Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
Such are the Mahayanist version of the Mahâparinirvâṇa recounting the death and burial of the Buddha and the Mahâsannipâta-sûtra, which apparently includes the Sûryagarbha and Candragarbha sutras. All these works were translated into Chinese about 420 A.D. and must therefore be of respectable antiquity. Besides the sutras, there are many compositions styled Avadânas or pious legends.
This silence makes it primâ facie probable that he lived either before or after Pan Ch'ao's career. But this unfortunately proves nothing except that Kanishka cannot have been very late. The work is not a scripture for whose recognition some lapse of time must be postulated. But he also states that it was after the Council that Mahayanist texts began to appear. Sut. Majj.
The former is a compendium of doctrine illustrated by quotations from what the author regarded as scripture. He cites about a hundred Mahayanist sutras, refers to the Vinaya and Divyâvadâna but not apparently to the Abhidharma. He mentions no Tantras and not many Dhâraṇîs.
The Diamond Cutter is one of the best known of these transcendental treatises and the two short works called Heart of the Prajñâ-pâramitâ, which are widely read in Japan, appear to be brief abstracts of the essence of this teaching. The Saddharma-Puṇḍarîka, or Lotus of the Good Law, is one of the best known Mahayanist sutras and is highly esteemed in China and Japan.
The Tibetan historian Târanâtha is not of much help, for his chronology is most confused, but still he definitely connects the appearance of Mahayanist texts with the reign of Kanishka and the period immediately following it and regards them as a new phenomenon. Greater assistance is furnished by the Chinese translators, whose dates are known with some exactitude.
Though the setting of the story is miraculous and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas innumerable are freely spoken of, yet the work does not enunciate the characteristic Mahayanist doctrines so definitely as the other treatises here enumerated.
To understand the extraordinary changes of meaning both mythological and metaphysical which the word Buddha undergoes in Mahayanist theology we must keep in mind not the personality of Gotama but the idea that he is one of several successive Buddhas who for convenience may be counted as four, seven or twenty-four but who really form an infinite series extending without limit backwards into the past and forwards into the future.
This school was reckoned as Hinayanist and though Aśvaghosha enjoys general fame in the Far East as a Mahayanist doctor, yet his undoubted writings are not Mahayanist in the strict sense of the word . But a more ornate and mythological form of religion was becoming prevalent and perhaps Kanishka's Council arranged some compromise between the old and the new.
Not only is the combination of devotion and metaphysics found in this work similar to the tone of many Mahayanist sutras but the manifestation of Krishna in his divine form is like the transformation scenes of the Lotus. The chief moral principle of the Bhagavad-gîtâ is substantially the same as that prescribed for Bodhisattvas.
Târanâtha informs us that among the many Mahayanist works which appeared in the reign of Kanishka's son was the Ratnakûṭa-dharma-paryâya in 1000 sections and the Ratnakûṭa is cited not only by the Śikshâsamuccaya but by Asanga.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking