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Updated: June 26, 2025
This may perhaps suffice for the parallels partly real, partly supposed between early Christianity and early Bahaism. I will now refer to an important parallel between the development of Christianity and that of Buddhism. It is possible to deny that the Christianity of Augustine [Footnote: Professor Anesaki of Tokio regards Augustine as the Christian Nagarjuna.] deserves its name, on the ground of the wide interval which exists between his religious doctrines and the beliefs of Jesus Christ. Similarly, one may venture to deny that the Mahâyâna developments of Buddhism are genuine products of the religion because they contain some elements derived from other Indian systems. In both cases, however, grave injustice would be done by any such assumption. It is idle 'to question the historical value of an organism which is now full of vitality and active in all its functions, and to treat it like an archaeological object, dug out from the depths of the earth, or like a piece of bric-
But if so, no record of his school is forthcoming from his native land, though the possibility that he was more than an individual thinker and represented some movement unknown to us cannot be denied. We might suppose too that since Nâgârjuna and Âryadeva were southerners, their peculiar doctrines were coloured by Dravidian ideas.
But for all that the doctrine of śûnyatâ as stated in the Mâdhyamika aphorisms ascribed to Nâgârjuna leaves an impression of audacious and ingenious sophistry. After laying down that every object in the world exists only in relation to every other object and has no self-existence, the treatise proceeds to prove that rest and motion are alike impossible.
In another place where he describes the curriculum followed by monks he says that they learn the Yogâcârya-śâstra first and then eight compositions of Asanga and Vasubandhu. Among the works prescribed for logic is the Nyâyadvâra-śâstra attributed to Nâgârjuna. The monk should learn not only the Abhidharma of the Sarvâstivâdins but also the Âgamas, equivalent to the Sûtra-piṭaka.
The Buddha gave out so much, as the time permitted him; Nagarjuna, founding the Mahayana, so much further; Bodhidharma, now that with the move to China a new lease of life had come, gave out, or rather taught to his disciples, so much more again of the doctrine that in its fulness is and always has been the doctrine of the Lodge.
After Aśvaghosha comes Nâgârjuna who may have flourished any time between 125 and 200 A.D. A legend which makes him live for 300 years is not without significance, for he represents a movement and a school as much as a personality and if he taught in the second century A.D. he cannot have been the founder of Mahayanism.
Many of the greatest Hindu teachers were Dravidians and at the present day it is in the Dravidian regions that the temples are most splendid, the Brahmans strictest and most respected. It may be that this Dravidian influence affected even Buddhism in the third century A.D., for Aryadeva the successor of Nâgârjuna was a southerner and the legends told of him recall certain Dravidian myths.
Nâgârjuna's authorship is not beyond dispute but these ideas may well represent a type of popular Buddhism slightly posterior to Aśvaghosha. In most lists of patriarchs Nâgârjuna is followed by Deva, also called Âryadeva, Kâṇadeva or Nîlanetra. I-Ching mentions him among the older teachers and a commentary on his principal work, the Śataśâstra, is attributed to Vasubandhu.
He who receiveth this teaching of Nagarjuna the Great Teacher, should recite always the Holy Name, believing the Divine Promise of the Buddha of Infinite Light. Whoso would quickly attain unto that resting-place where illusion ceaseth, should recite the Holy Name holding his mind in steadfast piety.
In this there may be a kernel of truth but otherwise the extant accounts of Nâgârjuna are too legendary to permit of historical deductions.
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