[Buddha-l] Are we sick of dogma yet? (2nd of 2)

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance,

> Lamotte is misleading here [re: the tabulations]. He has omitted the
figures for pure
> Mahaayaanists which he gives elsewhere.

In a sense, yes. Priestley "retabulates", reducing the Sammitiyas to a
"quarter" of all Indian Buddhists, rather than half (still a substantial
portion). At one point I did my own tabulation of Xuanzang's Xiyuji, and
came up with figures different from both (somewhere in the middle), but I
don't have my notes on that at hand at the moment (nor the time at the
moment to retabulate, since these demographic references are scattered
throughout the work). So let's say, for the moment, that somewhere between a
third to half of Indian Buddhist clerics (which suggests the size of the
support community as well) were Sammitiyas at that time. That is still
substantially more than the competition. Incidentally, when one tabulates
the Mahayana figures, they are *not* as large as Priestley imagines, and
they have a vaguer reference, since they include, among other things
(largely unspecified), Mahayana-Sthaviras -- whatever that means.

> >5. They didn't call themselves "Pudgalavadins" -- that was a label
applied
> >to them by others.
>
> We don't know that.

It's not a term that appears in any of their extant texts. And even their
opponents spend some time trying to figure out what Vatsiputriya means -- as
well as giving the names of the other sects. We have adopted many of the
"characterization" terms opponents used to label other schools in our
nomenclature of Buddhist schools (e.g., vijnana-vada for Yogacara -- 
Sthiramati uses the term vijnanavada in his Trimsika-bhasya to refer to
non-Yogacara schools; Vinitadeva glosses that particular reference to refer
to "Sautrantikas and others," and "Suunyataa-vaadins as a label for
Madhyamakas is ambiguous at best since that label was also applied to a
variety of different schools, and so on). So I'd rather stick with an
attested name, rather than accept an opponent's labelling.

Consider the following from Priestley (p. 37):

"Finally, we need to note that certain other schools have occasionally been
identified as pudgalavadin, affirming the reality of the person. Vasumitra
says in his account of the development and doctrines of the schools... that
the Sautrantikas taught the existence of an 'ultimately real person'
(paramaarthapudgala). In his commentary on Vasumitra's account, Kuiji
distinguishes this doctrine from that of the Pudgalavadins:

'They hold that there is the paramaarthapudgala, but it is subtle and
difficult to conceive; it is the real self. It is not the same as [the
pudgala of] the Sammitiyas and so on, which is neither identical with the
aggregates nor separate from them.' "

So, as Priestley and Thich show, the label "pudgalavada" was applied to a
variety of schools that we, now, would have some doubts about calling such.
It is a generic derogatory term, not what these schools called themselves.

> >  The earliest version of Pudgalavada called themselves
> >Vaatsiiputriiyas -- being named after their founder, Vaatsiiputra ("son
of a
> >heifer").
>
> 'son of a woman of the Vatsa clan'

That's another possibility considered in the literature. Thich provides a
discussion of the options. Priestley even suggests that it may be a
Sanskritization of Vacchagotta (!), well known from some important MN
suttas. The heifer option, to which I have no particular attachment, comes
with an explanatory mythology, so it would appear the Buddhists themselves
were unsure of exactly what the name referred to.

>
> >According to Kuiji, he was a student of Rahula (Buddha's son), who
> >was a student of "Saariputra, so Vaatsiiputra was transmitting
"Saariputra's
> >version of Buddha's Dharma. Other texts suggest he was not a contemporary
of
> >Buddha, but came a century or two after Buddha. In any case, the
> >Vatsiputriyas eventually split into four distinct schools:: Sammitiyas
> >(which appears to have been the largest group), Dharmottariyas,
> >Bhadrayaniyas, and Sannagarikas. As little as we know with certainty
about
> >the Vatsiputriyas and Sammitiyas, we know even less about the last three
> >groups. They are basically names, ciphers. The Pudgalavadins had their
own
> >extensive Tripitaka (Sutras, Abhidharma, Vinaya) of which nothing
survives.
> >The proof passages from the Tripitaka that appears in the surviving
> >"saastras are also found in the Nikayas, so, at least in terms of arguing
> >with their fellow Buddhists, they followed a commonly recognized Agama.
> >
> >6. Their influence (and numbers) continued to grow, replacing other sects
in
> >many places, and this continued until Buddhism disappeared from India.
>
> Evidence for this ?

