Saddharma Pundarika

Author(s): H Kern
Publisher: Oxford

Page 38

xxxvi
SADDHARMA-PUNDARÎKA.
honorific titles given to the preachers or interpreters of the law was 'wise' or 'learned man,' Pandita, for the word is so often applied to them that it looks more like a title than a common epithet 1. Târanátha knows Pandita to be a title, and considers it to be the equivalent of the older Mahabhadanta; he distinguishes 'Bodhisattvas' from 'com. mon Panditas' and 'Arhats.' How does this agree with the data in the Lotus? As it has been intimated in a foregoing note, the three Vehicles are imitations of three Åsramas or stages in the model life of an Årya, in the first place of a Brâhman. The stages are that of a student, of a hermit living in the forest, and of a Sannyâsin, Yati, or Mukta, who has wholly given up the world. The second stage, that of a householder, does not exist, of course, for those who vow themselves to a monastic life. Our Satra does not prescribe that the three stages must be gone through by the same persons, no more than the Bhagavadgîtâ l.c. requires that one should pass the stages of study, knowledge, and meditation before resolving upon complete renunciation (tyága); what follows from the context is only this, that the Vehicle of Bodhisattvas, alias those who strive for the weal of all creatures, is superior to the two preceding Vehicles. The Vehicle of the Bodhisattvas being the loftiest of the three, they themselves must be considered as occupying the highest rank. Now Târanatha places the Arhats above them, and with the Nepalese also the first class of the monastic order is that of Arhat S. The question is, how are we to judge of the relation between Arhats and Bodhisattvas in the Lotus? As far as I am able to see, the compiler of the Sútra describes facts, or supposed facts, which he knew from oral or literary tradition, as having occurred in the past, whereas the actual state of things in his own time and shortly before is represented as that of the future. His Arhats are sages of the past, canonized şaints; his human Bodhisattvas are sages,
1 E. g. Lotus, chap. x, st. 4, cf. 6; 23, 33 ; xiii, 13, 16, 24, 26, 30, 32, 39, 44.
Geschichte des Buddhismus, p. 6o. : Hodgson, Essays, p. 52; cf. p. 30. • The reader should not lay stress upon this singular,
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