Dharmaguptaka
Encyclopedia
Early Buddhist schools
The early Buddhist schools are those schools into which, according to most scholars, the Buddhist monastic saṅgha initially split, due originally to differences in vinaya, and later also due to doctrinal differences and geographical separation of groups of monks.The original saṅgha split into the...
, depending on one's source. They are said to have originated from another sect, the Mahīśāsakas
Mahisasaka
Mahīśāsaka is one of the early Buddhist schools according to some records. Its origins may go back to the dispute in the Second Buddhist Council...
. The Dharmaguptakas had a prominent role in early Central Asian and Chinese Buddhism, and their monastic rules for bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs are still in effect in some East Asian countries to this day, including China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. They are one of three surviving vinaya
Vinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
lineages, along with the Mūlasarvāstivāda
Mulasarvastivada
The Mūlasarvāstivāda was an early school of Buddhism, developed in India during the 2nd century AD and in decline by the 7th century. Its vinaya lineage has been preserved by Tibetans and Mongolians up to the present, although until recently, only Mulasarvastivadin monks existed - the lineage of...
and Theravāda
Theravada
Theravada ; literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India...
.
Doctrinal development
The Dharmaguptaka doctrine appears to have been characterized by an understanding of the BuddhaGautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
as separate from Sangha
Sangha
Sangha is a word in Pali or Sanskrit that can be translated roughly as "association" or "assembly," "company" or "community" with common goal, vision or purpose...
so that his teaching is superior to the one given by arhats. They also emphasise the merit of devotion to stupas, which often had pictorial representation of the stories Buddha's previous life as a bodhisattva
Bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is either an enlightened existence or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one for enlightenment ." The Pali term has sometimes been translated as "wisdom-being," although in modern publications, and...
, as portrayed in the Jatakas. Consequently, they regarded the path of a bodhisattva
Bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is either an enlightened existence or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one for enlightenment ." The Pali term has sometimes been translated as "wisdom-being," although in modern publications, and...
(bodhisattvayāna) and the path of a śrāvaka
Sravaka
Shravaka or Śrāvaka or Sāvaka means "hearer" or, more generally, "disciple".This term is used by both Buddhists and Jains. In Jainism, a shravaka is any lay Jain...
(śrāvakayāna) to be separate.
The Dharmaguptaka and Mahāyāna Buddhism
The Dharmaguptaka TripiṭakaTripiṭaka
' is a traditional term used by various Buddhist sects to describe their various canons of scriptures. As the name suggests, a traditionally contains three "baskets" of teachings: a , a and an .-The three categories:Tripitaka is the three main categories of texts that make up the...
is said to have contained two extra sections that were not included by some other schools. These included a Bodhisattva Piṭaka and a Mantra
Mantra
A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation"...
Piṭaka (Ch. 咒藏), also sometimes called a Dhāraṇī
Dharani
A ' is a type of ritual speech similar to a mantra. The terms dharani and satheesh may be seen as synonyms, although they are normally used in distinct contexts....
Piṭaka. According to the 5th century Dharmaguptaka monk Buddhayaśas, the translator of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya into Chinese, the Dharmaguptaka school had assimilated the "Mahāyāna
Mahayana
Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...
Tripiṭaka" (Ch. 大乘三藏). Paramārtha
Paramartha
Paramārtha was an Indian monk from Ujjain in central India, who is best known for his prolific Chinese translations which include Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa...
, a 6th century CE Indian monk from Ujjain
Ujjain
Ujjain , is an ancient city of Malwa region in central India, on the eastern bank of the Kshipra River , today part of the state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the administrative centre of Ujjain District and Ujjain Division.In ancient times the city was called Ujjayini...
, unequivocally associates the Dharmaguptaka school with the Mahāyāna, and portrays the Dharmaguptakas as being perhaps the closest to a straightforward Mahāyāna sect.
It is unknown when some members of the Dharmaguptaka school began to accept the Mahāyāna sūtras, but the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa records that Kaniṣka
Kanishka
Kanishka ) was an emperor of the Kushan Empire, ruling an empire extending from Bactria to large parts of northern India in the 2nd century of the common era, and famous for his military, political, and spiritual achievements...
(127-151 CE) of the Kuṣāṇa Empire
Kushan Empire
The Kushan Empire originally formed in the early 1st century AD under Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the middle course of the Oxus in what is now northern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.During the 1st and early 2nd centuries...
presided over the establishment of Prajñāpāramitā
Prajnaparamita
Prajñāpāramitā in Buddhism, means "the Perfection of Wisdom." The word Prajñāpāramitā combines the Sanskrit words prajñā with pāramitā . Prajñāpāramitā is a central concept in Mahāyāna Buddhism and its practice and understanding are taken to be indispensable elements of the Bodhisattva Path...
doctrines in the northwest of India. 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. Edward Conze
Edward Conze
Eberhart Julius Dietrich Conze was an Anglo-German scholar probably best known for his pioneering translations of Buddhist texts.-Life and work:...
