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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c14: Chapter VIII. The Schools of the Hīnayāna

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c14

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Chapter VIII. The Schools of the Hīnayāna

1. The Traditional Lists

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OUR knowledge of the schools of Hīnayāna is hopelessly confused and unsatisfactory; it depends on accounts handed down in late authorities, whose sources of information are unknown to us, and who in all likelihood represent accounts given by one or other of the schools, and representing therefore, its own opinion of the course of events rather than historical fact. The Ceylonese version as presented in the *Dīpavaṃsa*, in the trustworthiness of whose sources we have every reason to put little faith, treats the Pali Canon as accepted in Ceylon by the Vibhajyavādin school of the Mahāvihāra as representing the true doctrine of the Theras or elders, and the actual teaching of the Buddha. Now even in Ceylon the Vibhajyavādins were far from holding undisputed sway; when Fa-Hian visited the island at the close of the fourth century A.D. the Mahīçāsaka school was flourishing, and would certainly have denied out and out the claim of the Vibhajyavādins.

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The version of Buddhaghosa and the *Dīpavaṃsa* differing in detail even from the *Mahāvaṃsa*,¹ which is largely based on the same materials, places the first schism at the time of the Council of Vaiçālī, when, as a sequel to the condemnation of the Vajjiputtakas, the Mahāsaṅghikas broke away; from this schismatic school are two others, the Gokulikas and the Ekabbohārikas; the former of these two gave rise to the Paññattivādins and Bāhulikas and later to the Cetiyavādins, apparently all these schools coming into being in the second century after the Parinirvāṇa. In the same century there arose in the Theravāda the schools of the Mahīṁsāsakas and the Vajjiputtakas, the latter giving rise to four branches, Dhammuttariyas, Bhadrayānikas, Channāgarikas, and Sammitiyas. From the Mahīṁsāsakas there arose the Sabbatthivādins and the Dhammaguttikas. The former school was prolific; it gave birth to the Kassapikas, and these in their turn gave rise to the Saṅkantikas, from whom divided off the Suttavādins. Thus, with the six Mahāsāṅghika schools and the original Theravāda, there is a total of eighteen. But the account of Buddhaghosa adds six further schools, the Rājagirikas, Hemavatikas, Siddhatthas, Pubbaseliyas, Aparaseliyas, and Vājiriyas. The Mahāsāṅghikas,¹ however, naturally did not accept the view which made the Vibhajyavādins the true representatives of the Theravāda; they themselves represented the Ācāryavāda, suggesting a learned origin for their tenets, and they claimed that the true division was threefold, Sthavira, Mahāsāṅghika, and Vibhajyavādin. The Sthaviras they subdivided into the Sarvāstivādins and the Vātsīputrīyas, omitting the Mahīçāsakas as a link between the Sthaviras and the Sarvāstivādins. The primacy of the Vibhajyavādins is also challenged in traditions from the north; the Sarvāstivādins are credited with holding that the Mūla-Sarvāstivādins were more primitive than the Vibhajyavādins, though they reckon the monks of the Mahāvihāra, but also those of the Abhayagiri and Jetavana monasteries in Ceylon, as Sthaviras.²

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¹ KV. comm., pp. 2 ff. ; DV. v. 39 ff. ; cf. Mahābodhivaṃsa (ed. 1891), pp. 95 ff. DV. has Mahāsaṅgītikas and Bahussutakas, see Minayeff, *Recherches*, ch. viii and ix ; Kern, *Ind. Buddh.*, pp. 111 ff. ; Rhys Davids, JRAS. 1891, pp. 409 ff.

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¹ Tāranātha, *Buddhismus*, p. 271. Poussin (*Bouddhisme, Études*, p. 34) finds the Mahīçāsakas in the Mahāvihāra, but not plausibly.

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² Tāranātha, p. 272.

