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Bodhisattvas. The Hinayana held that Gotama, before his last birth,
dwelt in the Tushita heaven enjoying the power and splendour of an
Indian god and it looked forward to the advent of Maitreya. But it
admitted no other Bodhisattvas, a consequence apparently of the
doctrine that there can only be one Buddha at a time. But the
luxuriant fancy of India, which loves to multiply divinities, soon
broke through this restriction and fashioned for itself beautiful
images of benevolent beings who refuse the bliss of Nirvana that they
may alleviate the sufferings of others.[15] So far as we can judge,
the figures of these Bodhisattvas took shape just about the same time
that the personalities of Vishnu and Siva were acquiring consistency.
The impulse in both cases is the same, namely the desire to express in
a form accessible to human prayer and sympathetic to human emotion the
forces which rule the universe. But in this work of portraiture the
Buddhists laid more emphasis on moral and spiritual law than did the
Brahmans: they isolated in personification qualities not found
isolated in nature. Siva is the law of change, of death and rebirth,
with all the riot of slaughter and priapism which it entails: Vishnu
is the protector and preserver, the type of good energy warring
against evil, but the unity of the figure is smothered by mythology
and broken up into various incarnations. But Avalokita and Manjusri,
though they had not such strong roots in Indian humanity as Siva and
Vishnu, are genii of purer and brighter presence. They are the
personifications of kindness and knowledge. Though manifold in shape,
they have little to do with mythology, and are analogous to the
archangels of Christian and Jewish tradition and to the Amesha Spentas
of Zoroastrianism. With these latter they may have some historical
connection, for Persian ideas may well have influenced Buddhism about
the time of the Christian era. However difficult it may be to prove
the foreign origin of Bodhisattvas, few of them have a clear origin in
India and all of them are much better known in Central Asia and China.
But they are represented with the appearance and attributes of Indian
Devas, as is natural, since even in the Pali Canon Devas form the
Buddha's retinue. The early Buddhists considered that these spirits,
whether called Bodhisattvas or Devas, had attained their high position
in the same way as Sakyamuni himself, that is by the practice of moral
and i