Mahayana Buddhism

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The book Mahayana Buddhism is an excellent piece of outstanding work of Nalinaksha Dutt, consisting of detailed and dependable account of various historical events relating to the growth and development of philosophy and doctrines of Buddhism in general and Mahayana in particular, which propagated and flourished in India and abroad from the reign of the Great Buddhist King Asoka up to the 12th century.

The comparison of essential aspects of Mahayana and Hīnayāna, with special reference to the advance stages of Arhat and Bodhi-sattva undertaken by the Author are quite magnificent and appreciable.

Besides, the concepts of Nirvāņa, Parinirvāņa, and Buddhahood, the truths and the absolute enshrined in chapter VI, VII and VIII respectively, of the book are marvelous and will be helpful to those who are determined to attain the excellence in the stream of Buddhism.

The author has extensively used all the literary, philosophical, and epigraphic sources and analyzed them carefully and cautiously.

The book is most educative/illustrative and highly impressive/useful for students, research scholars, Buddhist devotees, and also in national and international libraries for their information and reference purposes.

Nalinaksha Dutt was a distinguished Indian scholar of Buddhism and a professor of Sanskrit and Pali at the University of Calcutta. His contributions to the study of Buddhism are significant, with his work spanning the under-standing of Mahayana Buddhism and its relation-ship with Hīnayāna. Dutt's scholarly pursuits led him to hold esteemed positions such as the vice-president of the Maha Bodhi Society and chair of The Asiatic Society. His legacy includes a wealth of publications that continue to influence students and researchers of Buddhism.

The present work is a revised edition of my earlier publication entitled Aspects of Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism. In this edition matters relating to Hīnayāna have been retained only where these became necessary for the sake of comparison and contrast with Mahayana.

The question that naturally arises in our minds, why the omniscient Bhagavan Buddha preached two religious systems: one lower (Hinayana) and the other higher (Mahayana) or two Truths, one conventional (Samvrti-satya) and the other real (Paramarthasatya). The answer to this question is given in the Saddamapundarika, one of the nine canonical texts of the Mahayanists.