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A northern view given by Vasumitra³ accepts the first schism as that of the Mahāsāṅghikas, who gave rise in the second century after the Parinirvāṇa to the Ekavyavahārikas, the Lokottaravādins, and Kukkulikas or Kukkuṭikas, and later to the Bahuçrutīyas. In the next century there arose from it the Prajñaptivādins, the Caitikas or Caityaçailas the Aparaçailas and the Uttaraçailas. The Sthaviravāda, on the other hand, in the third and fourth centuries divided into two main branches, each with further schools developing from it; the first was the Haimavatas, with the Dharmaguptikas, Mahiçāsakas, Kāçyapīyas, Saṅkrāntikas or Sautrāntikas; the second the Sarvāstivādins, also called Hetuvādins or Vibhajyavādins, with the Vatsīputrīyas and their four sub-divisions of Dharmottarīyas, Bhadrāyaṇīyas, Sammatīyas or Sammitīyas, and Saṇṇāgarikas. With this account there agrees fairly well that of Bhavya,¹ preserved in a Tibetan version; the Kukkulikas disappear from the Mahāsāṅghika list, and the Channāgarikas from that of the Sthaviravāda, but in the latter the Mahiçāsakas reappear, and the Hetuvidyas and the Vaibādyavādins—a very bad version of Vibhajjavādin in Pali, appear as distinct, thus bringing up the number to the orthodox eighteen; in Vasumitra apparently it is intended to treat Hetu- and Vibhajya-vādins as one school. All these schools, we are led to believe, were Indian in origin; the Mahāvaṅsa, which confuses the issue considerably, adds that two more schools, the Dhammarucis and Sāgaliyas, arose in Ceylon.²

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³ *Samayabhedoparacanacakra* (before A. D. 557); Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 227 ff. Five points raised by Mahādeva are made the origin of the trouble; Sthaviras, Nāgas, Prācyas and Bahuçrutīyas all take part in it.

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¹ Rockhill, *Life of the Buddha*, pp. 181 f; *Nikāyabhedavibhaṅgavyākhyāna*.

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² Walleser (*Der ältere Vedānta*, pp. 11 f.) suggests that Mahiṁsaka denotes an Andhra school (cf. Mahiṣamaṇḍala; JRAS. 1910, pp. 425 ff.; 1911, pp. 816 ff.) whose name was misunderstood as certainly was Vajjiputtaka in the rendering Vātsī°.

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Our best source for knowledge of these sects or schools is the Kathāvatthu of the Abhidharma Piṭaka, for there is much that is unintelligible in the accounts preserved in Chinese and in modern Tibetan accounts, such as the reports of Vasumitra, Bhavya, or Tāranātha. But we are faced with the fundamental and insuperable difficulty that the text itself disdains to mention the names of the sects holding views which it refutes or discusses,³ and we are therefore dependent on the account of Buddhaghosa, whose interest in the ideas may be creditable, but who is obviously a very poor authority on the point of what schools actually held the variant views. If we can trust his use of the present tense as indicating the actual existence of schools in his day we find only eight as then active, say in the middle of the fifth century A. D., the Sammitiyas, the Sabbatthivādins, Andhakas, Gokulikas, Bhadrayānikas, Uttarāpathakas and Vetulyakas, with probably the Kassapikas, and possibly the Vajjiputtiyas and Mahāsaṅghikas; we have some corroboration of these facts in the reports of the Chinese pilgrims Fa-Hian and Hiuen-Tsang (Yuan-Chwang) who assert the existence in northern India of the Mahāsāṅghikas, while there were Mahiçāsakas in Ceylon.

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³ All the statements as to schools referred to in the KV. are derived from the comm. and are proved only for the fifth century A. D.

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The materials are wholly inadequate to attain an intelligible view of the true connexions of the schools, their tenets, or the date of their appearance. The Vajjiputtakas, Vajjiputtiyas, or Vatsīputrīyas, figure in the Ceylonese tradition as the beginners of the schism by their failure in points of discipline, and then as merging, it seems, in the Mahāsāṅghikas; the northern accounts forget this fact, or reject it, and make them an offshoot of the main school rather than of the Mahāsāṅghikas; they tell us nothing of their special views. The Gokulikas, if the Sanskrit version Kukkulika represents the original form of their name, may have derived it from their doctrine that the world is a fiery mass of misery (kukkula),¹ but they may have really been a local school. The Andhakas, in the view of Buddhaghosa, are divided into the Pubba- and Apara-seliyas, who seem to derive their name from two cliffs facing each other in the region about Kāñcipura and Amarāvatī on the south-east coast in the Andhra country. The parallelism between the Caityikas, Uttara- and Avara-çailas as offshoots of the Mahāsāṅghika in the account of Bhavya with the Caitikas, Uttara- and Apara-çailas in that of Vasumitra has suggested that there is a real connexion between the Andhaka schools and the Cetiyavādin;² now there is evidence both in Sanskrit texts and late Tibetan tradition that the Caitika school was founded by a certain Mahādeva, who is credited with five heretical doctrines to decide which a council was held, apparently a confusion with the alleged Council to settle the ten points of the Vajjiputtakas. But Buddhaghosa had evidently no knowledge of the tradition of Mahādeva, and he does not connect the Cetiyavādins with the Andhakas. Of most of the other schools our information is even less satisfactory; their names may indicate the original teachers, as Vasumitra and Bhavya assert, but we cannot place any implicit faith in so easy assertions.

