Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2.16

c19.s2.16

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.