13.  The Karunaa-pundarika[149] or Lotus of Compassion is mainly occupied with the description of an imaginary continent called Padmadhatu, its Buddha and its many splendours.  It exists in Sanskrit and was translated into Chinese about 400 A.D. (Nanjio, No. 142).

14.  The Mahavairocanabhisambhodhi called in Chinese Ta-jih-ching or Great Sun sutra should perhaps be mentioned as it is the principal scripture of the Chen-yen (Japanese Shingon) school.  It is a late work of unknown origin.  It was translated into Chinese in 724 A.D. but the Sanskrit text has not been found.

There are a great number of other sutras which are important for the history of literature, although little attention is paid to them by Buddhists at the present day.  Such are the Mahayanist version of the Mahaparinirvana recounting the death and burial of the Buddha and the Mahasannipata-sutra, which apparently includes the Suryagarbha and Candragarbha sutras.  All these works were translated into Chinese about 420 A.D. and must therefore be of respectable antiquity.

Besides the sutras, there are many compositions styled Avadanas or pious legends.[150] These, though recognized by Mahayanists, do not as a rule contain expositions of the Sunyata and Dharma-kaya and are not sharply distinguished from the more imaginative of the Hinayanist scriptures.[151] But they introduce a multiplicity of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and represent Sakyamuni as a superhuman worker of miracles.

They correspond in many respects to the Pali Vinaya but teach right conduct not so much by precept as by edifying stories and, like most Mahayanist works they lay less stress upon monastic discipline than on unselfish virtue exercised throughout successive existences.  There are a dozen or more collections of Avadanas of which the most important are the Mahavastu and the Divyavadana.  The former[152] is an encyclopaedic work which contains inter alia a life of Sakyamuni.  It describes itself as belonging to the Lokottaravadins, a section of the Aryamaha-sanghikas.  The Lokottaravadins were an ancient sect, precursors of the Mahayana rather than a branch of it, and much of the Mahavastu is parallel to the Pali Canon and may have been composed a century or two before our era.  But other parts seem to belong to the Gandharan period and the mention of Chinese and Hunnish writing points to a much later date.[153] If it was originally a Vinaya treatise, it has been distended out of all recognition by the addition of legends and anecdotes but it still retains a certain amount of matter found also in the Pali and Tibetan Vinayas.  There were probably several recensions in which successive additions were made to the original nucleus.  One interpolation is the lengthy and important section called Dasabhumika, describing the career of a Bodhisattva.  It is the only part of the Mahavastu which can be called definitely Mahayanist.  The rest of the work marks a transitional stage in doctrine, just as its language is neither Prakrit or Sanskrit but some ancient vernacular brought into partial conformity with Sanskrit grammar.  No Chinese translation is known.