CHAPTER XII

NaGaRJUNA

WE may consider that As'vaghosha, a native apparently of Saketa, and for many years a resident of Pataliputra or Benares (probably the latter), brought into the newly formed, or reformed, Mahayana a certain Magadhan or Central Indian element. We may suppose that a sage of his wisdom, learning, and reputation would do much to strengthen the dying cause of Hinayana Buddhism in the very land of its birth, by raising it to a higher level of aim and endeavour, and to nobler because truer views of life and duty.

But the Kushan or Indo-Scythian rulers, in their newly awakened zeal for the propagation of a religion with which seemed to be bound up their hopes of the over-lordship of the fair peninsula of Jambudvipa, where they might rule in peaceful possession, no matter what might be the disturbances raised by Huns and Alani on their far distant Central Asian frontiers, were by no means contented with spiritual influence on the Ganges plains alone. All India, they might reasonably argue, ought to be won to the reformed Buddhism of which they were the acknowledged heads, as the possessors of Buddha's Begging-bowl. If India could thus be won to spiritual allegiance, the temporal allegiance would not be far off. Only, to win all India, there must be a religious platform which all India could accept.

In Nagarjuna they found a man admirably suited for the carrying out of their designs of recommending their enlarged faith to the spiritual conscience of India. A Brahman by birth, he was born, somewhere about the beginning of the second century, in Southern India. As a Brahman, he was one of the hereditary exponents and custodians of religion and faith, but seems at first to have had but scanty reverence for his privileges. He went the way of "gilded youth," threw himself into a life of dissipation, and thoughtlessly profaned his birthright. But one night he and three of his companions broke into the palace of the Rajah, partly for robbery, partly for intrigue with the ladies of the princely harem, and were discovered. Nagarjuna managed to escape in safety, but his three companions were taken and killed.

This was the turning-point in his career. Why had he been saved, while his companions, no more culpable than himself, had been overtaken by the vengeance of man, if not of Heaven? He recognized in his escape the hand of some unseen Providence, and from that moment determined to walk worthy of his sacerdotal birthright.