The University of Nalanda c7.102

c7.102

In the opening centuries of the Christian era a revival had set in Buddhism, revival if we may use that term. For up till now the energy of the Buddhist monks was directed only to the propagation of the new faith. They were content to inculcate the obvious meaning of what Buddha said. But, in this period, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., we come across such distinguished writers as Nāgārjuna and Āryadēva, who discerned some deeper meaning in Buddha's preachings and founded or popularised a new form of Buddhism called Mahāyāna, and gave it a philosophy named Mādhyamika. The seeds of Mahāyāna may have been sown by the Mahāsaṃghika School in the 3rd century B. C., but the terms Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna gained currency in the times of Nāgārjuna, that is to say, in the later half of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd centuries A.D.³