shnu Purana as the name of a class of gods and it is curious that
they are in one place[81] associated with other deities called the
Mukhyas. The worship of Amitabha, so far as its history can be traced,
goes back to Saraha, the teacher of Nagarjuna. He is said to have been
a Sudra and his name seems un-Indian. This supports the theory that
this worship was foreign and imported into India.[82]

This worship and the doctrine on which it is based are an almost
complete contradiction of Gotama's teaching, for they amount to this,
that religion consists in faith in Amitabha and prayer to him, in
return for which he will receive his followers after death in his
paradise. Yet this is not a late travesty of Buddhism but a relatively
early development which must have begun about the Christian era. The
principal works in which it is preached are the Greater
Sukhavati-vyuha or Description of the Happy Land, translated into
Chinese between 147 and 186 A.D., the lesser work of the same name
translated in 402 A.D. and the Sutra of meditation on Amitayus[83]
translated in 424. The first of these works purports to be a discourse
of Sakyamuni himself, delivered on the Vulture's Peak in answer to the
questions of Ananda. He relates how innumerable ages ago there was a
monk called Dharmakara who, with the help of the Buddha of that
period, made a vow or vows[84] to become a Buddha but on conditions.
That is to say he rejected the Buddhahood to which he might become
entitled unless his merits obtained certain advantages for others, and
having obtained Buddhahood on these conditions he can now cause them
to be fulfilled. In other words he can apportion his vast store of
accumulated merit to such persons and in such manner as he chooses.
The gist of the conditions is that he should when he obtained
Buddhahood be lord of a paradise whose inhabitants live in unbroken
happiness until they obtain Nirvana. All who have thought of this
paradise ten times are to be admitted therein, unless they have
committed grievous sin, and Amitabha will appear to them at the moment
of death so that their thoughts may not be troubled. The Buddha shows
Ananda a miraculous vision of this paradise and its joys are described
in language recalling the account of the New Jerusalem in the book of
Revelation and, though coarser pleasures are excluded, all the
delights of the eye and ear, such as jewels, gardens, flowers, rivers
and the songs of birds await the faithful