The History of Buddhist Thought c26.58

c26.58

As the trikāya doctrine is based upon a body of dogmatic teaching about the nature of a Buddha, it is natural that earlier doctrines should be included in it. But these are not necessarily anticipations of it. When *dhammakāya* occurs occasionally in the Pāli, it is merely the body of doctrine.¹ The *Milinda-pañha* says that Buddha now exists in the body of the doctrine, that is, in the spoken word, and the statement is only the utterance of the rationalist, who took a negative view of the nature of Nirvāṇa but preferred not to put it in its boldest form.²