One aspect of the story of Sâkyamuni and his antecedent births thus
led to the idea that all may become Buddhas. An equally natural
development in another direction created celestial and superhuman
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 Śiva 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. Śiva 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 Mañjuśrî,
though they had not such strong roots in Indian humanity as Śiva 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