[Buddha-l] Pudgalavada

[Dan Lusthaus]

Re: [Buddha-l] PudgalavadaLance,


  But this argument cuts both ways. What assurance do we have that the Pudgalavaadins were using these terms in the ways that we find in the predominantly northern and north-western literature that survives in Sanskrit and in Chinese or Tibetan translation ?

I think your suggestions are helpful, but "assurance" is the key word. Since we have virtually no extant Indian templates on which to go, we have no assurances on anything. Everything is speculation, including the attempts to decode the texts by Stephen, Thich T.C., Priestley, and myself.

What we can surmise, in general, is that the pudgalavadins (I think henceforth I will use this term uncapitalized in order to mark that it is not the proper name of any school, but a classificatory category imputed by others) took their Agamas very seriously (the long and short texts are both Agama commentaries, and are so classified in the Chinese canon), they had a distinctive Vinaya (Yijing gives up some examples of specific details in which they differed from other Vinayas), and had their own Abhidharma, consisting of nine volumes, none of which survive. These few examples of their literature that have come down to us from less than clear Chinese translations are all we have to go on for reconstructing their thought, especially since these Ch. texts suggest that their opponents drastically mischaracterized them (Richard refuses to believe they were mischaracterized unless he's given a proper motive, but he dismisses all motives as reductionisms, so we are left with the bare fact that what others say they are supposed to say is not what we find them saying in the little that has survived of what they wrote).

We have no assurance that the Pali usage, which, as you indicated, seems to have entered their vocabulary rather late (Buddhaghosa is later than the texts we are discussing), was a primary version of which their interpretations were derivative rather than the other way around, i.e., that they put such ideas on the agenda, and what the Pali post-canonical materials preserve is a later Theravadin response. We don't know whose idea was primary and driving the engine.

The idea that the sense intended by the pudgalavadins for the first prajnapti is simply dependence seems an overstretch. That is a related notion -- i.e., another way of describing the relation between the pudgala and the skandhas, ayatanas and dhatus -- but that "relation" is precisely what is at issue in the dispute between them and the Theravadins. That they could have used the same or similar terms to indicate *different* senses is entirely possible, as well. So I'm not even sure that were we able to know what the Indic original term was, we would be able to resolve the question of sense any more clearly than the indications we are already getting from the texts (though that would certainly help frame the speculations).

  Obviously, the issue partly depends on whether I am right to think that what we have are examples of these three kinds of prajñapti in association with ignorance. They could also apply in other cases without ignorance. Or, is there something in the Chinese text which rules this out ?

As Stephan noted, ignorance (or, as one text calls it: "stupidity") is certainly a major issue contextualizing these discussions. That still does not mean that they were understanding such things in an identical manner to others using the same or similar terms and models.

If we look at Vasumitra's description of the Sammitiya position (in Xuanzang's translation), he tends to support your suggestion:

謂補特伽羅非即蘊離蘊。依蘊處界假施設名。
"The Pudgala is neither the same nor different from the skandhas. It is a prajñapti (假施設名) dependent on the skandhas, āyatanas and dhātus."

The term 依 yi, (in the phrase "yi skandhas, ayatanas, dhatus...") can mean "dependent on," or "basis" (āśraya), or "on the basis of," etc.

On the other hand, the list of four wholesome roots that Vasumitra attributes to them - kṣānti, nāma, nimitta, and laukikā agra-dharmāḥ - is not the same as what we usually find in the variants of other schools.

(while Stephen is working on T1649, I will draft a full rendering of Xuanzang's tr. of Vasumitra's exposition of the Sammitiyas).

We may solve some of this yet.

Dan Lusthaus
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