with all the rigour of his powerful dialectic was quietly accepted as an indisputable truth. Thus we find Subhūti saying to the Buddha that vedanā (feeling), samjñā (concepts) and the samskāras (conformations) are all māyā (illusion)1. All the skandhas, dhātus (elements) and āyatanas are void and absolute cessation. The highest knowledge of everything as pure void is not different from the skandhas, dhātus and āyatanas, and this absolute cessation of dharmas is regarded as the highest knowledge (prajñāpāramitā)2. Everything being void there is in reality no process and no cessation. The truth is neither eternal (śāśvata) nor non-eternal (aśāśvata) but pure void. It should be the object of a saint's endeavour to put himself in the "thatness" (tathatā) and consider all things as void. The saint (bodhisattva) has to establish himself in all the virtues (pāramitā), benevolence (dānapāramitā), the virtue of character (śīlapāramitā), the virtue of forbearance (kşantipāramitā), the virtue of tenacity and strength (vīryyapāramitā) and the virtue of meditation (dhyānapāramită). The saint (bodhisattva) is firmly determined that he will help an infinite number of souls to attain nirvāṇa. In reality, however, there are no beings, there is no bondage, no salvation; and the saint knows it but too well, yet he is not afraid of this high truth, but proceeds on his career of attaining for all illusory beings illusory emancipation from illusory bondage. The saint is actuated with that feeling and proceeds in his work on the strength of his pāramitās, though in reality there is no one who is to attain salvation in reality and no one who is to help him to attain it. The true prajñāpāramitā is the absolute cessation of all appearance (yaḥ anupalambhaḥ sarvadharmāņām sa prajñāpāramitā ityucyate)*.

The Mahāyāna doctrine has developed on two lines, viz. that of Śūnyavāda or the Madhyamika doctrine and Vijñānavāda, The difference between Śūnyavāda and Vijñānavāda (the theory that there is only the appearance of phenomena of consciousness) is not fundamental, but is rather one of method. Both of them agree in holding that there is no truth in anything, everything is only passing appearance akin to dream or magic. But while the Sunyavādins were more busy in showing this indefinableness of all phenomena, the Vijñānavādins, tacitly accepting 2 Ibid. p. 177.

1 Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, p. 16.

3 Ibid. p. 21.

• Ibid. p. 177.

the truth preached by the Śūnyavādins, interested themselves in explaining the phenomena of consciousness by their theory of beginningless illusory root-ideas or instincts of the mind (vāsanā).

Asvaghosa (100 A.D.) seems to have been the greatest teacher of a new type of idealism (vijñānavāda) known as the Tathatā philosophy. Trusting in Suzuki's identification of a quotation in Asvaghosa's Śraddhotpadaśāstra as being made from Lankāvatarasutra, we should think of the Lankavatārasūtra as being one of the early works of the Vijñānavādins1. The greatest later writer of the Vijñānavāda school was Asanga (400 A.D.), to whom are attributed the Saptadaśabhumi sutra, Mahāyāna sūtra, Upadesa, Mahāyānasamparigraha śāstra, Yogācārabhūmi śāstra and Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra. None of these works excepting the last one is available to readers who have no access to the Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts, as the Sanskrit originals are in all probability lost. The Vijñānavāda school is known to Hindu writers by another name also, viz. Yogācāra, and it does not seem an improbable supposition that Asanga's Yogācārabhūmi śăstra was responsible for the new name. Vasubandhu, a younger brother of Asanga, was, as Paramartha (499-569) tells us, at first a liberal Sarvästivädin, but was converted to Vijñānavāda, late in his life, by Asanga. Thus Vasubandhu, who wrote in his early life the great standard work of the Sarvastivādins, Abhidharmakosa, devoted himself in his later life to Vijñānavāda. He is said to have commented upon a number of Mahāyāna sūtras, such asAvatamsaka, Nirvāņa, Saddharmapunḍarīka, Prajñāpāramitā, Vimalakīrtti and Śrīmālāsimhanāda, and compiled some Mahāyāna sūtras, such as Vijñānamātrasiddhi, Ratnatraya, etc. The school of Vijñānavāda continued for at least a century or two after Vasubandhu, but we are not in possession of any work of great fame of this school after him.

