1. The earliest school, the Buddhism of Buddha, taught that after Nirvâna, or man's emancipation from re-birth, the consciousness of the individual survived, and that he dwelt for ever in happiness in the Brahma heavens. This is the Buddhism of the "Little Vehicle."
2. The second, or innovating school, maintained that after Nirvâna the consciousness of the individual ceased. Their creed was the blank atheism of the Brahmin S'unyavâdi.
The first serious study of Buddhism took place in one of our colonies, and the first students were missionaries. Great praise is due to the missionaries of Ceylon for their early scholarship, but naturally they ransacked the Buddhist books less as scholars than missionaries. Soon they discovered with delight the teaching of the atheistic school, and statements that the Ceylon scriptures were the earliest authentic Buddhist scriptures, brought to the island by Mahinda, King Asoka's son (B.C. 306). In consequence of this the missionaries concluded that Ceylon had preserved untainted the original teaching of Buddha, and that the earliest school, that of the "Little Vehicle," was atheistic.
But the leading Sanscrit scholar of the world, Dr. Rajendra Lala Mitra, has completely dissipated this idea. In his work, "Nepalese Buddhist Literature," p. 178, he shows conclusively that it is the Buddhism of the innovating school, that of the "Great Vehicle," which preaches atheism. About the epoch of Christ, Kanerkos or Kanishka, a king who conquered India, introduced this innovating teaching. Hweng Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, who visited India in the seventh century, confirms this. There was in India at this date amongst the followers of Siva, a school who held that Nothingness was God, and Nothingness the future of man. They were called the S'unyavâdis, the proclaimers of Nothingness. Two priests, Parsvika and Vasabandhu, were with Kanerkos, and they persuaded this monarch to force this Pyrrhonism on the Buddhists. A mighty conflict was the consequence. The old Buddhists remonstrated. They said that Buddha knew nothing of all this. They called the "Great Vehicle" Sunyapushpa (the Carriage that drives to Nowhere). But Parsvika packed a convocation like Constantine, and forced the new teaching down their throats. ("Hweng Thsang, Hist." p. 114., et. seq. "Memoirs," pp. 174, 220.) Rajendra Lala Mitra says that the Buddhist books of the "Great Vehicle" are in a servile manner copied from Brahmin treatises.
Let us examine this "Great Vehicle," as writers like Sir Monier Williams tells us that it was this school that introduced the ideas of God and immortality into Buddhism, which until then was pure atheism. Its main Bible is a collection of writings called the "Rakshâ Bhagavatî." (Rajendra Lala Mitra, p. 179.) Bryan Hodgson confirms this. ("Literature of Nepal," p. 16.) The work itself is an avowed attack on the Hinayâna or "Little Vehicle," which is "refuted repeatedly," says the learned Hindoo. (p. 178.)
Let us now see what sort of god and what sort of immortality the "Rakshâ Bhagavatî" in its title of chapters proclaimed.
Chap. I. The subject of Nothingness (Sunyata) expounded.
Chap. II. Relation of the soul to form colour and vacuity.
Chap. IV. Relation of form to vacuity.