an images of the Buddha: we know from Chinese sources
that the two religions co-existed at Khotan and Kashgar and possibly
there are hostile references to Buddhism (Buiti and Gaotema the
heretic) in the Persian scriptures.[541]

It is true that we should be cautious in fancying that we detect a
foreign origin for the Mahayana. Different as it may be from the
Buddhism of the Pali Canon, it is an Indian not an exotic growth.
Deification, pantheism, the creation of radiant or terrible deities,
extreme forms of idealism or nihilism in metaphysics are tendencies
manifested in Hinduism as clearly as in Buddhism. Even the doctrine of
the Buddha's three bodies, which sounds like an imitation of the
Christian Trinity, has roots in the centuries before the Christian
era. But late Buddhism indubitably borrowed many personages from the
Hindu pantheon, and when we find Buddhas and Bodhisattvas such as
Amitabha, Avalokita, Manjusri and Kshitigarbha without clear
antecedents in India we may suspect that they are borrowed from some
other mythology, and if similar figures were known to Zoroastrianism,
that may be their source.

The most important of them is Amitabha. He is strangely obscure in
the earlier art and literature of Indian Buddhism. Some of the
nameless Buddha figures in the Gandharan sculptures may represent him,
but this is not proved and the works of Grunwedel and Foucher suggest
that compared with Avalokita and Tara his images are late and not
numerous. In the earlier part of the Lotus[542] he is only just
mentioned as if he were of no special importance. He is also mentioned
towards the end of the Awakening of Faith ascribed to Asvaghosha,
but the authorship of the work cannot be regarded as certain and, if
it were, the passage stands apart from the main argument and might
well be an addition. Again in the Mahayana-sutralankara[543] of
Asanga, his paradise is just mentioned.

Against these meagre and cursory notices in Indian literature may be
set the fact that two translations of the principal Amidist scripture
into Chinese were made in the second century A.D. and four in the
third, all by natives of Central Asia. The inference that the worship
of Amitabha flourished in Central Asia some time before the earliest
of these translations is irresistible.

According to Taranatha, the Tibetan historian of Buddhism,[544] this
worship goes back to Saraha or Rahulabhadra. He was reputed to have
been the teacher of Nagarjuna