Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2.13

c19.s2.13

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.