An Introduction to Tantric Buddhism c6.s3.2

c6.s3.2

Hiuen Tsang writes that when he came to India in the seventh century A.D. there were four schools of Buddhism, viz., Sautrāntika, Vaibhāṣika, Mādhyamika and Vijñānavāda or Yogācāra. The former two belonged to Hīnayāna and the latter two to Mahāyāna. The Vaibhāṣikas took their stand on the *Abhidharma* literature and did not accept the authority of the *Sūtras*. They believed in the reality of the extramental world and according to them our knowledge of the external world is an exact copy of it and as such it is direct and real. The Sautrāntikas based their views on the *Sūtra* literature; they were also realists but like the Vaibhāṣikas they did not base the notion of the external existence on the evidence of our direct perception; it is but an inference. The point of discussion regarding the status of external objects between the Yogācārins and the Sautrāntikas may briefly be stated thus: the Yogācārins contend that the object of awareness and awareness itself are one and the same, *i.e.*, the different contents of knowledge as yellow, blue etc. are but diverse forms or transformation of knowledge itself; the Sautrāntikas hold that it may be admitted that the diverse contents represent the diverse forms of knowledge, or rather the content may be regarded as in some sense identical with the knowledge, if there must be something outside knowledge by the operation of which the diversity of the forms of knowledge or its contents could be explained or inferred.¹ Though the early schools of Buddhism were thus in a sense all realists they did not believe in the substantiality or the permanence of the world,—everything being momentary and as such ultimately void (*śūnya*).