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

[L.S. Cousins]

Dan,

>In the case of the Vatsiputriyas/Sammitiyas, Pali accounts attribute the
>necessity for the so-called Second Council, traditionally dated to one
>hundred years after Buddha's nirvana, to incitements by the Vajjiputtakas,
>or Vajjiputtiyas (= Vatsiputriyas).

Ouch. This is a bad error, Dan. Sanskrit -ts-- corresponds to -cch- 
in Pali, not -jj-. I see your Prakrit is not much better than my 
Chinese :-)

The Vajjis (Sanskrit Vr.ji) were a people contemporaneous with the 
Buddha. The practices among monks belonging to that people led to the 
disputes settled at the Second Communal Recitation. In this kind of 
context -putra means 'member of a clan'; so the Vr.jiputrakas are 
'the members of the Vr.ji clan'.

They have nothing to do with the Vaatsiiputriiyas (in Pali 
Vacchiputtiya), although you are far from the first to get confused 
about the matter.

>There are, of course, all sorts of
>historical complications here -- starting with dating Buddha, the
>historicity and dating of the Second Council, etc. -- but, even if we
>conclude (though there is no a priori reason that we should) that this is a
>bit of Theravadin fiction concocted later, its concoction itself suggests
>that the Vajjiputtakas were a sufficiently challenging presence at whatever
>time that invention was devised -- which would, in any case, have been long
>before Harsha -- that they are selected for the role of major villian in the
>drama.

We have accounts of the Second Communal Recitation from a number of 
non-Theravaadin sources. The general features of the dispute are 
similar, although they differ in details.

>  They continue to be a presence, notable during Vasumitra's time (ca.
>2nd c CE), a major irritant to Sarvastivadins and others (as evidenced in
>Sarvastivadin literature, primarily preserved in Chinese, most not
>translated into Western languages yet), and were a sufficient threat during
>Vasubandhu's time (ca. 4th-early 5th c CE) for him to feel compelled to
>devote an entire chapter to exclusively refuting them -- and turning them
>into strawmen in the process).

No-one disputes that.

>Centuries before Harsha, they were displacing
>Sarvastivadins from places like Sarnath (a stone's throw from Benares).

 From one place - based on one inscription.

>Then Xuanzang arrives (he travelled from 629-645 through C. Asia and India).
>He provides our first, and only attempt at a demographic breakdown of
>Buddhism and Buddhists on the ground in India. He happens to arrive
>contemporaneously with Harsha's rule, and provides, without any
>editorializing whatsoever, the startling revelation that Sammitiyas
>outnumber all other (non-Mahayanist) sects combined two-to-one,

This is absurd. I have already cited Lamotte's actual figures. This 
is a simple matter of fact which anyone on this list can confirm by 
looking at page 543 of the English translation (p. 600 of the French) 
of Lamotte's history. As I previously indicated, they are slightly 
less than half, not two thirds of the 'Hiinayaana monks' i.e. 
excluding monks who follow Mahaayaana and monks who follow both 
Mahaayaana and Hiinayaana. So overall about a quarter of the whole 
Sam.gha.

>and that
>they are distributed throughout the country, with 1,351 monasteries (with
>higher concentration in the west, but strong numbers elsewhere as well).
>Sthaviras, the next highest number, have only 401. Mahasanghikas (who,
>unlike the Vatsiputriyas and Sammitiyas, figure prominently in modern
>historical studies of Buddhism in India) have only 24 monasteries.
>Sarvastivadins have 158. Of the 2079 total number of monasteries Xuanzang
>mentions, more than half are Sammitiya. (Those figures are from Lamotte --
>if your tabulation is different, please inform us).

This is indeed Lamotte's tabulation of the number of monasteries. But 
it is absurd. To show this, let us see how he gets his figure of 
1,351 monasteries for the Saamitiiyas.

This is mainly based on the figures for Kapilavastu:

Using Li Rongxi's translations:
Biography (T2053) p.82 Kapilavastu is deserted and in ruins
Record (T2087) p.174 "There are more than one thousand ruined 
foundations of old monasteries, and besides the palace city there is 
a monastery inhabited by over three thousand monks, who study the 
Hinayana teachings of the Sam.mitiya school."

So if this is right, Lamotte has parlayed one monastery into a 
thousand ! He himself refers to 1,000 in ruins. There is of course no 
reason to assume that the 1,000 ruined monasteries were of the same 
school as the one existing monastery. This single change is 
sufficient to reduce the number of Saamitiiya monasteries to less 
than those for Sarvaastivaadins or Sthaviras.

Well, Dan. You are a Sinologist. Perhaps you are able to check this 
for us. The reference in the margin for the start of the next 
paragraph is 901a, which presumably refers to the Chinese text of 
T2087.

I will stop here and reply to the rest of your message separately to 
keep this from getting too long.

Lance