date see esp. Péri, *BEFEO*. xi. 339 ff.; Lévi, ii. 2 n.; Winternitz, *VOJ*. xxvii. 36; Keith, *JRAS*. 1914, p. 1091. On Yogācāra literature see Stcherbatskoi, *Muséon*, vi (1905), 144 ff.; Garbe, (*Sāmkhya-Philosophie*,² p. 74) and Pathak, *IA*. xli. 244 maintain the older date but idly; see Smith, *Early Hist.*,³ pp. 328 ff.

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Of later works importance attaches to the *Madhyamākavatāra*² of Candrakīrti (sixth century A. D.) the commentator on Nāgārjuna’s Kārikās, and to the *Çikṣāsamuccaya*³ and *Bodhicaryāvatāra*⁴ of Çāntideva, who lived probably in the seventh century A. D. The former of Çāntideva’s works is in the main a mass of citations, often of some length, from texts not otherwise available to us in Sanskrit form; the latter is a poem of great religious merit, worthy of comparison in its own way with the *Imitatio Christi*. In a sense it is a *tour de force*, for the author is devoutly convinced of the nothingness of things, but his philosophy does not forbid him to exhibit a fervour of pious devotion. It is accompanied by a comment by Prajñākaramati, which contains valuable notices bearing on the text.

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² Trans. from Tibetan by Poussin, *Muséon*, viii (1907), 249 ff ; xi. (1910), 271 ff. ; date, Winternitz, ii. 259, n. 3, 379; Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, p. 208.

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³ Ed. Bendall, *BB*. i, Petrograd, 1902; trans. by him and Rouse, London, 1922; for his life, Haraprasād, *IA*. xlii. 49 ff.

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⁴ Ed. Poussin, *BI*. 1901 ff. ; trans. Paris, 1907. Cf. Foucher, *RHR*. lvii. 241 ff.

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Mahāyāna doctrines appear also in many other texts; even in the *Divyāvadāna* one section claims to be a Mahāyāna Sūtra, but these contain little of philosophical importance, and indeed of the literature mentioned comparatively small portion is concerned with philosophic issues, while many texts are still unavailable, existing only in Chinese or Tibetan versions. The result is inevitably that on many points it is extremely difficult to secure any clear view of the Mahāyāna position in detail; we can, however, ascertain some general principles, and from these we may be assured that what is lacking is not of special value even for the history of Indian philosophy.

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Of the later history of Buddhism as a philosophy in India comparatively little is important. The commentators on the Madhyamaka and the Vijñānavāda contended against one another, without either school ousting the other; the Mīmānsā, Vedānta, and Nyāya-Vaiçeṣika criticized severely Buddhist views. It is, however, significant that, while Kumārila makes strong play against the Madhyamaka, Caṅkara who refutes elaborately the Sarvāstivādins and the Vijñānavāda disposes summarily of the Madhyamaka. The polemics of Uddyotakara and Vācaspati Miçra are of special interest as showing the lively controversies of the schools. The Buddhists, for their part, were keen controversialists, invading the field of their enemies; we have fortunately good specimens of their controversial style in the treatises of Aço-ka and Ratnakīrti, both about the close of the ninth century A. D. In the Avayavinirākaraṇa the former makes an onslaught on the Nyaya thesis that the whole is something over and above the parts to which it stands in the peculiar relation of inherence (samavāya); in truth the whole is nothing apart from the parts and the relation is a myth. In the Sāmānyadūṣaṇadikprasāritā equal havoc is made with the conception that we experience generals or universals as real; we see the five fingers of the hand, not a sixth universal, which is as unreal as a horn on one’s head. Ratnakīrti established by two treatises, both positively and negatively, the doctrine of momentariness. The general decay of Buddhism from internal causes was accelerated by the havoc wrought by Mahomedan invaders, whose destruction of the monasteries and their inmates uprooted a faith in which the laity were only loosely attached to the Church, and from the twelfth century onwards Buddhist theories cease to attract much living attention in the schools.

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In China and Japan, on the other hand, the doctrines of the Mahāyāna were destined to have a great vogue and to develop into systems in which the nothingness of Nāgārjuna is transmuted into a very positive absolute; it is easy to interpret in the light of such developments our texts, but the result is undoubtedly in large measure to falsify the true signification.¹

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¹ T. Suzuki’s Outlines of Mahāyāna Buddhism is written from this point of view; it seems in fact to represent the attitude of the Shin-gon-shū school which is permeated with Tantric philosophy and is said to be derived

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Interesting light on the systems is thrown in a large number of works of other schools such as the *Nyāya* and *Vedānta Sūtra* and their commentaries, Kumārila’s *Vārttika*, Jayanta’s *Nyāyamañjarī*, Varadarāja’s *Tārkikarakṣā*, and Çrīdhara’s *Nyāyakandalī*, and in sketches of philosophical schools such as the *Sarvasiddhāntasaṃgraha*, *Sarvadarçanasaṃgraha*, and Guṇaratna’s *Tarkarahasyadīpikā* on the *Ṣaḍdarçanasamuccaya*.¹

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¹ For controversies with the Mīmāṃsā see Keith, KM. esp., pp. 46 ff. ; for logical discussions ILA. (reff., p. 275). The *Sāṃkhya Sūtra*, a late text deals with many Buddhist doctrines, and in i. 42-7 specifically with the Mahāyāna doctrines; see Garbe, *Sāṃkhya-Philosophie*,² p. 146, n. 1. On its age see ZDMG. lxii. 593 ; Keith, SS., pp. 91 ff. From Chinese sources alone do we know of Harivarman, author of the *Satyasiddhiçāstra*, perhaps c. 250 A. D.; Ui, VP., pp. 4 f., 42 f., 45, 50, 55 f.

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from the *Mahāvairocanābhisambodhi Sūtra* (translated A. D. 724) and other Tantric works, but unfortunately it treats the Mahāyāna as a unity; see de la Vallée Poussin, *JRAS*. 1908. pp. 885-94 ; 1910, p. 133.

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