But the Brahmanism of the day (we must remember that it was not yet the reformed and elevated Brahmanism which at a later date drove Buddhism out of India) failed to satisfy him, and he turned to Buddhism. This too--it was the distracted Hinayana--failed to give him rest. He read books without end, yet arrived not at the truth, until at last he went as a wandering religionist to the country of the Nagas, among the Himalayas, where he found peace and guidance.

A Japanese writer, in whose conscientious scholarship I have learned to put much confidence, says that his first journey was to a shrine of Adi-Buddha (), whom Japan looks upon as Amitabha, the Supreme and Original Buddha, from whom, as from a source, comes everything that is called Light in the human mind. Adi-Buddha is essentially a Himalayan cult, and it would be among those mountains, if anywhere, that Nagarjuna would meet with such a teaching. At this shrine he made the acquaintance of a Bodhisattva of the name of Mahanaga (Dai-ryu), who taught him the faith in Amida Buddha, and finding him an adept in spiritual understanding, conducted him to the Palace of the Dragons (Nagas) under the sea, and there revealed to him treasures of wisdom and doctrine which had been kept hidden for long generations, but which could now be communicated to men, inasmuch as the destined expounder of the secret doctrine had at length appeared.

From the Himalayas Nagarjuna went again to the south of India. Here he had a similar experience, one which we should be justified in treating as being the same as the one mentioned in the previous paragraph were it not that the treatment of the Japanese Mahayana requires that we should consider them as separate phenomena. In Southern India he is said to have found an Iron Tower (a shrine of some sort, we may suppose, like the shrine of St. Thomas at Mailapur) in which dwelt an aged Bodhisattva of the name of Vajrasattva (Jap. Kongosatta). Vajrasattva was the authorized exponent of a teaching which emanated from a Buddha named Vairoc'ana, who was greater than S'akyamuni.

[paragraph continues] Vairoc'ana claimed to be the one, the original Buddha, just as Amitabha did; and yet the two seemed to be different. Nagarjuna listened with sympathy: Vajrasattva recognized that his spiritual successor had arrived, committed the secret Teachings to hint, and gave him the rite of Abhis'ekha, a rite which is half Baptism and half Ordination.