The History of Buddhist Thought c24.6

c24.6

But for the layman a new type of religion arose. It may in its origin not have been brahminical at all, but it finally became absorbed in Hinduism. In this type we find an exclusive devotion (*bhakti*) to one god, a personal being who promises salvation to all that faithfully worship him. The earliest literary example of this type is the *Bhagavadgītā*, the poem in which the god Krishna transforms the doctrine of karma by teaching that action should not be performed for the sake of the resulting merit or pleasure, but that salvation depends upon the god’s power to save his devoted worshippers. The importance of the work here is only as one example of the emotional religions which permeated popular Hinduism. We have no evidence to place the contact of such religions with Buddhism earlier than the second century B.C.¹ It is from that period that we find archæological evidence for the existence of the religion of bhakti, and it is also from that time that the worship of bodhisattvas appears in Buddhism. The belief in bodhisattvas may well have developed naturally out of the story of the historical Buddha and his previous existences. The career which he undertook came to be looked upon as a possible career for all, and the inventiveness of the Mahāyānists supplied the names of numberless bodhisattvas. There can be little doubt that the bhakti worship which the Buddhist layman found all round him stimulated exactly the same kind of worship as we find in the popular bodhisattva doctrine.