We have seen (p. 136) that the Hīna-yāna, or ‘Little system,’ taught that there were only twenty-four Buddhas who had preceded Gautama. Three of these (viz. Kraku-ććhanda, Kanaka-muni, and Kāṡyapa), with Gautama as a fourth, had appeared in the present age, and only one Bodhi-sattva (Maitreya) was to come. But according to the ‘Great System,’ it was a mistake to limit the acquisition of the highest Saintship in this manner. It maintained that there would be numberless supreme Buddhas (and, in addition to them, self-taught, solitary Buddhas, called Pratyeka-Buddhas), as well as numberless Bodhi-sattvas, even in the present age of the world. In other words, it propounded the doctrine that the practice of the six (or ten) transcendent virtues (p. 128), and especially the acquisition of transcendent wisdom (prajñā pāramitā), might qualify many saints for the attainment of Bodhi-sattvaship and Buddhaship. According to one theory, there were to be at least a thousand Bodhi-sattvas, followed by a thousand Buddhas, while, according to others, Buddhas and Bodhi-sattvas were to be reckoned by myriads. But this theory of numberless Bodhi-sattvas involved an entirely new view of their nature and of the meaning of the term. In fact, the Bodhi-sattvas of the more developed Mahā-yāna school were not Bodhi-sattvas at all, according to the strict sense of the term. It is true they resembled the genuine Bodhi-sattva in having gone through a long series of existences leading them at last to perfect saintship and to a heaven of their own, but they were under no obligation to give up their Bodhi-sattvaship, quit their celestial abodes, or descend ultimately as human Buddhas upon earth. Furthermore, they never appeared to aim at Pari-nirvāṇa like their earthly counterparts. Their most obvious _raison d’être_ seems to have been to supply the need of personal objects of worship, and though in Tibet they were believed to have their own secondary corporeal emanations—sometimes called their ‘incarnations,’ but more properly described as descents (avatāra) of portions of their essence in a constant succession of human saints,—they never really left their own permanent stations in the heavenly regions. Indeed, it is probable that the chief cause of their popularity, as personal objects of adoration, was that they were able to help their worshippers to attain to the same permanent and unchangeable regions of bliss.