MAHAYANA BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



2G7 



('o ov7tos TrpoaekrfKvdd}^ i.e., who has come just as did the Buddhas 

 that preceded him. Hence the same term is applied, not only 

 in Sanskrit but also in Chinese Buddhist works to the Buddhas* 

 in general. This fact is of itself sufficient to show that, 

 even if the term had any deep meaning, it would denote some- 

 thing not peculiar to Siddhartha Buddha but common to all 

 the other real or imaginary Buddhas also. Hence to avoid 

 its true meaning and deliberately to introduce in its stead 

 technical terms of Christian theology, in order to lend support 

 to the theory that Mahayana Buddhism is only Christianity 

 under another name, is, to say the least of it, misleading. It 

 is true also that, as Buddhism proper admits the existence of no 

 God, the idealised and deified Buddha has, in part, usurped the 

 place of the Deity (we say only in part, because popular Maha- 

 yana Buddhism is polytheistic, not monotheistic) ; yet this does 

 not justify our author in boldly translating the word " Buddha" 

 by " God " in his so-called ' : Translation " of The Awakening of 

 Faith. The same exception must be taken to his rendering 

 " Dharmakaya " by " The Divine Spirit," since we have already 

 seen that the Dharmakaya is impersonal. In fact it is not too 

 much to say that each and every one of Dr. Eichard's state- 

 ments about the close resemblance between Mahayana Buddhism 

 and Christianity rests upon imagination and a singular 

 unscrupulousness of statement, which renders him entirely un- 

 reliable as an authority. 



We must now endeavour to explain as briefly as possible 

 a few of the more important technical terms used by the 

 Mahayanists in stating some of the philosophical dogmas of their 

 faith. One of these is Blmltatdtathdtd, which Suzuki translates 

 " Suchness," and which he states to be one of the conceptions 

 most distinctive of the Mahayana school. " Suchness " is also 

 known as Tathdgata-garbha {The Womb of the Tathdgata) and 

 Alay a-vij nan a {World consciousness). The word literally means 

 " the true nature of reality," and in The\ Awakening of Faith it 

 is thus explained : " Thus we understood that Suchness is neither 

 that which is existence nor that which is non-existence, nor 

 that which is at once existence and non-existence, nor that which 

 is not at once existence and non-existence ; that it is neither 

 that which is unity nor that which is plurality, nor that which 

 is at once unity and plurality, nor that which is not at once 

 unity and plurality. In a word, as Suchness cannot be com- 



* See Beal's Romantic History, pp. 7 and 8, where Buddha gives the 

 title to all the Buddhas who had preceded himself. See also p. 378, etc. 

 t A wakening of Faith, Suzuki's version, pp. 59, 60. 



