SECTION XLVIII. AMITA BUDDHA KWAN‐SHAI‐YIN, AND KWAN‐YIN.—WHAT THE “BOOK

OF DZYAN” AND THE LAMASERIES OF TSONG‐KHA‐PA SAY. As a supplement to the _Commentaries_ there are many secret folios on the lives of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and among these there is one on Prince Gautama and another on His reincarnation in Tsong‐Kha‐pa. This great Tibetan Reformer of the fourteenth century, said to be a direct incarnation of Amita Buddha, is the founder of the secret School near Tji‐ gad‐je, attached to the private retreat of the Teshu Lama. It is with Him that began the regular system of Lamaic incarnations of Buddhas (Sang‐ gyas), or of Shâkya‐Thub‐pa (Shakya‐muni). Amida or Amita Buddha is called by the author of _Chinese Buddhism_, a mythical being. He speaks of Amida Buddha (_Ami‐to Fo_) a fabulous personage, worshipped assiduously—like Kwan‐yin—by the Northern Buddhists, but unknown in Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon.(723) Very likely. Yet Amida Buddha is not a “fabulous” personage, since (_a_) “Amida” is the Senzar form of “Âdi”; “Âdi‐Buddhi” and “Âdi‐Buddha,”(724) as already shown, existed ages ago as a Sanskrit term for “Primeval Soul” and “Wisdom”; and (_b_) the name was applied to Gautama Shâkyamuni, the last Buddha in India, from the seventh century, when Buddhism was introduced into Tibet. “Amitâbha” (in Chinese, “Wu‐liang‐sheu”) means literally “Boundless Age,” a synonym of “En,” or “Ain‐Suph,” the “Ancient of Days,” and is an epithet that connects Him directly with the Boundless Âdi‐Buddhi (primeval and Universal Soul) of the Hindus, as well as with the Anima Mundi of all the ancient nations of Europe and the Boundless and Infinite of the Kabalists. If Amitâbha be a fiction of the Tibetans, or a new form of Wu‐liang‐sheu, “a fabulous personage,” as the author‐compiler of _Chinese Buddhism_ tells his readers, then the “fable” must be a very ancient one. For on another page he says himself that the addition to the canon, of the books containing the Legends of Kwan‐yin and of the Western heaven with its Buddha, Amitâbha, was also previous to the Council of Kashmere, a little before the beginning of our era,(725) and he places the origin of the primitive Buddhist books which are common to the Northern and Southern Buddhists before 246 B.C. Since Tibetans accepted Buddhism only in the seventh century A.D., how comes it that they are charged with inventing Amita‐Buddha? Besides which, in Tibet, Amitâbha is called Odpag‐med, which shows that it is not the name but the abstract idea that was first accepted of an unknown, invisible, and Impersonal Power—taken, moreover, from the Hindu “Âdi‐ Buddhi,” and not from the Chinese “Amitâbha.”(726) There is a great difference between the popular Odpag‐med (Amitâbha) who sits enthroned in Devachan (Sukhâvatî), according to the _Mani Kambum_ Scriptures—the oldest _historical_ work in Tibet, and the philosophical abstraction called Amida Buddha, the name being passed now to the earthly Buddha, Gautama.