This transformation in the conception of Dharmakâya has been effected by the different interpretation the term Dharma came to receive from the hand of the Mahâyânists. Dharma is a very pregnant word and covers a wide range of meaning. It comes from the root _dhṛ_, which means “to hold,” “to carry”, “to bear,” and the primitive sense of dharma was “that which carries or bears or supports,” and then it came to signify “that which forms the norm, or regulates the course of things,” that is, “law,” “institution,” “rule,” “doctrine,” then, “duty,” “justice,” “virtue,” “moral merit,” “character,” “attribute,” “essential quality,” “substance,” “that which exists,” “reality,” “being,” etc., etc. The English equivalent most frequently used for dharma by Oriental scholars is law or doctrine. This may be all right as far as the Pâli texts go; but when we wish to apply this interpretation to the Mahâyâna terms, such as Dharmadhâtu, Dharmakâya, Dharmalakṣa, Dharmaloka, etc., we are placed in an awkward position and are at a loss how to get at the meaning of those terms. There are passages in Mahâyâna literature in which the whole significance of the text depends upon how we understand the word dharma. And it may even be said that one of the many reasons why Christian students of Buddhism so frequently fail to recognise the importance of Mahâyânism is due to their misinterpretation of dharma. Max Mueller, therefore, rightly remarks in his introduction to an English translation of the _Vajracchedîka Sûtra_, when he says: “If we {222} were always to translate dharma by law, it seems to me that the whole drift of our treatise would become unintelligible.” Not only that particular text of Mahâyânism, but its entire literature would become utterly incomprehensible. In Mahâyânism Dharma means in many cases “thing,” “substance,” or “being,” or “reality,” both in its particular and in its general sense, though it is also frequently used in the sense of law or doctrine. Kâya may be rendered “body,” not in the sense of personality, but in that of system, unity, and organised form. Dharmakâya, the combination of dharma and kâya, thus means the organised totality of things or the principle of cosmic unity, though not as a purely philosophical concept, but as an object of the religious consciousness. Throughout this work, however, the original Sanskrit form will be retained in preference to any English equivalents that have been used heretofore; for Dharmakâya conveys to the minds of Eastern Buddhists a peculiar religious flavor, which, when translated by either God or the All or some abstract philosophical terms, suffers considerably. _Dharmakâya as Religious Object._