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VI- THE GĪTĀ AND BUDDHISTIC LITERATURE 815
path". It was not possible at any time to entirely discard the doctrine preached by Buddha himself that one must take up the state of a monk in order to reach 'Annihilation' (nirvūna); because, doing so would have amounted to cutting at the very foundation of the original preaching of Buddha. But there was no objection to saying that it was the duty of Buddhist monks to perform philanthrophical and charitable acts like the propagation of religion with a desireless (nirissita) frame of mind, instead of living alone and in dejection in the forest like a rhinoceros', though they might be monks.* This opinion has been advocated in the Saddharma-Pundarika and other treatises of the Mahāyāna sect, and Nāgasena has told Milinda (Mi. Pra. 6. 2. 4), that, “it is not impossible to attain Annihilation (nirvāna) by remaining in the state of a householder, and that many such cases are to be seen". Anybody will easily realise that these ideas are not from the original un-Atmic and renunciatory Buddhistic religion, and that they cannot be supported on the basis of the Theory of Non-Existence (šūnya-vāda), or the Theory of Knowledge (vijñāna-vāda); and many Buddhists at first thought that these ideas were inconsistent with the original preaching of Buddha. But this new opinion naturally became more and more popular later on, and the Path followed by those who adhered to the original preaching of Buddha acquired the name of 'Hinayāna' (inferior path), and the new path came to be known as · Mahāyāna' (superior path ) i. The
* The refrain (dho uva-pada) of the 41 stanzas of the Khaggavisāņa-sutta out of the Sutta-nipāta is “eho care khaggavisaņa kappo". "khaggavisāna' means rhinoceros', and the refrain means that the Buddhist monk should live alone in the woods like a rhinoceros.
+ In describing the difference between the Hīcayāna and the Mahāyāna sects, Dr. Kern says as follows:"Not the Arhat, who has shaken off all human feeling, but the generous, selfsacrificing, active Bodhisattva is the ideal of the Mahayanists, and this attractive side of the creed has, more perhaps than anything else, contributed to their wide conquests, whereas Southern Buddhism has not been able to make converts, expect where the soil has been prepared by Hinduism and Maharanism " Janual of