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¹ KV. ii. 8, where optimism is defended as orthodox. ² Poussin, JRAS. 1910, pp. 413 ff; Points of Controversy, p. xliii (corrected from p. xxxvi); cf. KV. ii. 1 ff.

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Greater interest and importance attach to the tradition that the Sthaviras adopted the name of Haimavatas in the third century after the Parinirvāṇa when the Hetuvādins broke away from the main body. The fact of the connexion of the Theravāda with the north is attested effectively by the Milindapañha; it is impossible to question its northern origin, and there is legendary evidence of the activity of the Sthaviras in Kashmir; indeed, the suggestion¹ has been made that it was from the true fountain of tradition in Kashmir rather than from Magadha that the Council of Asoka derived its doctrines, and that the Abhidharma literature is a product of Kashmir. But this contention can hardly be taken seriously, when we reflect not merely on the dubiety of the Council, but also on the fact that the argument is based on what is now notoriously wrong, the identity of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka of the Pali Canon with the Abhidharma of the Sarvāstivādins, which is connected in some measure with Kashmir. But we have in the Milindapañha a very significant fact, which shows us that the Vibhajyavādins cannot claim full credence for their assertions of their own antiquity. The Parivāra appendix of the Vinaya Piṭaka is certainly a late work; it was rejected both by the Dhammarucis of Abhayagiri and also evidently was ignored by the Milindapañha.

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¹ Walleser, PGAB., pp. 145 ff.

2. The Vibhajyavādins

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The origin of the Vibhajyavādins must remain obscure, though doubtless early. The exact force of the title is uncertain. But in the Canon it appears that to be an answerer in detail (vibhajjavādin) was one of the four rational ways of answering an inquiry. You might meet it by (1) a general proposition: (2) a number of particular propositions replying in detail; (3) a counter question; or (4) by waiving aside an unintelligible or irrelevant question. It has been contended, therefore, that, when established generalizations were being arraigned by criticism or when in the Asokan age errors springing from uncritical interpretation of doctrine were to be expunged, the way to purity of ideas lay especially in the *Distinguo* of the second of these methods.¹ This view is strengthened by the fact that once or twice in the Suttas we actually find the Buddha represented as declining to make the general assertion anxiously awaited by his interlocutor and replying instead: ‘Herein I am a particularizer; I am no generalizer’, and in the comment on the *Kathāvatthu* Buddhaghosa ascribes many of the disputes to want of particularization. A different origin, though one not out of sympathy with the spirit of the preceding suggestion, is ascribed in the *Abhidharmakoça*, where the name is traced to the fact that the school answer the old question: ‘Does all exist?’ with a distinction; the present and the past which has not yet borne its fruit exist; the future and the past which has borne its fruit do not exist.²

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¹ AN. i. 197; Mil., p. 445; *Points of Controversy*, pp. xl. f. KV. v. 6, distinction between popular and philosophical truth; xix. 2, application of idea of the void erroneously; xi. 5, misinterpretation of term Kappa, age.

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² Poussin, AK., p. vi., following AK. v. 25. As known to us the school is of Ceylon, but doubtless derived fr m the mainland. Later it dominated Burma and Siam; see Eliot, *Hinduism and Buddhism*, ch. xxxvi. ff.

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It is reasonable to accept the view that the *Abhidhamma Piṭaka*, as we have it in the Pali Canon, is the definite work of this school, a systematic scholasticism based on the Suttas, but nevertheless often advancing in detail beyond them. The date of the Abhidharma and its redaction in its present shape are alike unknown to us, but we may reasonably believe that it was composed from the first in Pali, whereas the Vinaya and the Suttas were redacted in Pali—doubtless with many additions of original composition—on the basis of earlier work in a dialect more closely vernacular.

