[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person

[dvf at umich.edu]

> Bruce Burrill wrote:
>
>> Damdifino which text first used "garbage vehicle," but it is one of 
>> the very first.

Paul Harrison, in his article "Who Gets to Ride in the Great Vehicle?", 
which discusses the early Chinese translations of 11 Mahayana Sutras, 
notes that Hinayana (translated as xiaodao, "small way") occurs only 4 
times, once in Kasyapa Parivarta, once in Druma Kinnararaja Pariprccha, 
once in Astasahasrika, and once in Chengju Guangming Dingyi Jing).

Sravakayana and pratyekabuddhayana are more common, but I feel like 
there may be other early references (not necessarily in those texts) to 
people or their aspirations as Hina ("lower") without the full hinayana 
term being used.

There is one occurence that I know of Hinayana in Bodhisattvabhumi, and 
quite a few references to Hinayana in Mahayanasutralamkara, but I 
suppose we would probably want to mark both as later than Lotus Sutra, 
right?

> Stephen Hodge wrote:

> Actually, taking the MPNS group as a whole, the texts can be dated 
> fairly precisely on the basis of specific internal evidence.  They 
> were largely compiled during the reign of Gautamiputra Shatakarni 
> (106-130CE) and shortly afterwards -- probably between 120CE and 
> 180CE at the latest -- in the west of the Shatavahana kingdom. Not 
> what I would call "fairly late" -- would you also say that Nagarjuna 
> was fairly late ?   We have Dr Masahiro Shimoda, the acknowledged 
> Japanese authority on the MPNS, here at present and his dating 
> largely coincides with mine.

I am interested to know more about this. Can you direct me to an 
article that details the internal evidence and the methods employed to 
ascertain this date?


Thanks,

David Fiordalis