The History of Buddhist Thought c13.30

c13.30

¹ *Friendly Epistle*, 1886, p. 30; *Abhk.*, ii, p. 62; G. Tucci, "A fragment from the Pratītyasamutpādavyākhyā of Vasubandhu," *JRAS.*, 1930, 611; *Daśabhumika-sūtra*, ed. Rahder, p. 51; the common Buddhist doctrine of the process of conception as described above is thus given in Divy., i, 442: "Now through the meeting of three circumstances sons and daughters are born. What are the three? When the mother and father being in love come together, the mother is at the due season, and the gandharva (the being to be reborn) is present." This appears not to be a peculiar Buddhist theory, but the usual view of conception accepted without question by the Buddhists. In the Pāli the same statement is put into the mouth of Buddha, and is also represented as being held by brahmins (*Majjh.*, i, 266; ii, 157).