honour, we must remember that it is typical of the Mahayana only in
the sense that the De Imitatione Christi is typical of Roman
Catholicism, for both faiths have other sides.

Śântideva's Bodhisattva, when conceiving the thought of Bodhi or
eventual supreme enlightenment to be obtained, it may be, only after
numberless births, feels first a sympathetic joy in the good actions
of all living beings. He addresses to the Buddhas a prayer which is
not a mere act of commemoration, but a request to preach the law and
to defer their entrance into Nirvana. He then makes over to others
whatever merit he may possess or acquire and offers himself and all
his possessions, moral and material, as a sacrifice for the salvation
of all beings. This on the one hand does not much exceed the limits of
_dânam_ or the virtue of giving as practised by Śâkyamuni in previous
births according to the Pali scriptures, but on the other it contains
in embryo the doctrine of vicarious merit and salvation through a
saviour. The older tradition admits that the future Buddha (_e.g._ in
the Vessantara birth-story) gives all that is asked from him including
life, wife and children. To consider the surrender and transfer of
merit (pattidâna in Pali) as parallel is a natural though perhaps
false analogy. But the transfer of Karma is not altogether foreign to
Brahmanic thought, for it is held that a wife may share in her
husband's Karma nor is it wholly unknown to Sinhalese Buddhism.[11]
After thus deliberately rejecting all personal success and selfish
aims, the neophyte makes a vow (praṇidhâna) to acquire enlightenment
for the good of all beings and not to swerve from the rules of life
and faith requisite for this end. He is then a "son of Buddha," a
phrase which is merely a natural metaphor for saying that he is one of
the household of faith[12] but still paves the way to later ideas
which make the celestial Bodhisattva an emanation or spiritual son of