The History of Buddhist Thought c29.26

c29.26

The different accounts have much in common, for they were speaking to some extent of schools which existed round about them. When they give their views on the origin of the secessions they appear to be theorizing. One view makes the Sarvāstivāda originate from the Mahīṃśāsaka, and another view reverses this. It is a point on which the rival schools were not likely to agree, and the history of the schools did not begin to be written until long after exact knowledge of the original disputes was lost. How little was actually known about the circumstances of the secessions can be seen from the two entirely different accounts of the secession of the Mahāsanghikas. According to one account it was purely a matter of discipline, and according to another a series of doctrinal questions. Yet neither of these matters appear characteristic in the later history of that school. Przyluski rejects both explanations. He says that the Great Assembly (Mahāsangha) was the meeting of all believers, religious and lay people; that originally it was held on feast days, when the more learned preached the doctrine, and all publicly confessed their faults; that when the congregation of the religious was constituted, it became the custom in different groups to convoke only the Assembly in the strict sense, to the exclusion of the laics; that this practice had the advantage of safeguarding the prestige of the religious by permitting them to confess their faults behind closed doors; that it appears to have been inaugurated in the communities of the West; and that the Mahāsanghika sect, localized in the East, for long preserved the ancient custom, to which it probably owed its name.¹