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| Spread Of Buddhism |
Spread Of Buddhism - THE FIRST TURNING OF THE WHEEL OF THE DOCTRINE: SARVASTIVADA AND MAHASAMGHIKA CONTROVERSY- Bart Dessein
After an initial period in which the Buddhist faith did not spread beyond the boundaries of the region where the Buddha spent his life, the territorial expansion of the Mauryan Empire under the famous king Asoka (r. ca. 270–ca. 230 BC) enabled Buddhism to quickly spread throughout India. This geographical expansion of the community gradually invoked different interpretations of the word of the Buddha, and led to the formation of different sects and schools.1
The dispute between the Sarvastivadins and the Mahasamghikas on the nature of the wheel of the doctrine and on the event that should be considered as the (first) turning of this wheel of the doctrine is an interesting example of scholarly debate between different Hinayana groups on the Indian subcontinent. This discussion, recorded in the Abhidharma literature, illustrates how the spread of Buddhism led to different interpretations of even such fundamental issues as: “What is the nature of what the Buddha said?” and “Where and to whom did He deliver his first sermon?”
The Mahasamghikas were involved in the first division of the Buddhist community early in the second century after the demise of the Buddha,2 that is, the schism between the Mahasamghikas and the Sthaviravadins. This schism was most likely invoked by the expansion of the root Vinaya text by the future Sthaviravadins, an expansion that was not accepted by the later Mahasamghikas.3 In the second century after the Buddha’s parinirvana, the Mahasamghikas split into the Ekavyavaharikas, the Lokottaravadins, the Bahusrut iyas, the Kukkutikas, and the Prajñaptivadins. Epigraphical evidence reveals that the Ekavyavaharikas and the Lokottaravadins moved into present-day Afghanistan, and that at least some of the Bahusrutiyas resided in present-day Pakistan.4 The Prajñaptivadins moved to the Himalaya mountains. The place of residence of the Kukkutikas is unclear. After Mathura had been the Mahasasamghika stronghold in the second half of the first century BC,5 the school also spread to the south of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely to the Krsna valley region. Epigraphic evidence of the presence of the Mahasamghikas and their different subschools in the Krsna valley region, dates back to the second and third centuries AD.6 This means that, at the time of the compilation of the Vaibh ika *Abhidharmamahavibhasasastra, our major Abhidharma source of information on the Sarvastivada and Mahasamghika controversy under scrutiny here, the Mahasamghikas had become an important Buddhist group also in the south.
1 We here follow the distinction between “schools” and “sects” as defined by Heinz Bechert 1961.
2 Nattier & Prebish 1976–1977, p. 239, suggest the date 116 Anno Buddhae.
3 On the primacy of monastic matters over doctrinal matters in the formation of the earliest Buddhist schools, see Frauwallner 1956 and Bechert 1961. On the relation of the so-called “five points of Mahadeva” to the first schism in the community, see..?
Dessein, “Of Tempted Arhats and Supermundane Buddhas: Abhidharma in the Krsn Region”, in: Anthony Barber & Sri Padma Holt (eds.). Buddhism in the Krsna River Valley of Andhra. State University of New York Press (forthcoming).
4 See Kieffer-Pülz 2000, pp. 293–294.
5 Lamotte 1958, p. 580. See also Shizutani 1965.
6 See Epigraphia Indica XX, pp. 15–17, 17, 19–20, 21–22, 24; Epigraphia Indica XXI,
pp. 61–62; Epigraphia Indica XXIV, pp. 256–260; Epigraphia Indica XXVII, pp. 1–4;
Lüders 1973, nos. 1223, 1230, 1244, 1248, 1250, 1263, 1272, 1270; Sivaramamurti
1942, p. 278. See further also Lamotte 1958, p. 580.
From the book 'The Spread of Buddhism' volume 16. Edited by Ann Heirman and Stephan Peter Bumbacher