We have already noticed that the Śūnyavāda formed the fundamental principle of all schools of Mahāyāna. The most powerful exponent of this doctrine was Nāgārjuna (100 A.D.), a brief account of whose system will be given in its proper place. Nāgārjuna's kārikās (verses) were commented upon by Āryyadeva, a disciple of his, Kumārajīva (383 A.D.), Buddhapālita and Candrakirtti (550 A.D.). Āryyadeva in addition to this commentary wrote at

1 Dr S. C. Vidyābhūshana thinks that Laṁkāvatāra belongs to about 300 A.D. 2 Takakusu's "A study of the Paramartha's life of Vasubandhu," J. R. A. S. 1905.

least three other books, viz. Catuḥśataka, Hastabālaprakaraṇavrtti and Cittaviśuddhiprakarana1. In the small work called Hastabālaprakaraṇavṛtti Āryyadeva says that whatever depends for its existence on anything else may be proved to be illusory; all our notions of external objects depend on space perceptions and notions of part and whole and should therefore be regarded as mere appearance. Knowing therefore that all that is dependent on others for establishing itself is illusory, no wise man should feel attachment or antipathy towards these mere phenomenal appearances. In his Cittaviśuddhiprakarana he says that just as a crystal appears to be coloured, catching the reflection of a coloured object, even so the mind though in itself colourless appears to show diverse colours by coloration of imagination (vikalpa). In reality the mind (citta) without a touch of imagination (kalpanā) in it is the pure reality.

It does not seem however that the Śūnyavādins could produce any great writers after Candrakīrtti. References to Śūnyavāda show that it was a living philosophy amongst the Hindu writers until the time of the great Mimamsā authority Kumārila who flourished in the eighth century; but in later times the Śūnyavādins were no longer occupying the position of strong and active disputants.

The Tathata Philosophy of Asvaghosa (80 A.D.).

Aśvaghoṣa was the son of a Brahmin named Saimhaguhya who spent his early days in travelling over the different parts of India and defeating the Buddhists in open debates. He was probably converted to Buddhism by Pārśva who was an important person in the third Buddhist Council promoted, according to some authorities, by the King of Kashmere and according to other authorities by Punyayasas3.

1 Āryyadeva's Hastabālaprakaraṇavṛtti has been reclaimed by Dr F. W. Thomas. Fragmentary portions of his Cittaviśuddhiprakarana were published by Mahāmahopadhyāya Haraprasāda śāstri in the Bengal Asiatic Society's journal, 1898.

*The above section is based on the Awakening of Faith, an English translation by Suzuki of the Chinese version of Śraddhotpadaśāstra by Aśvaghoṣa, the Sanskrit original of which appears to have been lost. Suzuki has brought forward a mass of evidence to show that Aśvaghoṣa was a contemporary of Kaniṣka.

3 Taranatha says that he was converted by Āryadeva, a disciple of Nāgārjuna, Geschichte des Buddhismus, German translation by Schiefner, pp. 84-85. See Suzuki's Awakening of Faith, pp. 24-32. Asvaghoṣa wrote the Buddhacaritakāvya, of great poetical excellence, and the Mahālamkāraśāstra. He was also a musician and had

