出三藏記集 3.14

3.14

After the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, Mahākāśyapa assembled the arhats to spend the rains retreat at Rājagṛha. He instructed Upāli to recite the vinaya. The eighty-thousand stores of Dharma were contained in eighty recitations. Initially, Mahākāśyapa upheld them; second was Ānanda; third was Madhyāntika; fourth was Śāṇavāsa; fifth was Upagupta. For over one hundred and ten years, it was transmitted without deviation. After more than one hundred and ten years, King Aśoka arose in the world. At first, holding gross false views, he ruined the Buddha's Dharma and burnt the sūtras and treatises, and the saṅgha was scattered like stars; thus the eighty recitations were reduced to ashes. Later, encountering an arhat, he again gave birth to faith; repenting to eradicate his offenses, he gained great spiritual power. Becoming an iron wheel-turning king who ruled over Jambudvīpa, he was able to command ghosts and spirits. In a single day and night, he dismantled the eight reliquary stūpas and built eighty-four thousand stūpas, restoring and exalting the Buddha's Dharma once more. He requested the arhats to chant and recite the sūtras and vinaya. At that time there were five great arhats, each leading a group of disciples to propagate the Dharma. Because their views and understandings differed, some maintaining dispensations and others following proscriptions, they transmitted their practices mutually, and consequently five schools emerged. These were used and practiced concurrently in the sixteen great kingdoms; all competed to advance their practices, and all attained realization of the Way. Had the holy Way not been profoundly interconnected, who could have made it so? In later times, the disparate positions of the five schools arose in contention. King Aśoka said, 'All recite the words of the Buddha; how am I now to fathom what is right and wrong?' He asked the saṅgha, 'How does the Buddha's Dharma settle matters?' All the monks said, 'According to the Dharma, one should follow the majority.' King Aśoka immediately assembled the monks of the five schools to cast voting sticks together. At that time, the majority took the voting sticks of the Vātsīputrīya school. He thereupon altered this single school to be called Mahāsāṃghika. 'Mahāsāṃghika' means 'the Great Assembly'. If examined in terms of the present time, when voting sticks were cast in this land, it was this Daśādhyāya-vinaya that was named Mahāsāṃghika. The Mahāsaṃnipāta-sūtra records the Buddha's prophecy that in future ages these vinayas would appear in the world, matching the present events, with their six names not differing. Furthermore, an Avadāna-sūtra states that when the Buddha was in the world, an elder dreamed that a piece of white cotton cloth suddenly divided on its own into five pieces. Startled, he went to the Buddha's presence to ask for the reason. The Buddha said, 'This signifies that after my nirvāṇa, the Vinaya-piṭaka will divide into five schools.'