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*This list is a simplification. It is likely that the development of Buddhist schools was not linear. |
TheDharmaguptaka (Sanskrit: धर्मगुप्तक;Chinese:法藏部;pinyin:Fǎzàng bù;Vietnamese:Pháp Tạng bộ) are one of the eighteen or twentyearly Buddhist schools, depending on the source. They are said to have originated from another sect, theMahīśāsakas. The Dharmaguptakas had a prominent role in earlyCentral Asian andChinese Buddhism, and theirPrātimokṣa (monastic rules forbhikṣus andbhikṣuṇīs) are still in effect in East Asian countries to this day, includingChina,Vietnam,Korea, andJapan as well as thePhilippines. They are one of three survivingVinaya lineages, along with that of theTheravāda and theMūlasarvāstivāda.
Guptaka means "preserver"[4] anddharma "law, justice, morality", and, most likely, the set of laws of Northern Buddhism.[5]
The Dharmaguptakas regarded the path of aśrāvaka (śrāvakayāna) and the path of abodhisattva (bodhisattvayāna) to be separate. A translation and commentary on theSamayabhedoparacanacakra reads:[6]
They say that although the Buddha is part of the Saṃgha, the fruits of giving to the Buddha are especially great, but not so for the Saṃgha. Making offerings to stūpas may result in many extensive benefits. The Buddha and those of theTwo Vehicles, although they have one and the same liberation, have followed different noble paths. Those of outer paths (i.e. heretics) cannot obtain thefive supernormal powers. The body of an arhat is without outflows. In many other ways, their views are similar to those of theMahāsāṃghikas.
According to theAbhidharma Mahāvibhāṣā Śāstra, the Dharmaguptakas held that theFour Noble Truths are to be observed simultaneously.
Vasubandhu states that the Dharmaguptakas held, in agreement with Theravada and against Sarvāstivāda, that realization of the four noble truths happens all at once (ekābhisamaya).[7]
The Dharmaguptaka are known to have rejected the authority of theSarvāstivādaprātimokṣa rules on the grounds that the original teachings of the Buddha had been lost.[8]
The Dharmaguptaka used a twelvefold division of the Buddhist teachings, which has been found in theirDīrghaĀgama, theirVinaya, and in someMahāyāna sūtras.[9] These twelve divisions are:sūtra,geya,vyākaraṇa,gāthā,udāna,nidāna,jātaka,itivṛttaka,vaipulya,adbhūtadharma,avadāna, andupadeśa.[9]
Between 148 and 170 CE, theParthian monkAn Shigao came to China and translated a work which described the color of monastic robes (Skt.kāṣāya) utilized in five major Indian Buddhist sects, calledDa Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi (Chinese:大比丘三千威儀).[10] Another text translated at a later date, theŚāriputraparipṛcchā, contains a very similar passage with nearly the same information.[10] However, the colors for Dharmaguptaka andSarvāstivāda are reversed. In the earlier source, the Sarvāstivāda are described as wearing deep red robes, while the Dharmaguptaka are described as wearing black robes.[11] The corresponding passage found in the laterŚāriputraparipṛcchā, in contrast, portrays the Sarvāstivāda as wearing black robes and the Dharmaguptaka as wearing deep red robes.[11]
During theTang dynasty, Chinese Buddhist monastics typically wore grayish-black robes and were even colloquially referred to asZīyī (Chinese:緇衣), "those of the black robes."[12] However, theSong dynasty monk Zanning (919–1001 CE) writes that during the earlierHan-Wei period, the Chinese monks typically wore red robes.[13]
According to the Dharmaguptakavinaya, the robes of monastics should be sewn out of no more than 18 pieces of cloth, and the cloth should be fairly heavy and coarse.[14]
A consensus has grown in scholarship which sees the first wave of Buddhist missionary work as associated with theGāndhārī language and theKharoṣṭhī script and tentatively with the Dharmaguptaka sect.[15]: 97 However, there is evidence that other sects and traditions of Buddhism also used Gāndhārī, and further evidence that the Dharmaguptaka sect also used Sanskrit at times:
