of these the _Mahayana_ or vehicle of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. As a
rule these three Vehicles are not regarded as hostile or even
incompatible. Thus the _Lotus sutra_,[3] maintains that there is
really but one vehicle though by a wise concession to human weakness
the Buddha lets it appear that there are three to suit divers tastes.
And the Mahayana is not a single vehicle but rather a train comprising
many carriages of different classes. It has an unfortunate but
distinct later phase known in Sanskrit as Mantrayâna and Vajrayâna but
generally described by Europeans as Tantrism. This phase took some of
the worst features in Hinduism, such as spells, charms, and the
worship of goddesses, and with misplaced ingenuity fitted them into
Buddhism. I shall treat of it in a subsequent chapter, for it is
chronologically late. The silence of Hsüan Chuang and I-Ching implies
that in the seventh century it was not a noticeable aspect of Indian
Buddhism.

Although the record of the Mahayana in literature and art is clear and
even brilliant, it is not easy either to trace its rise or connect its
development with other events in India. Its annals are an interminable
list of names and doctrines, but bring before us few living
personalities and hence are dull. They are like a record of the
Christian Church's fight against Arians, Monophysites and Nestorians
with all the great figures of Byzantine history omitted or called in
question. Hence I fear that my readers (if I have any) may find these
chapters repellent, a mist of hypotheses and a catalogue of ancient
paradoxes. I can only urge that if the history of the Mahayana is
uncertain, its teaching fanciful and its scriptures tedious, yet it
has been a force of the first magnitude in the secular history and art
of China, Japan and Tibet and even to-day the most metaphysical of its
sacred books, the Diamond Cutter, has probably more readers than Kant