Metaphysical Teaching.—The metaphysical teaching of Mahayana is known as the doctrine of the void (1finyata). It is found chiefly in the class of sutras known as Prajnaparamita, and is usually termed negativism or nihilism. There is no expounding or discussion in these works, and the method consists in dog matically stating certain principles or individual facts and then dogmatically denying them or asserting the contrary. The state ments are represented as being uttered by Buddha and assented to or expanded by one of the great bodhisattvas, and hence as needing no justification. Whether a coherent metaphysical system lay behind them is not clear. The real metaphysic of Mahayana lies in the systems based on the doctrine of the void by Mahayana teachers. They sought to find an absolute not merely as ultimate goal, but as a cosmical principle. For Agvaghosha (1st century A.D.) this was tathatd "suchness." His chief philosophical work, The Awakening of Faith, is known only through a Chinese trans lation. The most developed system is that of N5,garjuna, who is usually placed in the 2nd century A.D. In his system the doctrine of the void becomes a doctrine of relativity. The truth of no individual fact can be asserted because nothing is real apart from the whole. The system is known as finyav5.da or Madhyamika.
The system of Asanga and Vasubandhu (5th century A.D.) is known as Yogachara or Vijrianavada, in which everything is denied except consciousness (vifriana). It is thus a system of subjective idealism. These two latter systems are important for the history of Indian philosophy, as they receive elaborate refu tations in the commentaries on the orthodox philosophical sutras, and the vedanta doctrine of mays, cosmical illusion, has evidently adopted some of the principles of vijnanavada.
BinuoGRAPHY.—The most representative of the Mahayana sutras is the Saddharmapundarika (St. Petersburg [Leningrad], 1912 ; trans. by Kern, Oxford, 1884, in French by Burnouf as Le Lotus de la bonne loi, Paris, 1852) ; Mahayana Texts, contains translations of Vajrac chedika Prajileiparamita and of several sutras by Max Midller and others illustrating the worship of bodhisattvas. The most important work on Nagarjuna's system is T. Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana (Leningrad, 1927) ; cf. A. B. Keith, Buddhist philos ophy (1923), and D. T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (1907). Later schools have developed in China and Japan. See Yama kami Sogen, Systems of Buddhistic Thought (Calcutta, 1912).
(E. J. T.)