The History of Buddhist Thought c25.s1: Note on the Later Schools
The History of Buddhist Thought c25.s1
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Note on the Later Schools
c25.s1.1
The later schools were once classed according to the four divisions given by Mādhava in his *Sarvadarśanasamgraha*. This is a work of the fourteenth century, and merely shows us how the Buddhist schools appeared to a Hindu at that time. Even so, what we learn from it is not the fundamental teaching, but the points of dispute which had been selected for refutation by the orthodox schools. The schools mentioned are two of the older group (Hīnayāna), the Vaibhāṣikas (Sarvāstivādins) and the Sautrāntikas, and the two chief Mahāyāna schools, the Mādhyamikas and the Yogācāras.
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More details are given by Tāranātha in his history of Buddhism.¹ It contains much that is unhistorical and fantastic, and it is not necessary here to discuss it in detail. Its value for us is that it was written by one who had the Buddhist literature behind him, and we can now see what that literary development was.
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¹ The contents have been well analysed by Professor P. L. Vaidya in his *Études sur Āryadeva*.
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This first began in the Abhidharma schools. Besides the Sarvāstivādin group the chief schools were the Sautrāntikas and the Sāmmitīyas.² Of these we have no complete accounts, but the *Abhidharmakośa* discusses many of their views. The author Vasubandhu undertook to expound Sarvāstivāda doctrine, though he appears to have been inclined to the Sautrāntikas. The name Sautrāntika implies that they rejected the Abhidharma works as an authority, and accepted only the *sūtrāntas*. The Sāmmitīyas are best known for holding, like the Vātsīputrīyas, the pudgala doctrine, the view that though the individual does not exist apart from his parts, yet he is something more than the mere sum of them. Another important Hīnayāna school is well known as the Mahāsanghika, whose buddhological doctrines, if not the school itself, became merged in Mahāyāna.
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² On these two schools, see *ERE*.
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It is clear, both from the Mahāyāna sūtras and the systematic works, that the chief opponents of the early Mahāyāna controversialists were the Sarvāstivādins. These continued to flourish at the side of the Mahāyānists, for Vasubandhu’s great work on Abhidharma belongs to the fifth century.
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We have seen the scope of Nāgārjuna’s work. It was a systematization of the doctrine that first appears in the Mahāyāna sūtras. But this was probably only the final outcome of what had already been taught in a systematic form in the monasteries.³ Another author who contributed to it was Āryadeva, and it continued to flourish and be commented on for centuries.
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³ P. L. Vaidya, ibid., p. 20, puts Nāgārjuna A.D. 170–200, and Āryadeva A.D. 200–225.
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There is a similar course of development in the next great school, the Yogāchāra. We find a popular presentation in sūtra form, and then a systematic treatment by several scholars. Again, it is a natural surmise that when the sūtra was set forth there was already a systematic treatment in the monasteries, and that what we have now in the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu represents the form that it had taken in one of the centres of learning. After this there were no more important metaphysical developments. There was a subtle change in the religious side in the movement known as Tantrism, which affected both Buddhist and Hindu schools. In both cases it appears as an alien growth, but in the mysticism of the Yogāchāras there was a natural soil for its development.
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The later we go the clearer become the traces in Buddhist literature of contact with the orthodox Hindu schools. There is a passage in Chandrakīrti's commentary on Nāgārjuna which gives us an interesting glimpse of the state of philosophical parties in the seventh century A.D.¹ He refers to the different ways in which reality is asserted. (1) There are those who imagine the real existence of entities, and they are said to be the three Hindu schools of Karma-mīmāmsā, Vaiśeshika, and Sānkhya, and the Vaibhāshikas. (2) Those who deny existence are the Nāstikas, the materialists or nihilists. (3) Those who are those who deny the existence of past and future, of moral character (avijñapti),² of unconscious mental elements, but assert it of the rest. These appear to be the Sautrāntikas. (4) There are those who deny the real existence of the falsely known (parikalpita), but assert it of that which exists (relatively) through conditions (paratantra), and of that which is thought in its true nature (parinishpanna). These are the Yogāchāras, who had already become an important school. There appears to be no recognition here of the holders of upanishadic doctrine, nor of the form which it finally took as the Vedānta.
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¹ Madhyamakavṛ, 523.
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² Thus reading with Stcherbatsky, not vijñapti; cf. p. 162.
Linked texts (2)
- Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha — Mādhava, Sanskrit
- Abhidharmakośa — Vasubandhu, Sanskrit