Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c35.s3.t1.9

v2.c35.s3.t1.9

Yuan Chwang must have fallen into confusion in regard to the name Mahādeva. There were very probably two persons of this name "one an influential abbot of Pāṭaliputra"³ who preached the Devadūta-sūtra,⁴ and the other a monk who introduced the tenets relating to the imperfections of an Arhat.⁵ Mahādeva the investigator of name and reality must have been a Sarvāstivādin while the other Mahādeva, who attributed imperfections to an Arhat, was a Mahāsanghika. Yuan Chwang further confused the Theravādins with the Mahāsanghikas when he wrote that Aśoka supported the Mahāsanghikas against the Theravādins, and that 500 Arhats left Pāṭaliputra and propagated the Sthavira School in Kashmir, while the majority of the inferior brethren at Pāṭaliputra began the Mahāsanghika school.⁶ The Mahāsanghikas, as we know, lived originally at Vesālī and later on passed on to the south, making their principal centre in the Andhra country at Dhanakaṭaka (present Guntur District).