obtain
enlightenment as Sakyamuni under the _Ficus religiosa_. Each Buddha
has his own special kind of bodhi tree.]

[Footnote 62: _Record of the Buddhist religion_, Trans. Takakusu, p.
213. See too Watters, _Yuean Chwang_, II. 57, 144, 210, 215.]

[Footnote 63: Chinese P'u-hsien. See Johnston, _From Peking to
Mandalay_, for an interesting account of Mt. Omei.]

[Footnote 64: Or Mahasthana. Chinese, Tai-shih-chih. He appears to be
the Arhat Maudgalyayana deified. In China and Japan there is a marked
tendency to regard all Bodhisattvas as ancient worthies who by their
vows and virtues have risen to their present high position. But these
euhemeristic explanations are common in the Far East and the real
origin of the Bodhisattvas may be quite different.]

[Footnote 65: _E.g._ Watters, I. p. 229, II. 215.]

[Footnote 66: Kshitigarbha is translated into Chinese as Ti-tsang and
Jizo is the Japanese pronunciation of the same two characters.]

[Footnote 67: In _Ostasiat. Ztsft_. 1913-15. See too Johnston,
_Buddhist China_, chap. VIII.]

[Footnote 68: The Earth goddess is known to the earliest Buddhist
legends. The Buddha called her to witness when sitting under the Bo
tree.]

[Footnote 69: Three Sutras, analysed by Visser, treat of Kshitigarbha.
They are Nanjio, Nos. 64, 65, 67.]

[Footnote 70: A celebrated monastery in the portion of An-hui which
lies to the south of the Yang-tse. See Johnston, _Buddhist China_,
chaps, VIII, IX and X.]

[Footnote 71: There is some reason to think that even in Turkestan
Kshitigarbha was a god of roads.]

[Footnote 72: In Annam too Jizo is represented on horseback.]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BUDDHAS OF MAHAYANISM

This mythology did not grow up around the Buddha without affecting the
central figure. To understand the extraordinary changes of meaning
both mythological and metaphysical which the word Buddha undergoes in
Mahayanist theology we must keep in mind not the personality of Gotama
but the idea that he is one of several successive Buddhas who for
convenience may be counted as four, seven or twenty-four but who
really form an infinite series extending without limit backwards into
the past and forwards into the future.[73] This belief in a series of
Buddhas produced a plentiful crop of imaginary personalities and also
of speculations as to their connection with one another, with the
phenomena of the world and with the human soul.

In the Pali Canon the Buddhas antecede