yanas

Updated: May 2, 2025

In a word, this one of the many Buddhisms of Asia is vastly less a religion, in any real sense of the word, than a system of metaphysics. However, the doctrine to be mastered is graded in three Yanas or Vehicles; for there are now, as in the days of Shaka, three classes of being, graded according to their ability or power to understand "the truth."

William Elliot Griffis - The Religions of Japan: From the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji

Though European writers usually talk of two Yânas or Vehicles the great and the little and though this is clearly the important distinction for historical purposes, yet Indian and Chinese Buddhists frequently enumerate three.

Sir Charles Eliot - Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2