It is true that mostmanuscripts in Gāndhārī belong to the Dharmaguptakas, but virtually all schools — inclusiveMahāyāna — used some Gāndhārī. Von Hinüber (1982b and 1983) has pointed out incompletelySanskritised Gāndhārī words in works heretofore ascribed to theSarvāstivādins and drew the conclusion that either the sectarian attribution had to be revised, or the tacit dogma "Gāndhārī equals Dharmaguptaka" is wrong. Conversely, Dharmaguptakas also resorted toSanskrit.[15]: 99
Starting in the first century of theCommon Era, there was a large trend toward a type of Gāndhārī which was heavily Sanskritized.[15]: 99
TheGandharan Buddhist texts, the earliest Buddhist texts ever discovered, are apparently dedicated to the teachers of the Dharmaguptaka school. They tend to confirm a flourishing of the Dharmaguptaka school in northwesternIndia around the 1st century CE, with Gāndhārī as the canonical language, and this would explain the subsequent influence of the Dharmaguptakas inCentral Asia and then northeastern Asia. According to Buddhist scholarA. K. Warder, the Dharmaguptaka originated inAparānta.[16]
According to one scholar, the evidence afforded by the Gandharan Buddhist texts "suggest[s] that the Dharmaguptaka sect achieved early success under their Indo-Scythian supporters in Gandhāra, but that the sect subsequently declined with the rise of theKuṣāṇa Empire (ca. mid-first to third century A.D.), which gave its patronage to the Sarvāstivāda sect."[17]
Available evidence indicates that the first Buddhist missions toKhotan were carried out by the Dharmaguptaka sect:[15]: 98
[T]he KhotanDharmapada, some orthographical devices ofKhotanese and the not yet systematically plotted Gāndhārī loan words in Khotanese betray indisputably that the first missions in Khotan included Dharmaguptakas and used a Kharoṣṭhī-written Gāndhārī. Now all other manuscripts from Khotan, and especially all manuscripts written in Khotanese, belong to the Mahāyāna, are written in theBrāhmī script, and were translated from Sanskrit.
A number of scholars have identified three distinct major phases ofmissionary activities seen in the history ofBuddhism in Central Asia, which are associated with the following sects, chronologically:[18]
In the 7th century CE,Xuanzang andYijing both recorded that the Dharmaguptakas were located inOḍḍiyāna and Central Asia, but not in theIndian subcontinent.[8] Yijing grouped the Mahīśāsaka, Dharmaguptaka, andKāśyapīya together as sub-sects of the Sarvāstivāda, and stated that these three were not prevalent in the "five parts of India," but were located in the some parts of Oḍḍiyāna, Khotan, andKucha.[19]
The Dharmaguptakas made more efforts than any other sect to spread Buddhism outside India, to areas such asIran,Central Asia, and China, and they had great success in doing so.[16] Therefore, most countries which adopted Buddhism from China, also adopted the Dharmaguptaka vinaya and ordination lineage for bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs. According to A. K. Warder, in some ways the Dharmaguptaka sect can be considered to have survived to the present in those East Asian countries.[20] Warder further writes:[21]
It was the Dharmaguptakas who were the first Buddhists to establish themselves in Central Asia. They appear to have carried out a vast circling movement along the trade routes from Aparānta north-west intoIran and at the same time into Oḍḍiyāna (theSuvastu valley, north of Gandhāra, which became one of their main centres). After establishing themselves as far west asParthia they followed the "silk route", the east-west axis of Asia, eastwards across Central Asia and on into China, where they effectively established Buddhism in the second and third centuries A.D. The Mahīśāsakas and Kāśyapīyas appear to have followed them across Asia into China. [...] For the earlier period of Chinese Buddhism it was the Dharmaguptakas who constituted the main and most influential school, and even later theirVinaya remained the basis of the discipline there.
