Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c35.s3.t1.6

v2.c35.s3.t1.6

The propagation of Buddhism in Gandhāra and Kashmir has an independent history of its own. Both the Pāli and Sanskrit traditions state that Madhyāntika (Majjhantika) was responsible for the propagation of the religion in these two countries. Madhyāntika was a disciple of Ānanda and so he was a contemporary of Sambhūta Śāṇavāsi and senior to Upagupta. Madhyāntika is recognised as a teacher by the Sarvāstivādins. That Madhyāntika preached there Sarvāstivāda Buddhism in Kashmir is corroborated by the testimony of Hiuen Tsang who tells us that Aśoka not only sent Buddhist monks to Kashmir but also built monasteries at that place.² He writes that during Aśoka's reign there was in Magadha "a subtle investigator of name and reality, and who put his extraordinary thoughts in a treatise which taught heresy." An attempt was made to drown into the Ganges these monks who however saved themselves by flying through the air to Kashmir where they settled on the hills and the valleys. On hearing this, Aśoka felt remorse and requested them to return, and on their refusal, built for them 500 monasteries and "gave up all Kashmir for the benefit of the Buddhist church."' The fact underlying this story is that the "investigators of name and reality" were none other than the Sarvāstivādins, whose principal tenet is that nāma and rūpa are real and are divisible into 64 elements which exist for ever (sarvam asti), and it is for this they had the appellation of Sarvāstivāda.² Then the statement that they resorted to the hills and valleys of Kashmir corroborates the flight of the Sarvāstivādin monks to the north in Kashmir.