re translated before 300 A.D. but very few after
450. On the other hand portions of the sutra about Amida's Paradise,
of the Prajna-paramita, and of the Avatamsaka were translated about
150 A.D. and translations of the Lotus and Lalita-vistara appeared
about 300.

Great caution is necessary in using these data and the circumstances
of China as well as of India must be taken into account. If
translations of the Vinaya and complete collections of sutras are late
in appearing, it does not follow that the corresponding Indian texts
are late, for the need of the Vinaya was not felt until monasteries
began to spring up. Most of the translations made before the fifth
century are extracts and of indifferent workmanship. Some are retained
in the Chinese Tripitaka but are superseded by later versions. But
however inaccurate and incomplete these older translations may be, if
any of them can be identified with a part of an extant Sanskrit work
it follows that at least that part of the work and the doctrines
contained in it were current in India or Central Asia some time before
the translation was made. Applying this principle we may conclude that
the Hinayana and Mahayana were flourishing side by side in India and
Central Asia in the first century A.D. and that the Happy Land sutras
and portions of the Prajna-paramita already existed. From that time
onwards Mahayanist literature as represented by Chinese translations
steadily increases, and after 400 A.D. Hinayanist literature declines,
with two exceptions, the Vinaya and the Abhidharma books of the
Sarvastivadins. The Vinaya was evidently regarded as a rule of life
independent of theology, but it is remarkable that Hsuean Chuang after
his return from India in 645 should have thought it worth while to
translate the philosophy of the Sarvastivadins.

Other considerations render this chronology probable. Two conspicuous
features of the Mahayana are the worship of Bodhisattvas and idealist
philosophy. These are obviously parallel to the worship of Siva and
Vishnu, and to the rise of the Vedanta. Now the worship of these
deities was probably not prevalent before 300 B.C., for they are
almost unknown to the Pali Pitakas, and it was fully developed about
the time of the Bhagavad-gita which perhaps assumed its present form a
little before the Christian era. Not only is the combination of
devotion and metaphysics found in this work similar to the tone of
many Mahayanist sutras but the ma