Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c36.s3.1

v2.c36.s3.1

This is one of the schools enlisted by Bhavya and Vinītadeva, but not by Vasumitra. It does not also appear in the list of schools of the Ceylonese chronicles. Bhavya and Vinītadeva treat it as an offshoot of the Sarvāstivāda school. Prof. La Vallée Poussin has traced in the Chinese commentary of the Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi a passage in which Vibhajyavādins are identified with the Prajñaptivādins.⁶ This apparently refers to the Bahuśrutīyavibhajyavādins,⁷ by which name the Prajñaptivādins distinguished themselves from the Bahuśrutīyas. Prof. Poussin has shown that the position of the Vibhajyavādins cannot be clearly made out as their doctrines have much in common with the doctrines of the Sarvāstivādins, Mahāsaṅghikas, Sammitīyas and others. To add to this confusion, we have the Ceylonese traditions, in which the Pāli School, i.e. the Theravādins preferred to call themselves, Vibhajyavādins.¹ This anomalous position of the Vibhajyavādins, it seems, may be explained by regarding them not as an independent school, but as a term to denote those who did not accept the doctrines of a particular school in toto.² To wit, it may be shown that those Sarvāstivādins who did not accept the *sarvam asti* thesis in toto and held instead the opinion that the past which has not yet produced its fruits and the future does not exist were known as Vibhajyavādins, i.e. Sarvāstivāda-vibhajyavādin just as we have Bahuśrutīya-vibhajyavādin. On this analogy we may explain that among the Theravādins perhaps, there were some dissenting groups who were distinguished as Theravāda-vibhajyavādins. The Ceylonese monks of Mahāvihāra probably preferred to call themselves Vibhajjavādin as we find it clearly expressed in the versified table of contents of chapter III of the Cullavagga³ and in the colophon of the commentary on the *Tika-paṭṭhāna*,⁴ as also in the *Dīpavaṃsa*, (xviii. 41, 44). In the account of the Third Council, as given in the Ceylonese chronicles¹ as also in Buddhaghosa’s commentaries,² the Vibhajjavādins were declared as orthodox monks.³