The History of Buddhist Thought c28.15

c28.15

To estimate this accusation fairly it is necessary to recognize to what extent the Pāli exegetes were right. It is a fact that there are numerous works in Sanskrit which are “almost modern compositions”. It is also true that in them there is much that is heretical, adventitious, and heterogeneous. This is not mere modern theory. It is admitted by the authors of these late works themselves. They taunted the older schools with clinging to the letter rather than the spirit. They even admitted that their opponents’ teaching really was the Buddha-word, but maintained that Buddha taught it to the simple-minded merely as a preliminary, and meant it to be superseded by the higher doctrine, the new goal of life and the new philosophical conceptions which they called Mahāyāna. Stcherbatsky declares that Buddhism “resulted, 500 years after the demise of the Master, in what may be called a quite new religion, reposing on a quite different philosophic foundation”.¹