3. Sarvāstivādins, Vaibhāṣikas, and Sautrāntikas

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Opposed to the Vibhajyavādins were the Sarvāstivādins, asserters of the reality of all things, and among them also we find a set of Ābhidhārmikas, who developed a philosophical literature of their own, while the school possessed a Vinaya and a Sutta collection on the same lines as the Pali Canon, possibly at first written in some Prakrit, but later certainly in Sanskrit. This Abhidharma literature begins with the Jñānaprasthāna of Kātyāyanīputra—variously dated at three hundred or five hundred years after the Parinirvāṇa—and its six ‘feet (pāda),’ Dharmaskandha by Ṣāriputra; Dhātukāya by Pūrṇa; Prajñāptiçāstra by Maudgalyāyana; Vijñānakāya by Devakṣema; Saṃgītiparyāya by Ṣāriputra; and Prakaraṇapāda by Vasumitra; though it has disappeared in its Sanskrit form save for odd fragments, it is preserved in a Chinese rendering.¹ Chinese records show how that the Jñānaprasthāna was brought by Saṅghadeva and Dharmapriya from Kashmir (A. D. 383) possibly in a Pali-like dialect, while Hiuen Tsang (A. D. 657) used a Sanskrit version. Some of the Sarvāstivādins clung to these texts as their sole authority; Dharmatrāta, Ghoṣaka, Vasumitra, and Buddhadeva are all criticized by the Vaibhāṣikas of Kashmir and Buddhadeva is apparently the teacher mentioned in a Mathurā inscription (perhaps 50 B. C.—A. D. 10). Dharmatrāta is traditionally, but apparently in error, placed much later, being a pupil of Āryadeva the Mahāyānist (perhaps A. D. 200), and Vasumitra is assigned to the time of a son of Kaniṣka (A. D. 100).² These data are insufficient to help us to any very definite idea as to the date of the Jñānaprasthāna and its supplements; no faith can be placed on the alleged authors, the titles being manifestly intended to convey the impression of extreme antiquity. But it is clear that the Abhidharma must go back to at least a century B. C. It is impossible to prove whether it preceded, as is at least possible, or was contemporary with, or subsequent to, the compilation of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka.

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¹ The Prajñāptiçāstra exists in the Tibetan and is analysed by Poussin in part as an appendix to his ed. of Abhidharmakoça, III, pp. 295 ff. The AKV. has Devaçarman and, for the Saṃgītiparyāya, Mahākausthila; Tāranātha, Buddhism-us, pp. 56, 296; Takakusu, JPTS. 1904-05, pp. 67 ff; for the latter text, cf. DN. no. 33; SBB. iv. 200; above, ch. i. § 1.

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² Dharmatrāta, author of the Udānavarga and Saṃyuktābhidharmahṛdayaçāstra, was uncle of Vasumitra, and his work must have been used by Açvaghoṣa; thus he probably lived under Kaniṣka; Lévi, JA. 1912, ii. 215 ff. See Lüders, SBA. 1914, pp. 101 ff.

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Under Kaniṣka who presented a casket with Buddha’s relics to the Sarvāstivādins, it seems,¹ must be placed the writing of a commentary, Vibhāṣā, on the Abhidharma, whence the name of the Vaibhāṣika school of Buddhism, whose centre was apparently Kashmir, although in that country itself there were Buddhists who were not Vaibhāṣikas, and although we hear of Vaibhāṣikas of the outer country, the west, and the northern borders.

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¹ There is confusion here between works called Vibhāṣā and Mahāvibhāṣā, in which Kaniṣka seems referred to as in the past; Watters, Yuan Chwang, i. 274 ff; Takakusu, JRAS. 1905, p. 415; JPTS. 1904–05, p. 123. The Vinaya of the Mūla-Sarvāstivādin is familiar with the north-west, and alludes to Kaniṣka; T'oung Pao, 1907, p. 115; JA. 1914, ii. 493; see JRAS. 1908, p. 1058 for casket; on Aṣvaghoṣa's share, see JRAS. 1905, p. 52.

