[Buddha-l] Personalists. Was: Are we sick of dogma yet?

[L.S. Cousins]

Dan,

>I'm not sure how to respond to the various details in your message, since
>there are a number of underlying epistemological and methodological issues
>that would have to come into question, and I'm not sure we will be able to
>resolve these via email.

I will have to know what these are.

>In short, you seem eager to delimit Sammitiyas in geographical range,
>numbers, and historical stretch at any imagined opportunity, as if absence
>of *explicit* countervaling evidence were decisive, which is certainly is
>not.

I certainly consider the absence of explicit evidence decisive 
without strong evidence accounting for that.

I do, for many reasons, believe that most or all the early schools 
have distinct literatures in part because they originated in specific 
regions. This may be true of all of them, with the possible exception 
of the Mahaasam.ghikas. To put it another way, I do not believe that 
during the oral period

>More problematically, you are quick to label information from Chinese
>sources (Xuanzang, Kuiji, etc.) as in error or mistaken,

In general, I think Hsuan-tsang's account is reliable, although of 
course that is disputed by many scholars today. I do think that the 
evidence of the pilgrimage sites is not valid for Eastern India in 
general. So when the Record tells us that there were 1,000 monks 
(mostly Sim.hala) at Bodh-gayaa, I conclude that this tells us 
nothing about the presence of this school in Eastern India. (They 
were certainly present there for some centuries and so could have 
been successful in spreading out elsewhere in the North, but there is 
little evidence of that at this time.)

When the Biography and the Record differ, it is clear that the 
evidence attributed to the Chinese pilgrim is unreliable. So at 
IIran.aparvata there are 4,000 monks who are Sarvaastivaadin 
according to the Biography and Saam.itiiya according to the Record. 
Similarly, at Benares the Biography has 2,000 Sarvaastivaadins, 
whereas the Record has 3,000 Sam.mitiiyas.

In fact, leaving aside the pilgrimage sites at Kapilavastu, Sarnath, 
the only site east of "Sraavasti where the Chinese pilgrim mentions 
followers of Saam.mitiiyas present in numbers is Karn.asuvarn.a (300 
in the Biography and 2,000 in the Record). This suggests rather 
support from a local royal family in that area.

>while, at the same
>time, fashioning an untenable theory that Sammitiyas only had a momentary
>dominance due to Harsha

I think the evidence suggests that they were one of the four major 
traditions, but I think it likely that they took a disproportionate 
knock after the Arab invasion of Sind and the destruction of 
Valabhii. Or will you argue that the Islamic invasions did them no 
harm ?

The importance of Hars.a's dynasty is evident from the figures: 
20,000 monks at Hars.a's capital city alone.

So I find the theory (I do not think I am the first to say this) not 
so much untenable as overwhelmingly evidenced.

>-- and our main information about the demographic
>distribution of Buddhists in India at that time is precisely the reports by
>Xuanzang and Yijing (in conjunction with Faxian's accounts of a couple
>centuries earlier -- which incidentally also found Sammitiyas dispersed
>throughout India, including the south).

Fa-hsien says nothing about the schools. So this is unclear, but I 
think you must mean that I-tsing (a little later than Hsüan-tsang) 
mentions Saam.mitiiyas in the South. I think Lamotte is again a 
little misleading on this, if Takakusu's translation is correct. On 
p. 9 of Takakusu's translation of I-tsing, we are told:
Towards the South (S. India), all follow the Sthaviranikaaya, though 
there exist a few adherents of other Nikaayas.
Lamotte seems to extract this and makes him say that there are 
adherents of the Saam.mitiiya (a few) in the South.

On the Saam.mitiiyas, I-tsing says specifically:
In Laat.a and Sindhu - the names of the countries of Western India - 
the Sammitinikaaya has the greater number of followers, and there are 
some few members of the other three schools.

To this we should add:
In Magadha (Central India) the doctrines of the four Nikaayas are 
generally in practice, yet the Sarvaastivaadanikaaya flourishes the 
most.

>If not for Xuanzang's account, you
>would probably be inclined to argue that Sammitiyas were negligible even in
>the 7th c.

