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

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance
> >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 :-)

My Prakrit deficiencies aside, the names Vajjiputtiyas and Vajjiputtakas are
taken directly from the Aung & Rhys Davids PTS ed. of _Points of
Controversy_ , p. xlii. Footnote 2 on that page states: "Vatsiipuriitryas is
merely a Sanskritized form of the Pali."

But if I understand your objection, it is not simply philological, but the
claim that these Vajjiputtiyas (a.k.a. Vr.jiputrakas) are to be considered a
different group than the Vatsiputriyas, and to conflate them would be a
misidentification. Maybe. Maybe not. As we know, Sanskritization of Pali was
hardly a precise science, with many notable anomalies (sammuti to sa.mv,rti;
aasava to aa"srava, etc.). In terms of pronunciation, vajja and vaccha are
not far apart at all, so this is not an inconceivable conflation.

I guess the moral of the story is to never trust someone else's
Sanskritization (Priestley's of Ku"sa, Aung and Rhys-Davids of Vajjiputta).
Since you are also someone else, you may have to join that list. :-)

> 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.

Prebish and Nattier's article in History of Religions (16, 3, 1977, 237-272)
reviewed the materials and earlier theories, and added some additional
wrinkles. I'm not sure if much additional work has been done on this since.
The difference in details can be significant.


> 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)

His figures:
Sthaviras: 36,800 religious [i.e., monks and nuns]
Mahasamghikas: 1,100 religious
Sarvastivadins: 23,700
Sammatiyas: 66,500
Unspecified: 6,700.

Total: 134,800

N.B. 66,500 x 2 = 133,000, effectively half (and the unspecified could
include Mahayanists).

> Using Li Rongxi's translation:
> 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."

There is no word for "ruined" in the Chinese, though it might be possible to
interpret the intent that way. What Xuanzang says is:

"Of sa.nghaaraamas there are more than a thousand ancient foundations, and
alongside the city wall there is one sa.nghaaraama, with more than 3,000
monks who practice the teachings of the Hinayana Sammitiya school."

Dan Lusthaus