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To the Vaibhāṣikas and the Sarvāstivādins there developed opposition in the school of the Sautrāntikas, who insisted that the Abhidharma texts and a fortiori the Vibhāṣā had no authority, and that such Abhidharma as the Buddha taught was contained in the Suttas, a doctrine obviously fairly in accord with the essential facts. Therefore they adhered determinedly to the Sūtras alone, although they accepted the Sarvāstivādin and the Vaibhāṣika views save where they conflicted with their own. Of their views we have some account in the great work of Vasubandhu, the Abhidharmakoṣa, with his own commentary. The Koṣa itself in six hundred stanzas sets forth the views of the Vaibhāṣika school of Kashmir, but Vasubandhu was not a Vaibhāṣika or a Sarvāstivadin; on the contrary he had strong Sautrāntika sympathies, and later himself adopted the Yogācāra attitude, with which in his comment he shows himself familiar. His Bhāṣya therefore criticizes freely the views of the Vaibhāṣika, a fact which brought upon him replies from orthodox Vaibhāṣikas. The date of Vasubandhu, therefore, becomes of special interest to us; the period A.D. 420–500 suggested by Takakusu² on the strength of Chinese evidence may probably be taken to be superseded by the proposal of Péri which brings his death not later than A.D. 350; a date substantially earlier is impossible, if we accept the strong tradition which brings him into contact with a son of Candragupta. This is, of course, on the assumption that the Vasubandhu of the *Abhidharmakoça* is the brother of Asaṅga, of the Yogācāra school; it is just possible to read observations of Yaçomitra in his comment on the Koça to mean that the author refers to this Vasubandhu, and he was therefore later, but this suggestion is on the whole implausible. The merits of the work are obvious, and the fact of its only partial preservation in Sanskrit has hampered greatly Buddhist studies. It covers the whole field of ontology, pyschology, cosmology, the doctrine of salvation and of the saints, and a vast proportion of its matter is common to all Buddhist belief. Hence it formed the text-book of Buddhists generally after Vasubandhu’s death, whether they followed the Hīnayāna or the Mahāyāna, while it contains incidentally much evidence on the early Sanskrit Canon. It formed itself the subject of comment by Vasumitra and Guṇamati, and later by Yaçomitra whose comment is preserved to us in Sanskrit.¹

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² BEFEO. 1904, p. 37; Péri, ibid. 1911, pp. 339 ff; Poussin, AK., pp. viii. f.; SC. Vidyābhūṣaṇa, JASB. 1905, p. 227; Smith, Early Hist. of India³, pp. 328–34; Watters, Yuan Chwang, i. 210, 355–9; Winternitz, Ind. Litt. ii. 256; Lévi, MSA. ii. 1 f.

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¹ Book III is ed. and trs. Poussin. Yaçomitra is Sautrāntika in view. Kumāralabdha, teacher of Çrilābha, founded the school, and traditionally he is a contemporary of Nāgārjuna (c. A. D. 200); Kern, *Ind. Buddh.*, pp. 122, 127; the date, however, is clearly uncertain; cf. BEFEO. 1911, pp. 359, 375; Watters, *Yuan Chwang*. ii. 286; Eliot, *Hinduism and Buddhism*, ii. 86, n. 4, 92.

4. Precursors of the Mahāyāna

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Different as these schools are in view and outlook, they all are classed as within the Hīnayāna, and therefore as distinct from the Mahāyāna. The suggestion, however, has been made that the apparent distinctness is illusory and that Buddhaghosa’s list at least includes sects which would by us be classed as Mahāyānist. In support of this view it is pointed out² that the Chinese pilgrims recognize along with Mahāsāṅghikas, Mahīçasakas, Sarvāstivādins, Sāmmitīyas, Sthaviras, Lokottaravādins, the Pūrva- and Aparaçaila Vihāras, the Mahāyānists and Hīnayānists so that Buddhaghosa who wrote half a century after Fa-Hian (A.D. 400) could hardly fail to take account of schools of the Mahāyāna. This abstract argument is aided by the suggestion that a Mahāyānist school is to be detected in the Vetulyakas who are represented as docetists, and described according to some manuscripts as teachers of the great emptiness (*mahāsuññatāvādins*), while an effort has been made to compare the description of the Mahāyāna Sūtras as Vaipulyas with their name.¹ The Uttarāpathakas, a vague title, ‘northerners’ must have included Mahāyānists, since they patronized the doctrine of ‘suchness’ (*tathatā*) in the sense of the existence of something unconditioned, while the Mahāsāṅghikas held views in some respects intermediate between the Mahā- and the Hīna-yāna. It can hardly be said that this reasoning is satisfactory. The Vetulyakas appear in history in the third century A.D. and later as a dissident sect in Ceylon, and there is nothing to show that the Uttarāpathaka doctrine of ‘suchness’ assumed anything like the remarkable shape which it has in the Mahāyāna.²

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² *Points of Controversy*, pp. xlv. ff.

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¹ SBE. XLIX. ii. 188 f; 102 f; Kern, *Vaitulya, Vetulla, Vetulyaka* (Amsterdam, 1907); Poussin, *JRAS*. 1907, pp. 432 f., on the strength of a blunder in a Kashgar fragment of the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka* when Vaitulya replaces Vaipulya.

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² Below, ch. xii. § 1.