Which? Point 5 or point 6, or both?

As for 5, we have descriptions of their literature and its purported size in
various sources (noted in both Priestley and Thich). The names of the
different Vatsiputriya offshoot schools are attested in a variety of
sources, such as ch. 10 of Vasumitra's Samaya-bhedoparacana-cakra,
T.49.2031) which says they divided over alternate interpretations of a
single agama passage. Since this text is probably from the 2nd c CE, the
schism was apparently fairly early on. The Sammitiyas appear to have become
the dominant sect, and the fate of the others is uncertain. The Sariputra to
Rahula to Vatsiputra lineage is reported by Kiuji, who, as I mentioned,
seems to get most other details about them correct. There are alternate
"origin" stories in the literature, some putting the creation of the
Vatsiputriya school two hundred years after Buddha's parinirvana, and others
with alternate dates. Vatsiputra is mentioned twice in the Maha-parinirvana
sutra, lending ideological (if not historical) credence to considering him a
contemporary of the Buddha.

As for point 6:

>My understanding is that they had the support of
> Hars.a and his family. So their exceptional numbers at the time of
> the visit of Hsüan-tsang is due to the support of his short-lived
> dynasty. I see no reason to suppose that they were such a large
> proportion of the Sangha before or after.

Harsha may have been a contributing factor at a certain point, but one of
the striking facts of Xuanzang's Xiyuji is that he reports on monasteries
and their demographics as he enters each area and town of India, and the
Sammitiyas are established in sizeable communities virtually wherever he
goes -- north, south, east, and west. I doubt we can attribute that wide
distribution to Harsha alone.

Again, Priestley (p. 31):

"At least two of the Pudgalavadin schools, the Vatsiputriyas and the
Kaurukulaka branch of the Sammitiyas, survived into the tenth century CE...
The Pudgalavada lasted, then, from about two centuries after the death of
the Buddha until the time when Buddhism finally disappeared from India, a
period of well over a millennium.... [T]he extinction of Buddhism in India
also marked the end of the Pudgalavada."

This is the conservative estimate (e.g., it starts two centuries after
Buddha, rather than contemporaneously, etc.).

Let's keep in mind that their opponents had no motive for accurately
recording their success or popularity. As evidence that the Sammitiyas were
already making their mark before Harsha, consider this from Thich (pp.
12-13):

"The presence of the school is proved by two inscriptions: one in Mathuraa,
from the Ku.saana period (second century CE), the other at Saarnath, from
the Gupta period (fourth century CE)...
"It was around the third or fourth century CE that the Sammitiyas became so
influential and popular that they replaced the Sarvastivadins in Sarnath."

That's pre-Harsha. There is also inscriptional evidence that they continued
to spread a dominant influence north and south subsequently, displacing both
Theravadins (Sthaviras) and Sarvastivadins from previous strongholds
southward and northward, respectively.

> This is based on the material in Chinese. As I have mentioned in my
> article on Pudgalavaada, it is more likely that these texts are later
> and influenced by Naagaarjuna.

Not necessarily. The problematizing of "same as vs. different from" was a
centerpiece of their approach, but only part of Nagarjuna's arsenal, the
part sometimes considered most sophistrical -- and thus least
sophisticated -- of his argumentative methods. Their notion of
"inexpressible" (as everyone seems to prefer to translate avaacya,
avaktavya, bukeshou, etc.) was at the core of their account of the pudgala
(cf. Priestley, p. 54, n.1 and passim), and, it would seem, the crux of how
one was to understand their insistence that the pudgala was a prajnapti.
Also cf. the quote from Kuiji above.

> I see no reason to believe that Sammatiyas were particularly dominant
> in the early period. Inscriptions don't suggest that. They may well
> have been initially dominant in parts of western India.

Xuanzang's 7th c. tabulation does give them a higher concentration in the
west, but I wouldn't consider either Sarnath or Mathura "west".

As for the idea that they influenced the thinking and development of the
other schools, Priestley, e.g., suggests: "...the Pudgalavada might in this
respect have been an anticipation of the Mahayana doctrine of the
dharmakaya, and perhaps even a precedent for it." (p. 89) One can find many
additional similar suggestions, though anxiety of influence prevented others
from acknowledging such debts.

Dan Lusthaus