This doctrine is essentially a variety of Indian pantheism but peculiar in its terminology inasmuch as Vairocana, like Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita, proclaims himself to be the All-God and not merely the chief of the five Buddhas.  He quotes with approval the saying “you are I:  I am you” and affirms the identity of Buddhism and Sivaism.  Among the monks[434] there are no muktas (i.e. none who have attained liberation) because they all consider as two what is really one.  “The Buddhists say, we are Bauddhas, for the Lord Buddha is our highest deity:  we are not the same as the Sivaites, for the Lord Siva is for them the highest deity.”  The Sivaites are represented as saying that the five Kusikas are a development or incarnations of the five Buddhas.  “Well, my son” is the conclusion, “These are all one:  we are Siva, we are Buddha.”

In this curious exposition the author seems to imply that his doctrine is different from that of ordinary Buddhists, and to reprimand them more decidedly than Sivaites.  He several times uses the phrase Namo Bhatara, namah Sivaya (Hail, Lord:  hail to Siva) yet he can hardly be said to favour the Sivaites on the whole, for his All-God is Vairocana who once (but only once) receives the title of Buddha.  The doctrine attributed to the Sivaites that the five Kusikas are identical with the superhuman Buddhas remains obscure.[435] These five personages are said to be often mentioned in old Javanese literature but to be variously enumerated.[436] They are identified with the five Indras, but these again are said to be the five senses (indriyas).  Hence we can find a parallel to this doctrine in the teaching of the Kamahayanikan that the five Buddhas correspond to the five senses.

Two other special theses are enounced in the story of Kunjarakarna.  The first is Vairocana’s analysis of a human being, which makes it consist of five Atmans or souls, called respectively Atman, Cetanatman, Paratman, Niratman and Antaratman, which somehow correspond to the five elements, five senses and five Skandhas.  The singular list suggests that the author was imperfectly acquainted with the meaning of the Sanskrit words employed and the whole terminology is strange in a Buddhist writer.  Still in the later Upanishads[437] the epithet pancatmaka is applied to the human body, especially in the Garbha Upanishad which, like the passage here under consideration, gives a psychophysiological explanation of the development of an embryo into a human being.

The second thesis is put in the mouth of Yama.  He states that when a being has finished his term in purgatory he returns to life in this world first as a worm or insect, then successively as a higher animal and a human being, first diseased or maimed and finally perfect.  No parallel has yet been quoted to this account of metempsychosis.