On the other hand the Chinese Tripitaka contains many translations which bear an earlier date than this and are ascribed to translators connected with the Yueh-chih.  I see no reason to doubt the statements that the Happy Land sutra and Prajna-paramita (Nanjio, 25, 5) were translated before 200 A.D. and portions of the Avatamsaka and Lotus (Nanjio, 100, 103, 138) before 300 A.D.  But if so, the principal doctrines of Mahayanist Buddhism must have been known in Khotan[539] and the lands of Oxus before we have definite evidence for the presence of Christianity there.

Zoroastrianism may however have contributed to the development and transformation of Buddhism for the two were certainly in contact.  Thus the coins of Kanishka bear figures of Persian deities[540] more frequently than images of the Buddha:  we know from Chinese sources that the two religions co-existed at Khotan and Kashgar and possibly there are hostile references to Buddhism (Buiti and Gaotema the heretic) in the Persian scriptures.[541]

It is true that we should be cautious in fancying that we detect a foreign origin for the Mahayana.  Different as it may be from the Buddhism of the Pali Canon, it is an Indian not an exotic growth.  Deification, pantheism, the creation of radiant or terrible deities, extreme forms of idealism or nihilism in metaphysics are tendencies manifested in Hinduism as clearly as in Buddhism.  Even the doctrine of the Buddha’s three bodies, which sounds like an imitation of the Christian Trinity, has roots in the centuries before the Christian era.  But late Buddhism indubitably borrowed many personages from the Hindu pantheon, and when we find Buddhas and Bodhisattvas such as Amitabha, Avalokita, Manjusri and Kshitigarbha without clear antecedents in India we may suspect that they are borrowed from some other mythology, and if similar figures were known to Zoroastrianism, that may be their source.

The most important of them is Amitabha.  He is strangely obscure in the earlier art and literature of Indian Buddhism.  Some of the nameless Buddha figures in the Gandharan sculptures may represent him, but this is not proved and the works of Grunwedel and Foucher suggest that compared with Avalokita and Tara his images are late and not numerous.  In the earlier part of the Lotus[542] he is only just mentioned as if he were of no special importance.  He is also mentioned towards the end of the Awakening of Faith ascribed to Asvaghosha, but the authorship of the work cannot be regarded as certain and, if it were, the passage stands apart from the main argument and might well be an addition.  Again in the Mahayana-sutralankara[543] of Asanga, his paradise is just mentioned.

Against these meagre and cursory notices in Indian literature may be set the fact that two translations of the principal Amidist scripture into Chinese were made in the second century A.D. and four in the third, all by natives of Central Asia.  The inference that the worship of Amitabha flourished in Central Asia some time before the earliest of these translations is irresistible.