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The Mahāsāṅghikas, again, though doubtless in doctrine forming a bridge to Mahāyāna ideas were clearly distinct from the Mahāyāna. To them belonged the Lokottaravādins, of whom we have a revised and altered relic in the shape of the *Mahāvastu*,³ which purports to be the Vinaya of the Lokottaravādins, of the Āryamahāsāṅghikas; both schools are mentioned by the Chinese pilgrims, and their importance was clearly great, but the *Mahāvastu* as preserved is decidedly late, since it refers *inter alia* to Chinese and Hunnish writing and to Greek astrology.

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³ ed. Senart, Paris, 1882–97.

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The Sāmmitīyas have been even less fortunate, though a Çāstra was translated into Chinese between A.D. 350 and 431. They were, it is clear, closely connected with the Vātsīputrīyas, with whom the *Abhidharmakoçavyākhyā* actually identifies them.⁴

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⁴ In TRD., p. 46 they as Āryasamitīya appear as Vaibhāṣikas, and believers in a person (*pudgala*). This is untrustworthy, as regards the identification. The name may be Sammitīyas or Sāmmitīyas, and the meaning is uncertain. In MKV. (p. 148, n. 1) it stands for the Hīnayāna.

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The appearance of the Mahāyāna in its developed forms as distinctive schools, Madhyamaka and Vijñānavāda, did not mean the absorption of the Hīnayāna schools, which persisted side by side with them in varying strength, the Sarvāstivādins and their subdivisions being predominant in Northern India; in the second century A. D. we find the Caitikas at Amarāvatī, the Mahāsāṅghikas at Kārli, and the Bhadrāyaṇīyas at Nāsik. The eighteen sects are mentioned by King Guhasena of Valabhī (A. D. 559), and are known to the Chinese pilgrims, but Hiuen-Tsang obtained scriptures only of the seven, Sthaviras, Mahāsāṅghikas, Mahiçāsakas, Sāmmitīyas, Kāçyapīyas, Dharmaguptas, and Sarvāstivādins and knows the Lokottaravādins, while I-Tsing groups the eighteen under the four heads of Mahāsāṅghikas, Sthaviras, Sāmmitīyas, and Mūla-Sarvāstivādins. But there were other lines of division, based on the distinction of Vinaya, Sūtra and Abhidharma, and probably these may have been more important than the school divisions proper.

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While the relations of the schools among themselves were complex and varied, their relation to the Mahāyāna was obviously equally complicated; there was nothing to prevent the combination of Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna views; Fa-Hian resided at Pāṭaliputra in a Mahāyānist monastery, but found there the Vinaya of the Mahāsāṅghikas and the Sarvāstivādins; in Hiuen-Tsang’s enumeration of some 183,000 monks, 32,000 only were Mahāyāna out and out, 96,000 Hīnayāna, and 54,500 lived in monasteries where both faiths were studied, and he reckons some at least of the Sthaviras of Ceylon as Mahāyānists, a term which in I-Tsing covers all who read the Mahāyāna texts and worship Bodhisattvas. Neither he nor I-Tsing seems to be hostile to the Hīnayāna, but to regard it as merely an inferior stage of knowledge and practice; Hiuen-Tsang is credited with converting Harṣa (A. D. 606-48)—a very eclectic king—to Mahāyāna from Hīnayāna beliefs. I-Tsing apparently accepted as all valid the Vinaya of the Mūla-Sarvāstivādins; the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra or Vijñānavāda systems, regarded as rather complementary than opposed; and the Mahāyāna religious and ethical precepts. Eclecticism was doubtless encouraged by the existence of such institutions as the great University of Nālandā in Magadha, not far from Gayā, which appears to have come into prominence after the time of Fa-Hian; the district of Valabhī, on the other hand, was the stronghold of the Sāmmitīyas who, if we are to judge from Hiuen-Tsang’s numbers, were at his date the strongest sect, though this was not the case in that of I-Tsing who assigns pre-eminence to the Mūla-Sarvāstivādins, a term which we may interpret as denoting the Sarvāstivādin school proper as opposed to its Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika developments.¹

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¹ See Kern, *Ind. Buddh.*, pp. 128 ff; Rhys Davids, *JRAS.* 1891, pp. 409 ff; 1892, pp. 1 ff; Eliot, *Hinduism and Buddhism*, ch. xxiii; Poussin, *Bouddhisme* (1898) ch. ii. Buddhaghosa, the great commentator on the Canon, and author of the *Visuddhimagga*, (c. A. D. 450-500) studied first at Gayā and may have been influenced by the Mahāyāna; Walleser, *PGAB.*, pp. 116 f; *JRAS.* 1904, p. 371.

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