During the early period of Chinese Buddhism, the Indian Buddhist sects recognized as important, and whose texts were studied, were the Dharmaguptakas, Mahīśāsakas, Kāśyapīyas, Sarvāstivādins, and the Mahāsāṃghikas.[22]
Between 250 and 255 CE, the Dharmaguptaka ordination lineage was established in China when Indian monks were invited to help with ordination in China.[23] No full Vinaya had been translated at this time, and only two texts were available: the Dharmaguptaka Karmavācanā for ordination, and the Mahāsāṃghika Prātimokṣa for regulating the life of monks. After the translation of full Vinayas, the Dharmaguptaka ordination lineage was followed by most monks, but temples often regulated monastic life with other Vinaya texts, such as those of the Mahāsāṃghika, the Mahīśāsaka, or the Sarvāstivāda.[23]
In the 7th century, Yijing wrote that in eastern China, most people followed the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, while the Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya was used in earlier times inGuanzhong (the region aroundChang'an), and that the Sarvāstivāda Vinaya was prominent in theYangtze area and further south.[23] In the 7th century, the existence of multiple Vinaya lineages throughout China was criticized by prominent Vinaya masters such asYijing andDao An (654–717). In the early 8th century, Dao An gained the support ofEmperor Zhongzong of Tang and an imperial edict was issued that thesangha in China should use only the Dharmaguptaka vinaya for ordination.[24]
TheGandhāran Buddhist texts (the oldest extant Buddhist manuscripts) are attributed to the Dharmaguptaka sect by Richard Salomon, the leading scholar in the field, and the British Library scrolls "represent a random but reasonably representative fraction of what was probably a much larger set of texts preserved in the library of a monastery of the Dharmaguptaka sect inNagarāhāra Afghanistan."[25][26]
Among the Dharmaguptaka Gandhāran Buddhist texts in theSchøyen Collection, is a fragment in the Kharoṣṭhī script referencing the SixPāramitās, a central practice for bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna doctrine.[27]
In the early 5th century CE, DharmaguptakaVinaya was translated intoChinese by the Dharmaguptaka monkBuddhayaśas (佛陀耶舍) ofKashmir. For this translation, Buddhayaśas recited the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya entirely from memory, rather than reading it from a written manuscript.[28] After its translation, the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya became the predominant vinaya in Chinese Buddhist monasticism. The Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, or monastic rules, are still followed today in China, Vietnam and Korea, and its lineage for the ordination of monks and nuns has survived uninterrupted to this day. The name of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya in the East Asian tradition is the "Vinaya in Four Parts" (Chinese:四分律;pinyin:Sìfēn Lǜ), and the equivalent Sanskrit title would beCaturvargika Vinaya.[29] Ordination under the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya only relates to monastic vows and lineage (Vinaya), and does not conflict with the actual Buddhist teachings that one follows (Dharma).
TheDīrgha Āgama ("Long Discourses," 長阿含經Cháng Āhán Jīng) (T. 1)[30] corresponds to theDīgha Nikāya of the Theravada school. A complete version of theDīrgha Āgama of the Dharmaguptaka sect was translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian (竺佛念) in theLater Qin dynasty, dated to 413 CE. It contains 30 sūtras in contrast to the 34 suttas of the TheravadinDīgha Nikāya.
TheEkottara Āgama ("Incremental Discourses," 增壹阿含經Zēngyī Āhán Jīng) (T. 125) corresponds to theAnguttara Nikāya of the Theravāda school. It was translated into Chinese by Dharmanandi in 384 CE, and edited by Gautama Saṃghadeva in 398 CE. Some have proposed that the original text for this translation came from the Sarvāstivādins or the Mahāsāṃghikas.[31] However, according to A.K. Warder, theEkottara Āgama references 250 prātimokṣa rules for monks, which agrees only with the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya. He also views some of the doctrine as contradicting tenets of the Mahāsāṃghika school, and states that they agree with Dharmaguptaka views currently known. He therefore concludes that the extantEkottara Āgama is that of the Dharmaguptakas.[32]
TheŚāriputra Abhidharma Śāstra (舍利弗阿毘曇論Shèlìfú Āpítán Lùn) (T. 1548) is a completeabhidharma text that is thought to come from the Dharmaguptaka sect. The only complete edition of this text is in Chinese. Sanskrit fragments have been found inBamiyan,Afghanistan, and are now part of theSchøyen Collection (MS 2375/08). These manuscripts are thought to have been part of a monastery library of the MahāsāṃghikaLokottaravāda sect.
