Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c37.8

v2.c37.8

Hiuen Tsang speaks of a group of monks as Mahāyānists of the Sthavira school. From his records,⁴ it seems that he divided the monks of Ceylon into two groups, calling the Mahāvihāravāsins as Hinayāna-Sthaviras and the Abhayagirivāsins as Mahāyāna-Sthaviras. He came across such Mahāyānist Sthaviras in the Mahābodhi-saṅghārāma, built in Gaya by a king of Ceylon,¹ in Kaliṅga² and Surat.³ In the monasteries of Samataṭa,⁴ Drāviḍa,⁵ he says, the monks belonged to the Sthavira school without any mention of Mahāyāna. He was aware of the split of the Buddhist church into two schools, Sthaviras and Mahāsaṅghikas,⁶ and quite deliberately used the expression Mahāyānist Sthaviras. His remarks about the division of monks in Ceylon remind us about the Ceylonese tradition that the Abhayagiri monastery became for some time a centre of the Vetulyakas, the immediate forerunners, we may say, of the Mahāyānists,⁷ and very probably the Chinese pilgrim referred to the Vetulyakas or the monks generally living in the Abhayagiri monastery as Sthaviras of the Mahāyāna school. By Mahāyānist Sthaviras Hiuen Tsang probably meant those monks who followed Vinaya rules of the Sthaviravādins but held views of the Mahāyānists like Suññatāvāda of the Vetulyakas.