On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c7.s10.9

v1.c7.s10.9

For the words here placed within inverted commas the original is *Shuo-ch'u-shih* (說出世). This expression, as has been shewn by others, is used to translate the Sanskrit Lokottaravādin. Julien interprets this and its Chinese equivalent as meaning those "dont les discours s'élèvent au dessus du monde".¹ Burnouf renders the term by "ceux qui se prétendent supérieures au monde".² Eitel translates it "Those who pretend to have done with the world".³ But all these interpretations judged by the accounts of the school seem to be wrong and misleading. Wassiljew explains the term better as meaning "those who argue about emergence from the world, that is, argue that in the Buddhas there is nothing which belongs to the world".⁴ So also Rockhill using Tibetan texts explains the term thus—"Those who say that the blessed Buddhas have passed beyond all worlds (i. e. existences), that the Tathāgata was not subject to worldly laws are called ["Those who say that the Tathagata] has passed beyond all world, or *Lokottaravādins*."⁵ The school which bore this name is described as an offshoot from the Mahāsaṅgika or Church of the Great Congregation of Brethren which arose in the Madhyadeśa or "Mid-India" of Chinese writers. The name was given to the sect from the prominence which its founders gave to the doctrines that the Buddhas were not begotten and conceived as human beings, that there was nothing *worldly* in them, but that they were altogether above this world, world-transcending. In Chinese Lokottaravādin became *Shuo-ch'u-shih* (or *Ch'u-shih-shuo*) as in Yuan-chuang's translation, or *Ch'u-shih-chien-yen-yü* or *Ch'u-shih-chien-shuo*.⁶ The former means “stating that [Buddha] transcends the world” and the latter means “talk [of Buddha] transcending what is in the world.” In the “Mahāvastu” we have apparently a sort of text book of this sect, though the treatise represent itself to be portion of the Vinaya.¹ It teaches with iteration the doctrine of the unworldliness or super-worldliness of the Tathāgatas or Great Rishis, and consists mainly of legends of the past and present lives of the Buddha. As Vasumitra shews, the Lokottaravādins, like the other sects which branched off from the Mahāsaṅgika body, differed from the latter only in the accidentals not in the essentials of doctrine and precept. The peculiar doctrine about the Buddhas must be excepted. In the lists of the Buddhist schools given in the Dīpavamso the Lokottaravādin school is not mentioned.