as a name for the place of departed spirits, appears to mean in Persian a park or enclosed garden and the Avesta speaks of four heavens, the good thought Paradise, the good word Paradise, the good deed Paradise and the Endless Lights.[80] This last expression bears a remarkable resemblance to the name of Amitabha and we can understand that he should rule the west, because it is the home to which the sun and departed spirits go.  Amitabha’s Paradise is called Sukhavati or Happy Land.  In the Puranas the city of Varuna (who is suspected of having a non-Indian origin) is said to be situated in the west and is called Sukha (Linga P. and Vayu P.) or Mukhya (so Vishnu P. and others).  The name Amitabha also occurs in the Vishnu Purana as the name of a class of gods and it is curious that they are in one place[81] associated with other deities called the Mukhyas.  The worship of Amitabha, so far as its history can be traced, goes back to Saraha, the teacher of Nagarjuna.  He is said to have been a Sudra and his name seems un-Indian.  This supports the theory that this worship was foreign and imported into India.[82]

This worship and the doctrine on which it is based are an almost complete contradiction of Gotama’s teaching, for they amount to this, that religion consists in faith in Amitabha and prayer to him, in return for which he will receive his followers after death in his paradise.  Yet this is not a late travesty of Buddhism but a relatively early development which must have begun about the Christian era.  The principal works in which it is preached are the Greater Sukhavati-vyuha or Description of the Happy Land, translated into Chinese between 147 and 186 A.D., the lesser work of the same name translated in 402 A.D. and the Sutra of meditation on Amitayus[83] translated in 424.  The first of these works purports to be a discourse of Sakyamuni himself, delivered on the Vulture’s Peak in answer to the questions of Ananda.  He relates how innumerable ages ago there was a monk called Dharmakara who, with the help of the Buddha of that period, made a vow or vows[84] to become a Buddha but on conditions.  That is to say he rejected the Buddhahood to which he might become entitled unless his merits obtained certain advantages for others, and having obtained Buddhahood on these conditions he can now cause them to be fulfilled.  In other words he can apportion his vast store of accumulated merit to such persons and in such manner as he chooses.  The gist of the conditions is that he should when he obtained Buddhahood be lord of a paradise whose inhabitants live in unbroken happiness until they obtain Nirvana.  All who have thought of this paradise ten times are to be admitted therein, unless they have committed grievous sin, and Amitabha will appear to them at the moment of death so that their thoughts may not be troubled.  The Buddha shows Ananda a miraculous vision of this paradise and its joys are described in language recalling the account of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation and, though coarser pleasures are excluded, all the delights of the eye and ear, such as jewels, gardens, flowers, rivers and the songs of birds await the faithful.