Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c7.s2.t3: Conception of the Sarvāstivādins

Aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Relation to Hīnayāna c7.s2.t3

Language
English

Conception of the Sarvāstivādins

c7.s2.t3.1

The other school, the Sarvāstivādins, who retained the realistic conception of Buddha, differed a little from the Theravādins. Unfortunately their original Piṭakas in Sanskrit are lost beyond recovery and we have to depend for our information about them on the few fragmentary pieces of their literature discovered in Central Asia, or on the Chinese translations of their Āgamas, in which again very little spade-work has yet been done.⁵ Our main source of information at present is the *Abhidharmakośa*, made accessible to us from Chinese by the monumental French translation of Professor La Vallée Poussin. The *Kośa*, again, it should be noted, is the work of a systematiser and the production of a time much later than that of the Āgamas, to which it bears the same relation as the *Visuddhimagga* does to the Pāli Piṭakas. As the present state of our knowledge indicates that the *Divyāvadāna* and the *Lalitavistara*¹ originally belonged to this school, though they were recast by the Mahāyānists, we must examine with caution some of the statements found in them regarding the kāya conception.

c7.s2.t3.2

⁵ Dr. Chizen Akanuma (*Eastern Buddhist*, II, p. 7) quotes some passages from the Chinese Aṅguttara and Saṃyukta Āgamas and shows that the *dharmakāya* of Buddha denoted the collection of dharmas (teachings).

c7.s2.t3.3

¹ Winternitz, *Geschichte etc.*, II, p. 194.

Linked texts (2)