Vatsiputriyah
Vatsiputriyas in Sanskrit, Vajjiputtakas in Pali. Hinayanist sect often linked with Sammatiyah, which broke from the orothodox Sarvastivada. The founder was Vatsa. They may be classified as Pudgalavadins, accepting the pudgala transmigrated, and rejecting the theory of the Five Skandhas (the Five Aggregates comprising personality). They were considered schismatics through their insistence on the reality of the self. That individual self is neither the same nor different from the Five Skandhas. The doctrine challenged the Dharma exposition by the Sarvastivadah. The school was later dividied into four:
1) Dharmottariyah
2) Bhadrayaniyah
3) Sammatiyah
4) Sannagarikah
Vatsiputriya: There is controversy over the root of the name of the Vatsiputriya school. Like the Sarvastivadins, they believed that an arhat could fall and that heretics could also attain miraculous powers.
Others feel it may be named for Vatsa, a brahmin, who is also called Vatsiputra. He was a leader or a member of the school known as Vatsiputriyas.
The Vatsiputriyas advocated the theory of the 'pudgala', the permanent substance of an individual.
The pudgala was neither the same as nor different from the skandhas; obviously they had not been exposed to Nagarjuna's reasoning in his
Mulamadhyakarikas which clearly refutes the existence of any such agent. However, the Vatsiputriyas provided a transitional link to the Madhyamika.
They were aware of the inadequacy of a stream of elements to account for the basic facts of experience, memory, moral responsibility, spiritual life, etc. They believed in a permanent unity.
In Kashmir, the sixth Patriarch, Krsna, who was given the Dharma by Dhitika, countered the false view of self being taught by the monk named Vatsa. Krsna was an arhat, who entered nirvana.
He was the son of a prominent merchant family, and was known to have guided many disciples to realization.
Vasubandhu's Abhidharma Kosa devotes a chapter to the refutation of the atma doctrine of this school, which admitted a quasi-permanent self.
see also: Vatsiputriya
