96 CHAPTER FOURmore central. There are a fair number of sticking points in any such synthe-
sis-the Madhyamikas ridiculed the Yogacarin formulation of the "depen-
dent" nature as a coupling of the real and the unreal, whereas the Yogacarins
responded by asking where illusion could have its source except in reality-
but these difficulties only served to set combustible intellects on fire with the
desire to resolve them. When Buddhist Tantrism developed, it made use of
the Yogacarin practice of creating and destroying mental images, together with
the concept of meditative reversal, in its radical reformulation of the Path (see
Section 6.3.3). Later, the Ch'an and Hua Yen schools in China, and Dzogchen
in Tibet, found their textual inspiration largely in Yogacarin works.
4.4 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN HiNAY.ANA
It is easy to read histories ofBuddhism in India and come away with the im-
pression that, with the founding of the Mahayana, Hinayana either died out,
was consigned to the minority, or at least lost its creative impulse. Actually,
nothing could be further from the truth. The accounts of Chinese pilgrims in
the seventh century C.E. testifY that the Hinayana schools then were still in the
majority in India; according to Tibetan historians, the schools maintained that
position until the demise ofBuddhism in northern India in the thirteenth
century c.E. They had developed universities of their own well before that
point, which were similar to the great university at Nalanda (see Section 6.2).
For instance, the Sarp.matiya school was strong in the western university at
Valabhi, which was considered second only to Nalanda itself, whereas the
Sarvastivadins were predominant at two universities in Kashmir. Modern
scholarship suggests that the Siutrantikas were well represented at Nalanda,
which was otherwise a Mahayana stronghold. Nalanda's successful missionary
campaign in Tibet and Southeast Asia ensured that records of the school's in-
tellectual tradition continued to survive after its physical destruction in the
early 1200s. The Hinayana universities, however, either did not engage in
missionary work or were less successful. Thus when their libraries were de-
stroyed, all record of their later teachings was destroyed with them. N everthe-
less, it is possible to outline some later trends in Hinayana to provide an idea
of the creative energy it was still able to maintain in the first millennium of
the common era.
In the first century c.E., the great poet Asvagho~a-a member of a
Mahasanghika subschool, the Bahusrutiyas-composed Sanskrit epics and
plays with Buddhist themes, including one of the first epic poems on the com-
plete life of the Buddha, the Buddhacarita (which was used as a source for much
of Chapters 1 and 2). Asvagho~a made a conscious effort to enlist the sophisti-
cated techniques of kavya, the Indian tradition of fine literature, to the Bud-
dhist cause. His works were something of a tour de force, presenting even the
most technical of the early Buddhist doctrines, such as dependent co-arising,
in the tightly controlled forms of Sanskrit poetics.