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INTRODUCTION
Ācārya Asangapāda.
Thus the author of the present work is Ācārya Asangapāda, the writer of the YBS, of which the present bhūmi forms a part (xiïi bhūmi).
4. Sources
The works credited to have been written by and available in the name of Ācārya Asangapāda?, exhibit his encyclopaedic knowledge of both, the Buddhist and the Brahmanical sources. He had mastered not only the Theravāda and the Ābhidharmika Šāstrās, the Mahāyāna Sūtras, the PP-literature, the works of Maitreyanātha, Nāgārjuna and Aryadeva but also absorbed the theme and the spirit of the entire Vedic literature, including the Brāhmaṇas and the Upanişads. And this fact cannot be denied that Buddha and the Buddhist authors were equally influenced, in spirit at least, by the Brahmanic faith and learning; and that is why, the entire terminology used by Buddhists has been borrowed from the Vedic and Brāhmaṇic sources in some way or other, though at some places the original sense might have changed4.
1. Vide, YBS, 1.3. 2. Vide, infra, p. 31 sq. 3. Vide, our Comparative Studies etc. (quoted infra f.n. 4), ch. I,
VII-IX; Anand K. Coomaraswami, Hinduism and Buddhism. 4. Vide, Mahadevan, Gaudapāda, Ch. 9, p. 217 sq., 222, 229;
(contd. on p. lii)
