ays that,
considered from the point of view of the ultimate goal of religion,
the instructions, attempts, realization, and time, the Hinayana
occupies a lower and smaller place than the other called Maha
(great) Yana, and hence it is branded as Hina (small, or low).
This brings us to one of the fundamental points of distinction
between Hinayana and Mahayana. The ultimate good of an
adherent of the Hinayana is to attain his own nirva@na or salvation,
whereas the ultimate goal of those who professed the Mahayana
creed was not to seek their own salvation but to seek the
salvation of all beings. So the Hinayana goal was lower, and in
consequence of that the instructions that its followers received,
the attempts they undertook, and the results they achieved were
narrower than that of the Mahayana adherents. A Hinayana man
had only a short business in attaining his own salvation, and this
could be done in three lives, whereas a Mahayana adherent was
prepared to work for infinite time in helping all beings to attain
salvation. So the Hinayana adherents required only a short period
of work and may from that point of view also be called _hina,_ or
lower.

This point, though important from the point of view of the
difference in the creed of the two schools, is not so from the point
of view of philosophy. But there is another trait of the Mahayanists
which distinguishes them from the Hinayanists from the
philosophical point of view. The Mahayanists believed that all
things were of a non-essential and indefinable character and
void at bottom, whereas the Hinayanists only believed in the
impermanence of all things, but did not proceed further than
that.

It is sometimes erroneously thought that Nagarjuna first
preached the doctrine of S'unyavada (essencelessness or voidness
of all appearance), but in reality almost all the Mahayana sutras
either definitely preach this doctrine or allude to it. Thus if we
take some of those sutras which were in all probability earlier than
Nagarjuna, we find that the doctrine which Nagarjuna expounded

127

with all the rigour of his powerful dialectic was quietly accepted
as an indisputable truth. Thus we find Subhuti saying to
the Buddha that vedana (feeling), samjna (concepts) and the
sa@mskaras (conformations) are all maya (illusion) [Footnote ref 1]. All
the skandhas, dhaetus (elements) and ayatanas are void and absolute
cessation. The highest knowledge of everything as pure void
is not