Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2.9

c19.s2.9

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.