[Buddha-l] A question for Jewish Buddhists

[L.S. Cousins]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> Lance,
>
>   
>> The Sanskrit version of the Rājasūtra (=Sāmaññaphalasutta) in
>> the Dīrghāgama is virtually identical to the version included in the
>> Sanskrit (Mūla-)sarvāstivādin Vinaya texts. (I have personally compared
>> parts of them.) A number of suttas in the Pali MN which are missing in
>> the Chinese version of the Madhyamāgama are precisely found in the
>> Sanskrit Dīrghāgama. And so on. I don't believe there is any doubt in
>> this case.
>>     
>
> This is confusing. Either the Chinese MA is the same as the Sarvastivadin
> version or it isn't. If the the Sanskrit Mulasarvastivadin version contains
> sutras missing from the Chinese, then they are not the same. In which case
> the Chinese version reasonably could be attributed to a different school
> that omitted those sutras. One could imagine various scenarios by which they
> came to be left out of the Chinese version, which would include scenarios
> where they might have been in the original Indic version but neglected by
> the translators, but that would be imagining. Attribution remains open.
>
> Dan
>   
There is no extant Sanskrit Mūlasarvāstivādin version of the 
Madhyamāgama. (Although there are some Sanskrit fragments available.) 
Please read what I said more carefully.

The argument is that the Sanskrit version of the Dīrghāgama is 
(Mūla-)sarvāstivādin. Its organization is related to that of the Chinese 
Madhyamāgama in such a way that they must belong to the same recension.

The only alternative I can see is to suppose that by some time around 
the middle of the first millennium A.D. (or earlier) a Sanskrit 
canonical recension of the four Āgamas had been produced which was 
largely shared by the major schools of northern India. Conversely the 
Pali recension might represent a shared version of the schools using 
Middle Indian in (mostly) Southern India. This model is not impossible, 
but it doesn't seem to fit the evidence as well. (Note that evidence 
from an earlier period would not necessarily invalidate this.)

Lance