legends. The Buddha called her to witness when sitting under the Bo
tree.]

[Footnote 69: Three Sûtras, analysed by Visser, treat of Kshitigarbha.
They are Nanjio, Nos. 64, 65, 67.]

[Footnote 70: A celebrated monastery in the portion of An-hui which
lies to the south of the Yang-tse. See Johnston, _Buddhist China_,
chaps, VIII, IX and X.]

[Footnote 71: There is some reason to think that even in Turkestan
Kshitigarbha was a god of roads.]

[Footnote 72: In Annam too Jizō is represented on horseback.]




CHAPTER XVIII

THE BUDDHAS OF MAHAYANISM


This mythology did not grow up around the Buddha without affecting the
central figure. To understand the extraordinary changes of meaning
both mythological and metaphysical which the word Buddha undergoes in
Mahayanist theology we must keep in mind not the personality of Gotama
but the idea that he is one of several successive Buddhas who for
convenience may be counted as four, seven or twenty-four but who
really form an infinite series extending without limit backwards into