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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c14.s1: 1. The Traditional Lists

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c14.s1

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English

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.

Cites (7)