Great caution is necessary in using these data and the circumstances of China as well as of India must be taken into account.  If translations of the Vinaya and complete collections of sutras are late in appearing, it does not follow that the corresponding Indian texts are late, for the need of the Vinaya was not felt until monasteries began to spring up.  Most of the translations made before the fifth century are extracts and of indifferent workmanship.  Some are retained in the Chinese Tripitaka but are superseded by later versions.  But however inaccurate and incomplete these older translations may be, if any of them can be identified with a part of an extant Sanskrit work it follows that at least that part of the work and the doctrines contained in it were current in India or Central Asia some time before the translation was made.  Applying this principle we may conclude that the Hinayana and Mahayana were flourishing side by side in India and Central Asia in the first century A.D. and that the Happy Land sutras and portions of the Prajna-paramita already existed.  From that time onwards Mahayanist literature as represented by Chinese translations steadily increases, and after 400 A.D.  Hinayanist literature declines, with two exceptions, the Vinaya and the Abhidharma books of the Sarvastivadins.  The Vinaya was evidently regarded as a rule of life independent of theology, but it is remarkable that Hsuean Chuang after his return from India in 645 should have thought it worth while to translate the philosophy of the Sarvastivadins.

Other considerations render this chronology probable.  Two conspicuous features of the Mahayana are the worship of Bodhisattvas and idealist philosophy.  These are obviously parallel to the worship of Siva and Vishnu, and to the rise of the Vedanta.  Now the worship of these deities was probably not prevalent before 300 B.C., for they are almost unknown to the Pali Pitakas, and it was fully developed about the time of the Bhagavad-gita which perhaps assumed its present form a little before the Christian era.  Not only is the combination of devotion and metaphysics found in this work similar to the tone of many Mahayanist sutras but the manifestation of Krishna in his divine form is like the transformation scenes of the Lotus.[181] The chief moral principle of the Bhagavad-gita is substantially the same as that prescribed for Bodhisattvas.  It teaches that action is superior to inaction, but that action should be wholly disinterested and not directed to any selfish object.  This is precisely the attitude of the Bodhisattva who avoids the inaction of those who are engrossed in self-culture as much as the pursuit of wealth or pleasure.  Both the Gita and Mahayanist treatises lay stress on faith.  He who thinks on Krishna when dying goes to Krishna[182] just as he who thinks on Amitabha goes to the Happy Land and the idea is not unknown to the Pali texts, for it finds complete expression in the story of Matthakundali.[183]