He held that in the soul two aspects may be distinguished -the aspect as thatness (bhūtatathată) and the aspect as the cycle of birth and death (samsāra). The soul as bhūtatathatā means the oneness of the totality of all things (dharmadhātu). Its essential nature is uncreate and external. All things simply on account of the beginningless traces of the incipient and unconscious memory of our past experiences of many previous lives (smṛti) appear under the forms of individuation'. If we could overcome this smrti "the signs of individuation would disappear and there would be no trace of a world of objects." "All things in their fundamental nature are not nameable or explicable. They cannot be adequately expressed in any form of language. They possess absolute sameness (samata). They are subject neither to transformation nor to destruction. They are nothing but one soul" -thatness (bhūtatathata). This "thatness" has no attribute and it can only be somehow pointed out in speech as "thatness." As soon as you understand that when the totality of existence is spoken of or thought of, there is neither that which speaks nor that which is spoken of, there is neither that which thinks nor that which is thought of, "this is the stage of thatness." This bhūtatathata is neither that which is existence, nor that which is non-existence, nor that which is at once existence and nonexistence, nor that which is not at once existence and non-existence; it is neither that which is plurality, nor that which is at once unity and plurality, nor that which is not at once unity and plurality. It is a negative concept in the sense that it is beyond all that is conditional and yet it is a positive concept in the sense that it holds all within it. It cannot be comprehended by any kind of particularization or distinction. It is only by transcending the range of our intellectual categories of the comprehension of the limited range of finite phenomena that we can get a glimpse of it. It cannot be comprehended by the particularizing consciousness of all beings, and we thus may call it negation, "śūnyata," in this sense. The truth is that which

invented a musical instrument called Rastavara that he might by that means convert the people of the city. "Its melody was classical, mournful, and melodious, inducing the audience to ponder on the misery, emptiness, and non-ātmanness of life." Suzuki, p. 35.

1 I have ventured to translate “smṛti” in the sense of vāsanā in preference to Suzuki's "confused subjectivity" because smrti in the sense of vāsanā is not unꞌamiliar to the readers of such Buddhist works as Lankāvatāra. The word "subjectivity" seems to be too European a term to be used as a word to represent the Buddhist sense.

subjectively does not exist by itself, that the negation (śūnyatā) is also void (śūnya) in its nature, that neither that which is negated nor that which negates is an independent entity. It is the pure soul that manifests itself as eternal, permanent, immutable, and completely holds all things within it. On that account it may be called affirmation. But yet there is no trace of affirmation in it, because it is not the product of the creative instinctive memory (smṛti) of conceptual thought and the only way of grasping the truth-the thatness, is by transcending all conceptual creations.

"The soul as birth and death (samsāra) comes forth from the Tathāgata womb (tathāgatagarbha), the ultimate reality. But the immortal and the mortal coincide with each other. Though they are not identical they are not duality either. Thus when the absolute soul assumes a relative aspect by its selfaffirmation it is called the all-conserving mind (ālayavijñāna). It embraces two principles, (1) enlightenment, (2) non-enlightenment. Enlightenment is the perfection of the mind when it is free from the corruptions of the creative instinctive incipient memory (smrti). It penetrates all and is the unity of all (dharmadhātu). That is to say, it is the universal dharmakāya of all Tathāgatas constituting the ultimate foundation of existence.

"When it is said that all consciousness starts from this fundamental truth, it should not be thought that consciousness had any real origin, for it was merely phenomenal existence-a mere imaginary creation of the perceivers under the influence of the delusive smrti. The multitude of people (bahujana) are said to be lacking in enlightenment, because ignorance (avidyā) .prevails there from all eternity, because there is a constant succession of smrti (past confused memory working as instinct) from which they have never been emancipated. But when they are divested of this smrti they can then recognize that no states of mentation, viz. their appearance, presence, change and disappearance, have any reality. They are neither in a temporal nor in a spatial relation with the one soul, for they are not self-existent.

"This high enlightenment shows itself imperfectly in our corrupted phenomenal experience as prajñā (wisdom) and karma (incomprehensible activity of life). By pure wisdom we understand that when one, by virtue of the perfuming power of dharma, disciplines himself truthfully (i.e. according to the dharma) and accomplishes meritorious deeds, the mind (i.e. the ālayavijñāna)