Roughly about a century after Lord Buddha's demise, his teachings came to be closely scrutinized, when the meanings and significance of traditional Buddhist ideas were intensely examined and diverse hypotheses advanced to elucidate and harmonize them internally within the context of Buddhist thought, as also with the ideas which were, then, current in the general intellectual milieu of the times. The present study attempts to analyze the world of thought presented in the Kathavatthu, an important canonical text on doctrinal controversies. The tradition ascribes it to the age of Mauryan Emperor Aśoka.
It is indeed gratifying to place before the students of Buddhist studies a second edition of the
Cross Currents in Early Buddhism
. An important feature of the new edition is the addition of an exhaustive introduction to the work and a concluding chapter entitled, 'Threshold of Mahāyāna', which shows that its emergence was not accidental. lt was in the making for a long as reflected in the novel ideas put forth by the dissident sects like Mahāsāṃghikas and their sub-sects. The new ideas took a definite shape, probably, not later than the close of the first century b.c. And, if its emergence is to be so placed, there is no reason why the roots may not be found earlier. Certain doctrines debated in the Kathavatthu seem to delineate a bridge between the Hinayana and the Mahāyāna sects.