The DharmaguptakaTripiṭaka is said to have contained two extra sections that were not included by some other schools. These included a Bodhisattva Piṭaka and aMantra Piṭaka (咒藏Zhòu Zàng), also sometimes called aDhāraṇī Piṭaka.[8] According to the fifth-century Dharmaguptaka monk Buddhayaśas, the translator of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya into Chinese, the Dharmaguptaka school had assimilated the "Mahāyāna Tripiṭaka" (大乘三藏Dàchéng Sānzàng).[33]
The Dharmaguptaka biography of the Buddha is the most exhaustive of all classical biographies of the Buddha, and is entitledAbhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra. Various Chinese translations of this text date from between the 3rd and 6th century CE.
It is unknown when some members of the Dharmaguptaka school began to accept the Mahāyāna sūtras, but theMañjuśrīmūlakalpa records thatKaniṣka (127–151 CE) of the Kuṣāṇa Empire presided over the establishment ofPrajñāpāramitā doctrines in the northwest of India.[34] Tāranātha wrote that in this region, 500 bodhisattvas attended the council at Jālandhra monastery during the time of Kaniṣka, suggesting some institutional strength for Mahāyāna in the northwest during this period.[34]Edward Conze goes further to say that Prajñāpāramitā had great success in the northwest during the Kuṣāṇa period, and may have been the "fortress and hearth" of early Mahāyāna, but not its origin, which he associates with the Mahāsāṃghika branch.[35]
Jan Nattier writes that available textual evidence suggests that the MahāyānaUgraparipṛcchā Sūtra circulated in Dharmaguptaka communities during its early history, but a later translation shows evidence that the text later circulated amongst the Sarvāstivādins as well.[36] TheUgraparipṛcchā also mentions a fourfold division of the Buddhist canon which includes a Bodhisattva Piṭaka, and the Dharmaguptaka are known to have had such a collection in their canon.[37] Nattier further describes the type of community depicted in theUgraparipṛcchā:[38]
... [T]he overall picture that theUgra presents is quite clear. It describes a monastic community in which scriptures concerning the bodhisattva path were accepted as legitimate canonical texts (and their memorization a viable monastic specialty), but in which only a certain subset of monks were involved in the practices associated with the Bodhisattva Vehicle.
The MahāyānaRatnarāśivyākaraṇa Sūtra, which is part of theMahāratnakūṭa Sūtra, is believed by some scholars to have a Dharmaguptaka origin or background, due to its specific regulations regarding giving to the Buddha and giving to the Saṃgha.[39]
According to Joseph Walser, there is evidence that thePañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (25,000 lines) and theŚatasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (100,000 lines) have a connection with the Dharmaguptaka sect, while theAṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (8000 lines) does not.[40] Instead, Guang Xing assesses the view of the Buddha given in theAṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (8000 lines) as being that of the Mahāsāṃghikas.[41]
The translator Buddhayaśas was a Dharmaguptaka monk who was known to be a Mahāyānist, and he is recorded as having learned bothHīnayāna and Mahāyāna treatises. He translated theDharmaguptaka Vinaya, theDīrgha Āgama, and Mahāyāna texts including theĀkāśagarbha Bodhisattva Sūtra (虛空藏菩薩經Xūkōngzàng Púsà Jīng). The preface written by Buddhayaśas for his translation of theDharmaguptaka Vinaya states that the Dharmaguptakas had assimilated the Mahāyāna Tripiṭaka.[33]
The Dharmaguptakas were said to have had two extra sections in their canon:[8]
In the 4th century Mahāyāna abhidharma workAbhidharmasamuccaya,Asaṅga refers to the collection which contains the Āgamas as theŚrāvakapiṭaka, and associates it with the śrāvakas andpratyekabuddhas.[42] Asaṅga classifies the Mahāyāna sūtras as belonging to theBodhisattvapiṭaka, which is designated as the collection of teachings for bodhisattvas.[42]
Paramārtha, a 6th-century CE Indian monk fromUjjain, unequivocally associates the Dharmaguptaka school with the Mahāyāna, and portrays the Dharmaguptakas as being perhaps the closest to a straightforward Mahāyāna sect.[43]
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