are merely coaches, all travelling on the same road to salvation
though some may be quicker than others. The Mahayana did not suppress
the Hinayana but it gradually absorbed the traffic.

The causes of this transformation were two-fold, internal or Indian and
external. Buddhism was a living, that is changing, stream of thought and
the Hindus as a nation have an exceptional taste and capacity for
metaphysics. This taste was not destroyed by Gotama's dicta as to the
limits of profitable knowledge nor did new deities arouse hostility
because they were not mentioned in the ancient scriptures. The
development of Brahmanism and Buddhism was parallel: if an attractive
novelty appeared in one, something like it was soon provided by the
other. Thus the Bhagavad-gita contains the ideas of the Mahayana in
substance, though in a different setting: it praises disinterested
activity and insists on faith. It is clear that at this period all
Indian thought and not merely Buddhism was vivified and transmuted by
two great currents of feeling demanding, the one a more emotional
morality the other more personal and more sympathetic deities.

I shall show in more detail below that most Mahayanist doctrines, though
apparently new, have their roots in old Indian ideas. But the presence
of foreign influences is not to be disputed and there is no difficulty
in accounting for them. Gandhara was a Persian province from 530 to 330
B.C. and in the succeeding centuries the north-western parts of India
experienced the invasions and settlements of numerous aliens, such as
Greeks from the Hellenistic kingdoms which arose after Alexander's
expedition, Parthians, Sakas and Kushans. Such immigrants, even if they
had no culture of their own, at least transported culture, just as the
Turks introduced Islam into Europe. Thus whatever ideas were prevalent
in Persia, in the Hellenistic kingdoms, or in Central Asia may also have
been prevalent in north-western India, where was situated the university
town of Taxila frequently mentioned in the Jatakas as a seat of Buddhist
learning. The foreigners who entered India adopted Indian religions[14]
and probably Buddhism more often than Hinduism, for it was at that time
predominant and disposed to evangelize without raising difficulties as
to caste.

Foreign influences stimulated mythology and imagery. In the reliefs of
Asoka's time, the image of the Buddha never appears, and, as in the
earliest Christian art, the i