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
Mahasamghika
The ' , literally the "Great Saṃgha", was one of the early Buddhist schools in ancient India.The origins of the sect of Buddhism are still extremely uncertain, and the subject of debate among scholars. One reason for the interest in the origins of the school is that their Vinaya recension appears...
branch.
According to Joseph Walser, there is evidence that the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (25,000 lines) and the Śatasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (100,000 lines) have a connection with the Dharmaguptaka sect, while the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (8000 lines) does not.
Among the Dharmaguptaka Gandhāran Buddhist texts
Gandharan Buddhist Texts
The Gandhāran Buddhist Texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century CE. They are written in Gāndhārī, and are possibly the oldest extant Indic texts altogether. They were sold to European and Japanese institutions and individuals, and are currently...
in the Schøyen Collection
Schoyen Collection
The Schøyen Collection is the largest private manuscript collection in the world, mostly located in Oslo and London. Formed in the 20th century by Martin Schøyen, it comprises manuscripts of global provenance, spanning 5,000 years of history. It contains more than 13,000 manuscript items; the...
, is a fragment in the Kharoṣṭhī script referencing the Six Pāramitās, a central practice for bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna doctrine.
Influence on East Asian Buddhism
The Dharmaguptakas made more efforts than any other sect to spread Buddhism outside India, to areas such as IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, and China, and they had great success in doing so. 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 those East Asian countries, the Dharmaguptaka can be considered to have survived in a partial and attenuated form.
School's flourishing and demise
The Gandharan 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 northwestern IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
around the 1st century CE, with Gāndhārī
Gandhari language
Gāndhārī was a north-western prakrit spoken in Gāndhāra. Like all prakrits, it is thus descended from either Vedic Sanskrit or a closely related language. Gāndhārī was written in the script...
as the canonical language, and this would explain the subsequent influence of the Dharmaguptakas in Central Asia and then northeastern Asia. According to Buddhist scholar A.K. Warder, the Dharmaguptaka originated in Aparanta
Aparanta
Aparanta, or Aparantaka was a geographical region of ancient India, variously corresponding to the northern Konkan, northern Gujarat, Kathiawar, Kachch and Sindh....
.
Scholars over the years have asserted that the Dharmaguptaka were founded by a Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
monk:
One of the major missionaries was Yonaka Dhammarakkhita. He was, as his name indicates, a Greek monk, native of ‘Alasanda’ (Alexandria). He features in the Pali tradition as a master of psychic powers as well as an expert on Abhidhamma. He went to the Greek-occupied areas in the west of India. Long ago Przyluski, followed by Frauwallner, suggested that Dhammarakkhita be identified with the founder of the Dharmaguptaka school, since dhammarakkhita and dhammagutta have identical meaning. Since that time two pieces of evidence have come to light that make this suggestion highly plausible. One is the positive identification of very early manuscripts belonging to the Dharmaguptakas in the Gandhāra region, exactly where we expect to find Yonaka Dhammarakkhita. The second is that the phonetic rendering of his name in the Sudassanavinayavibhāsā evidently renders ‘Dharmagutta’ rather than ‘Dhammarakkhita’.http://www.congress-on-buddhist-women.org/index.php?id=62
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 the Kusāna Empire (ca. mid-first to third century A.D.), which gave its patronage to the Sarvāstivāda sect."
The Dharmaguptaka vinaya
Vinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
was translated into Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
by Buddhayasas in the early fifth-century, and thereafter became the predominant vinaya
Vinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
in Chinese Buddhist monasticism. When Xuanzang
Xuanzang
Xuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...
traveled in Asia during the 7th century however, he reported that the Dharmaguptakas had almost completely disappeared from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
. In the 7th century CE, Xuanzang and Yijing recorded that the Dharmaguptakas were located in Oḍḍiyāna
Oddiyana
', a small country in early medieval India, ascribed importance in the development and dissemination of Tantric Buddhism. The physical location of is disputed and open to conjecture. Possible locations that have been identified are:...
and Central Asia, but not on the mainland of India.
Vinaya legacy
The Dharmaguptaka vinayaVinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
, or monastic rules, are still followed today in Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Korea, and its lineage for the ordination of nuns has survived uninterrupted to this day. The name of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya in this traditions is the Four-Part Vinaya (Ch. 四分律 sìfēnlǜ), and the equivalent Sanskrit title is the Caturvargika Vinaya.
Ordination under the Dharmaguptaka vinaya only relates to monastic vows and lineage, and does not conflict with the actual Buddhist tradition one follows.