I most certainly would not. There is plenty of other evidence that 
the Saam.mitiiya group of schools was one of the four major divisions 
over a long period.

>  If not for the Chinese ethnographies, we would all probably
>imagine that by the first c. CE, only four schools -- the Tibetan
>nomenclature of Sautrantika, Sarvastivadin, Yogacara and Madhyamaka, with
>some murky Theravadins hanging out somewhere -- survived in India -- which
>we can agree is absurd.

I understand this to be a doctrinal division of the 
Sarvaastivaadanikaaya, not a set of Vinaya schools.

>  Inscriptional evidence is, by nature, sporadic and
>has its own unreliabilities, and our awareness of the existence of
>inscriptions is serendipity at best (think of all the Indian regions
>currently under water, victims of all the damn dam projects that India is
>scamming the world to fund).

There are quite a few more inscriptions known nowadays and they seem 
a good source for the areas where they were in vogue during the 
earlier centuries A.D..

>That you are willing to accept that Sammitiya is a blanket label for
>additional schools,

Because many sources say so.

>but resist the well attested fact that "sunyataa-vaada
>also a blanket term used for a variety of non-Madhyamaka schools (including
>in Pali sources) is surprising.

I asked for evidence.

>So where the evidence is impossible to
>ignore (Xuanzang had no motive for exaggerating Sammitiya presence -- on the
>contrary), you grudgingly accept it, while delimiting it to the least
>impact, and wherever the record is spotty you fill in the gap with denials.
>You accuse everyone of exaggerating (Priestley's claims about the time of
>the demise of the Sammitiyas, etc.) or simply being mistaken, but seem to
>exaggerate the inverse at every turn.

Can we not be specific. There are reasons for each of my claims.

I do not have Priestley's book, but when I read it, I liked it. But I 
did think he was over-stating the case. And misinterpreting 
references to the Saam.mitiiyasas as referring only to the largest of 
the several schools of the division of the Sam.gha originally called 
Vaatsiiputriiyas and later known after their largest branch, the 
Saam.mitiiyas proper. This is Lamotte's error. Yet he at least 
presents plenty of evidence against his own understanding.

Of course, Priestley is a reasonable corrective on some earlier 
views. It is just that with the enthusiasm of the convert he 
overstates the case.

>That epigraphic evidence shows that
>centuries before Xuanzang or Harsha the Sammitiyas were displacing
>Sarvastivadins as far east as Sarnath is compelling evidence.

We have one inscription - at the site of the First Sermon. You cannot 
(or shouldn't) generalize from one piece of historical evidence. I 
believe it also claims that the Sarvaastivaadins had previously 
replaced the Vaatsiiputrikas. So who knows who subsequently replaced 
the Saam.mitiiyas !

>  That they were
>still around at the time of Harsha -- given that the conservative estimate
>of their origins puts them within a couple of centuries of Buddha -- shows
>that, unlike most of the other early "schools" that had already faded into
>oblivion, the Sammitiyas had hit on formulas for longevity and stability,
>and were spreading, is also compelling. That one of their centers was at
>Valabhi -- which was decimated by the Muslims in the 780s, all monastics
>killed, the extensive libraries burned, etc., and yet the Sammitiyas
>continued to thrive, indicates that even a century after Harsha they were
>still doing well.

Where is your evidence that they continued to thrive after the eighth century ?

>So rather than pursue this further, let's agree to disagree on the extent of
>Sammitiya prominence in India.

Hmm

>Rather, being more interested in their
>philosophical contributions, as is Richard, and following the suggestion in
>your recent message to him that we should examine their own texts rather
>than speculate from a distance with alien categories and concerns, I have
>attempted to translate a bit of two of the surviving Pudgalavada texts from
>the Chinese, in part to illustrate why I consider some of the current
>speculations about their views, including Priestley's, to be in need of some
>re-examination.
>
>So as to avoid going over the word limit for postings, I will break things
>up into a number of separate posts.

I look forward to that. It sounds interesting.

Lance Cousins