DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

-8.4] CHANGES IN BUDDHISM
had yet to be fulfilled. We have a letter 11 of the famous Buddhist teacher
Matrceta to an unnamed (but presumably Kusana) ruler, which
enjoins him not to kill animals; nothing is said about killing men in
war. During the reign of Kaniska, a fourth Buddhist council was
held, according to a heavily disputed tradition. There is no dispute as
to the result of the supposed council : a split between two schools of
Buddhist thought. The northerners claimed the Great Vehicle (Mahayana),
corresponding precisely to the activities and tastes which might have been
expected by nobles and satraps that continued to pile gifts upon ancient
monastic foundations. This Mahayana school changed its language to
-Sanskrit, though not always the carefully developed Parunian type ;
Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit forms an idiom by itself. They drifted further
away from the common people in their refinement of doctrine, researches
into science and higher abstract philosophy. The conservative
Hmayana (Lesser Vehicle ; contemptuously so labelled by the versatile
northerners) retained a primitive, austere Buddhism, with its simpler Pali
language — which was nearly as distant as Sanskrit from the common
peoples’ idioms in the south where these monks continued to preach the
Law. The division was not sharp for several HInayana monasteries
persisted in the north, while the Mahayana had, by the second century A.
D., come as far south as the lower Krsna river in the person of the
great Nagiarjuna, scientist and theologian, who is supposed to have died
at Nagarjunikonda. Other sects were not banned. The Jains, always
prominent in the south, gained ground in the north. The beautiful
red sandstone Kusana sculptures of Mathura preserve many pieces
from Jain foundations. This would be expected, for the statues show
court nobles dressed in fine embroidered clothes, which implies trade,
and therefore implies the traders whom the Jain religion suited perhaps
better than pampered Buddhism. Better archaeology at Mathura would
tell us more about the less perishable waives that must have been exchanged
at this important trade center.
From our point of view, the basic productive difference upon
which the rest was embroidery may roughly be put as’ follows. The
Mahayana abbeys took direct part in exploitation of their considerable