a mixture of learned and popular
speech. But Sanskrit did not become a sacred language for the
Mahayanists like Latin for Roman Catholics. It is rather Pali which
has assumed this position among the Hinayanists, for Burmese and
Sinhalese translations of the Pitakas acquired no authority. But in
the north the principle[122] that every man might read the Buddha's
word in his own vernacular was usually respected: and the populations
of Central Asia, the Chinese, the Tibetans, and the Mongols translated
the scriptures into their own languages without attaching any
superstitious importance to the original words, unless they were
Dharanis or spells.

About the time of the Christian era or perhaps rather earlier, greater
use began to be made of writing for religious purposes. The old
practice of reciting the scriptures was not discontinued but no
objection was made to preserving and reading them in written copies.
According to tradition, the Pali scriptures were committed to writing
in Ceylon during the reign of Vattagamani, that is according to the
most recent chronology about 20 B.C., and Kanishka caused to be
engraved on copper plates the commentaries composed by the council
which he summoned. In Asvaghosha[123] we find the story of a Brahman
who casually taking up a book to pass the time lights on a copy of the
Sutra of the Twelve Causes and is converted. But though the Buddhists
remained on the whole true to the old view that the important thing
was to understand and disseminate the substance of the Master's
teaching and not merely to preserve the text as if it were a sacred
formula, still we see growing up in Mahayanist works ideas about the
sanctity and efficacy of scripture which are foreign to the Pali
Canon. Many sutras (for instance the Diamond Cutter) extol themselves
as all-sufficient for salvation: the Prajna-paramita commences with a
salutation addressed not as usual to the Buddha but to the work
itself, as if it were a deity, and Hodgson states that the Buddhists
of Nepal worship their nine sacred books. Nor was the idea excluded
that certain words, especially formulae or spells called Dharani, have
in themselves a mysterious efficacy and potency.[124] Some of these
are cited and recommended in the Lotus.[125] In so far as the
repetition of sacred words or spells is regarded as an integral part
of the religious life, the doctrine has no warrant in the earlier
teaching. It obviously becomes more and more promi