Denoting any of the five celestial and meditative Buddhas — Vairochana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha and Amoghasiddhi — it was a term coined by Brian Houghton Hodgson in the early nineteenth century. The term is not mentioned in Buddhist texts; Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhists refer to these Buddhas as “the five Tathagatas” or “five transcendental Buddhas.”
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