U. Anomadassi

The concept of the Buddha began with the historical human Buddha, Gotama or Śākyamuni Buddha and underwent a dramatic development and reached its culmination with the formation of the tri-kāya theory. A careful observation of the various Buddhist knowledge systems that developed in ancient India and China clearly shows the systematic development of the Buddha concept. Thus, to have a clear picture of the evolution of the Buddha notion, it is a thorough significance to study how the Buddha was depicted in early Buddhist discourses and diverse biographical sketches of the other subsequent Buddhist traditions such as 1 E 4 3 Sarvāstivāda, Mahāsā ghika and Mahāyāna. Hence, this present paper attempts to understand the evolution of the ideology of the Buddha basically focusing on the early Buddhist discourse and assorted Buddhology of the other Buddhist schools.

Pure Land as a proper school name, is an early affiliation that historically originated from Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. And the initial formation of this school, as its mainstream tradition, Mahāyāna, is still subject to ambiguity in the current academic world. Due to scarcities in both historical evidence and lineage sources in ancient Indian Pure Land, understandings of the emergence of Amitabha thought in academia are divergent and complex. Unlike some schools of Indian Mahāyāna tradition, such as Mādhyamaka and Yogācāra, not many comprehended and thorough studies have been accomplished regarding the initial development of fundamental thoughts of this school systematically. Generally, Pure Land as a belief, its formation can be traced back approximately to the 1 st BCE to 1 st CE, and its practitioners aspired exclusively to the faith of the Buddha Amitābha (eq., Buddha Amitāyus) and his Pure Land, Sukhāvatī that is an ideal spiritual paradise where the Buddha Amitābha dwells. Following these doctrinal premises, believers could experience rebirths in Sukhāvatī as non-returners and attain nirvāṇa as Buddhas in Pure Lands. Such a set of thoughts were later evolved as the Amitābha cult and further promoted as a soteriological path after death. This present study is concerned with the Indian establishment of the Pure Land school with extant Sanskrit scriptural evidence, scholarly opinions, archaeological discoveries, travelogues of Chinese pilgrims, and doctrinal accounts indirectly mentioned in affiliation counterparts.

The theory of the three natures (trisvabhāva) is generally deemed as one of the distinguished philosophical notions especially elucidated in early Yogācāra literature. Many early doctrinal expositions of the Yogācāra school illustrate this comprehensive philosophy. According to their early philosophical texts. every empirical experience is characterised by three distinct but interdependent natures (svabhāva) or characters (lakṣaṇa) namely, 'Imaginary Nature' (parikalpita-svabhāva), 'Other-dependent Nature' (paratantra-svabhāva) and 'Perfected Nature' (pariniṣpaṇṇa-svabhāva) respectively. Yogācāra presents this teaching as one reality viewed an experience from three distinct angles, therefore, it is said that they do not represent three separate substances, but three characteristics of an empirical experience. Also, they are illustrated as the soteriological doctrine of Yogācāra which indicates the intellectual transformation from illusion to intelligence and mundane to noble.