hayana sutras that can, at least provisionally, be placed
in the early centuries of the common era, and in what
little there is there is a curiously anticultic stand.
One of the most visible characteristics of the Ma-
hayana as it developed outside of India may well be an
emphasis on a multiplicity of “present” Buddhas other
than S ́akyamuni, on the Buddhas Amitabha and
Bhaisajyaguru in particular, less so on the Buddha
AKSOBHYA. But while there are early Mahayana sutras
devoted to the first and third of these that were com-
posed, presumably, in India, these early texts contain
really very little that would suggest any elaborate sys-
tem of cult, WORSHIP, or RITUAL. It is, in fact, only in
the sutra devoted to Bhaisajyaguru, which cannot be
early, that we get clear references to the use of cult im-
ages and set, specific ritual forms. There is, moreover,
as already mentioned, only the barest certain trace of
any devotion to Amitabha in the Indian art historical
or inscriptional record, and none at all—or only very
late—for Bhaisajyaguru or Aksobhya. Unlike the great
bodhisattvas, these buddhas seem never to have cap-
tured the Indian religious imagination in an immedi-
ate way. Rebirth in Amitabha’s Pure Land was, to be
sure, in India—as later in Nepal and Tibet—a gener-
alized religious goal, but as such probably differed very
little from other generic positive rebirths.
It is, however, not just in the early sutras dealing
with the new buddhas that it is difficult to find refer-
ences to cult practice, to images—once erroneously
thought to have been a Mahayana innovation—or
even to the stupa cult. They are surprisingly rare in all
Mahayana sutras until the latter begin their elusive
transformation into TANTRA, and this process must
start around the fourth century. The comparative rar-
ity of references in this literature to the stupa cult was
particularly damaging to Akira Hirakawa’s theory that
tied the origin of the Mahayana to this cult, but his
theory has been largely set aside on other grounds as
well (i.e., a serious underestimation of the role of es-
tablished monastic Buddhism [Hnayana] in the con-
struction and development of the cult). It is in the
literature of the latter, in fact, particularly in its vinaya
and avadanaliteratures, that the origin tales, the pro-
motion, and the religious ideology of both the stupa
cult and the cult of images occur, not in Mahayana
sutras—if they refer to either it is at least clear that they
take both as already established cult forms, and are in
fact reacting to them, at first, at least, by attempting to
deflect attention away from them and toward some-
thing very different. This attempt is most commonly
articulated in passages that assert—to paraphrase—
that it is good to fill the world with stupas made of
precious substances, and to worship them with all sorts
of perfumes, incenses, and so on, but it is far and away,
in fact infinitely, better and more meritorious to take
up even a four-line verse of the doctrine, preserve it,
recite it, teach it and—eventually, it now seems—write
or copy it. Virtually the same assertion, using virtually
the same language, is made in regard to religious
giving—it is good to fill the whole world with jewels
and give it as a gift to the Buddha, but it is far and
away superior to take up, study and instantiate even a
small part of the doctrine, or some practice, or a text.
This, for example, is a constant refrain in the DIAMOND
SUTRA(Vajracchedika).
Passages of this sort—and they are legion—are
explicitly devaluing precisely what archaeological and
inscriptional evidence indicates large numbers of
Buddhist monks, nuns, and laypeople were doing
everywhere in India in the early centuries of the com-
mon era: engaging in the stupa cult and making reli-
gious gifts. They also appear to be inflating the value
of what large numbers of Buddhist monks, nuns, and
laypeople might well have not been doing, but what
the authors or compilers of Mahayana sutras wanted
them to: seriously taking up or engaging with the doc-
trine. This looks very much like reformist rhetoric—
conservative and the opposite of “popular”—and yet
it, perhaps more than anything else, seems character-
istic of a great deal and a wide range of Mahayana lit-
erature. Here too it is important to note that Gregory
Schopen was almost certainly wrong—and his theory
too must go the way of Hirakawa’s—in seeing in these
passages only an attempt by the “new” movement to
substitute one similar cult (the cult of the book) for
another similar cult (the cult of relics). That such a
substitution occurred—and perhaps rather quickly—
is likely, but it now appears that it is very unlikely that
this was the original or fundamental intention. That
intention—however precarious, unpopular, or suc-
cessful—was almost certainly to shift the religious fo-
cus from cult and giving to doctrine, to send monks,
nuns, and even laymen quite literally back to their
books. That in this attempt the book itself was—again,
it seems, rather early—fetishized may only be a testa-
ment to the strong pressures toward cult and ritual that
seem to have been in force in Indian Buddhism from
the beginning. The success of this attempt might well
account for the fact—otherwise so puzzling—that it is
very difficult to find clear and uncontested Mahayana
elements in the Indian art historical and inscriptionalMAHAYANA