The third council, B.C. 246, was assembled by Asoka at Patna; and the fourth and last council was held under king Kanishka, and it was at this fourth council that Nagarjuna introduced the Mahayana doctrine. — Eery. ; Imp. Gaz. Both these rulers made Buddhism a state religion. Asoka had inscriptions recorded on rocks and columns, enjoining its doctrines, and some of these still remain. his son Mahendra, B.C. 243, carried to Ceylon Asoka's version of the Buddhist scriptures in the Magadhi language. He took with him a band of missionaries ; and soon after, his sister, the princess Sanghamitta, who had entered the order, followed with a company of nuns. In the inscriptions, Buddhism appears as a system of pure abstract morality, no trace being exhibited of the worship either of Buddha himself, or of the serpent or tree.
Kanishka ruled in Kashmir and N.W. India, about A.D. 10-40, but his sway extended to both sides of the Himalaya, from Yarkand and Khokand to Agra and Sind. The assembly convoked by him consisted of 700 members. They drew up their commentaries on the Buddhist faith, which supplied in part materials for the Tibetan or Northern Canon. . The prominent sects are known as the Hina yana and Mahayana, the Lesser Vehicle and the Greater Vehicle. The original puritans belong to the Hinayana. They practised morality, with a few simple ceremonial observances. The Maha yana school was founded by the 13th patriarch, Nagarjuna, a native of Berar, about 500 or 400 years after Buddha. It taught an abstruse mystical theology, in which Buddha was pushed into the background by female personifications of Dharma or the Prajna Paramita, and other god desses, by Jnanat Maka Buddhas, or forms of the senses (Ferg. and Burg. Cave Temples of India, 182). The Mahayana includes many later corrup tions or developments of the faith, as originally embodied by Asoka in the Lesser Vehicle or Canon of the southern Buddhists, B.C. 244. The Buddhist Canon of China is a branch of the Greater Vehicle, and was arranged between A.D. 67 and 1285. It includes 1440 distinct works, comprising 5586 books ; and the Buddhism of China and Japan is a grossly idolatrous religious system.
Kanishka and his council became in some degree to the northern or Tibeto-Chinese Buddh ists what Asoka and his Patna council (244 B.c.) had been to the Buddhists of Ceylon and the south. But the ultimate divergence between the canons is great, both as to the historical aspects of Buddha's life and as to his teaching.— Imp.
Gaz.
• The rails of the dhagobas at Buddha Gaya, Bharhut, with the eastern caves, give a complete history of Buddhism as it existed in India during the Mauryan dynasty (B.c. 325 to 188). At
Sanchi and the western caves is given a complete representation of the character it assumed from the 1st century before the Christian era till the third or fourth of it. At Amravati and the N.W. monasteries in Peshawur, are shown the modifica tions introduced before and during the 4th cen tury ; and from Ajunta and later caves are to be traced its history till it became almost Jaiva, and then altogether faded away.—Fergusson, p. 206.
The gateways of the Sanchi tope belong to the first half of the 1st century of the Christian era, and, though subsequent to the Naga revelation, the sculptures scarcely indicate its existence. Buddha does not appear on the Sanchi sculptures as an object of worship. The serpent is there, but rare. The dhaguba, or depositin.y of the relics of saints, is there, as also are the tree;the wheel, and other emblems, and, on the whole, the sculp tures on the Sanchi tope may illustrate the Hinayana school of Buddhism, at the period when other doctrines were about to be introduced.
The Amravati sculptures, again, belong to a period 300 years later than that of Sanchi, and in them the new school of Mahayana Buddhism may be studied. In these, Buddha is an object of worship, but the serpent is his co-equal. The dhagoba, tree, and wheel are reverenced, and the sculptures contain all the legends of the later books, though in a purer form. Hindus, Dasyas, and other men, women, and animals, especially monkeys, appear in the sculptures worshipping the serpent and other gods. The serpents are all divine, five and seven headed ; and representa tions are numerous of the Naga angelic orders,— the female Naga with one serpent only springing from the back, the male Naga with three. In the Amravati sculptures are tonsured priests, and other signs of a clerical order segregated from the laity, and of an established ritual. Sanchi is illustrative of the Hinayana Buddhist philosophy, 500 years before the oldest Buddhist book.; and Amravati illustrates the Mahayana philosophy 600 years after its promulgation.
The frescoes of the caves of Ajunta illustrate a period 300 years later than the Amravati tope, and belong to the time immediately preceding the decline of Buddhism in India. In No. 19 chaitya cave, Ajunta, he is the object of wor ship, and occupies a position in front of the dhagoba itself, surmounted by the triple umbrella. A pure theism has become changed into an over whelming idolatry.—Fergusson, p. 124.