the countries of the East, their influence might well have been productive about the time of I-Ching’s visit.  But in any case during the sixth and seventh centuries religious travellers must have been continually journeying between India and China, in both directions, and some of them must have landed in the Archipelago.  At the beginning of the sixth century Buddhism was not yet decadent in India and was all the fashion in China.  It is not therefore surprising if it was planted in the islands lying on the route.  It may be, as indicated above, that some specially powerful body of Hindus coming from the region of Gujarat and professing Buddhism founded in Java a new state.

As to the character of this early Javanese Buddhism we have the testimony of I-Ching that it was of the Mulasarvastivadin school and Hinayanist.  He wrote of what he had seen in Sumatra but of what he knew only by hearsay in Java and his statement offers some difficulties.  Probably Hinayanism was introduced by Gunavarman but was superseded by other teachings which were imported from time to time after they had won for themselves a position in India.  For the temple of Kalasan (A.D. 779) is dedicated to Tara and the inscription found there speaks of the Mahayana with veneration.  The later Buddhism of Java has literary records which, so far as I know, are unreservedly Mahayanist but probably the sculptures of Boroboedoer are the most definite expression which we shall ever have of its earlier phases.  Since they contain images of the five superhuman Buddhas and of numerous Bodhisattvas, they can hardly be called anything but Mahayanist.  But on the other hand the personality of Sakyamuni is emphasized; his life and previous births are pictured in a long series of sculptures and Maitreya is duly honoured.  Similar collections of pictures and images may be seen in Burma which differ doctrinally from those in Java chiefly by substituting the four human Buddhas[440] and Maitreya for the superhuman Buddhas.  But Mahayanist teaching declares that these human Buddhas are reflexes of counterparts of the superhuman Buddhas so that the difference is not great.

Mahayanist Buddhism in Camboja and at a later period in Java itself was inextricably combined with Hinduism, Buddha being either directly identified with Siva or regarded as the primordial spirit from which Siva and all gods spring.  But the sculptures of Boroboedoer do not indicate that the artists knew of any such amalgamation nor have inscriptions been found there, as in Camboja, which explain this compound theology.  It would seem that Buddhism and Brahmanism co-existed in the same districts but had not yet begun to fuse doctrinally.  The same condition seems to have prevailed in western India during the seventh and eighth centuries, for the Buddhist caves of Ellora, though situated in the neighbourhood of Brahmanic buildings and approximating to them in style, contain sculptures which indicate a purely Buddhist cultus and not a mixed pantheon.