Dharmagupta school

Dharmagupta school

法蔵部・曇無徳部 (Skt; Jpn Hozo-bu or Dom-mutoku-bu)

Also known as the Dharmaguptaka school. One of the twenty Hinayana schools of ancient India.

According to The Doctrines of the Different Schools, during the third one-hundred-year period after Shakyamuni Buddha's death, the Dharmagupta school branched out from the Mahishasaka school, which had derived from the Sarvastivada school.

The Fourfold Rules of Discipline, a text of the vinaya (rules of monastic discipline), belongs to the Dharmagupta school.

This text had a great influence on Chinese Buddhism.

According to The Doctrines of the Different Schools, the Dharmagupta school attached greater importance to making offerings to the Buddha himself than to the Buddhist Order.

It asserted that the building of stupas would result in great reward.

Although the school is within the lineage of the Sthaviravada (Pali Theravada) school, its ideas are similar to those of another, more progressive and flexible lineage, the Mahasamghika school and its branches.

It is said that the Long Agama Sutra, one of the four Agama sutras, was preserved and transmitted by the Dharmagupta school.

....................................... The Dharmaguptaka (Sanskrit: धर्मगुप्तक; traditional Chinese: 法藏部; pinyin: Fǎzáng Bù) are one of the eighteen or twenty early Buddhist schools, depending on one's source.

They are said to have originated from another sect, the Mahīśāsakas.

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, Vietnam, Korea, and Taiwan.

They are one of three surviving Vinaya lineages, along with the Theravāda and the Mūlasarvāstivāda.

Doctrinal development

The Dharmaguptaka doctrine appears to have been characterized by an understanding of the Buddha as separate from Saṃgha 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, as portrayed in the Jatakas.

The Dharmaguptakas regarded the path of a śrāvaka (śrāvakayāna) and the path of a bodhisattva (bodhisattvayāna) to be separate.

The Dharmaguptaka are known to have rejected the authority of the Sarvāstivāda pratimokṣa rules on the grounds that the original teachings of the Buddha had been lost.

Appearance

Between 148 and 170 CE, the Parthian monk An Shigao came to China and translated a work which described the color of monastic robes (Skt. kāṣāya) utitized in five major Indian Buddhist sects, called Da Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi (大比丘三千威儀).

Another text translated at a later date, the Śariputraparipṛcchā, contains a very similar passage with nearly the same information. However, the colors for Dharmaguptaka and Sarvāstivāda are reversed.

In the earlier source, the Sarvāstivāda are described as wearing deep red robes, while the Dharmaguptaka are described as wearing black robes.

The corresponding passage found in the later Śariputraparipṛcchā, in contrast, portrays the Sarvāstivāda as wearing black robes and the Dharmaguptaka as wearing deep red robes.

During the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese Buddhist monastics typically wore grayish-black robes, and were even colloquially referred to as Ziyi (緇衣), "those of the black robes."

However, the Song Dynasty monk Zanning (919–1001 CE) writes that during the earlier Han-Wei period, the Chinese monks typically wore red robes.

According to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, 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. History

The region of Aparānta, where the Dharmaguptakas are believed to have originated

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 India around the 1st century CE, with Gāndhārī as the canonical language, and this would explain the subsequent influence of the Dharmaguptakas in [[Wikipedia:Central Asia|Central Asia]] and then northeastern Asia.

According to Buddhist scholar A.K. Warder, the Dharmaguptaka originated in Aparānta.

Scholars over the years have asserted that the Dharmaguptaka were founded by a Greek 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 Przyłuski, 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'.

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 Kuṣāṇa Empire (ca. mid-first to third century A.D.), which gave its patronage to the Sarvāstivāda sect."

In the 7th century CE, Xuanzang and Yijing both recorded that the Dharmaguptakas were located in Oḍḍiyāna and [[Wikipedia:Central Asia|Central Asia]], but not on the mainland of India.

Yijing grouped the Mahīśāsaka, Dharmaguptaka, and Kāśyapīya 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, and Kucha.

The Dharmaguptakas made more efforts than any other sect to spread Buddhism outside India, to areas such as Iran, [[Wikipedia:Central Asia|Central Asia]], 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 some ways in those East Asian countries, the Dharmaguptaka sect can be considered to have survived to the present.

Warder further writes:

It was the Dharmaguptakas who were the first Buddhists to establish themselves in [[Wikipedia:Central Asia|Central Asia]].

They appear to have carried out a vast circling movement along the trade routes from Aparānta north-west into Iran and at the same time into Oḍḍiyāna (the Suvastu valley, north of Gandhāra, which became one of their main centres).

After establishing themselves as far west as Parthia they followed the "silk route", the east-west axis of Asia, eastwards across [[Wikipedia:Central Asia|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 their Vinaya 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.

Texts

Gandhāran Buddhist texts

The Gandhāran 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 in Nagarāhāra."

Among the Dharmaguptaka Gandhāran Buddhist texts in the Schøyen Collection, is a fragment in the Kharoṣṭhī script referencing the Six Pāramitās, a central practice for bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna doctrine.

Vinaya translation

In the early 5th century CE, Dharmaguptaka Vinaya was translated into Chinese by the Dharmaguptaka monk Buddhayaśas (佛陀耶舍) of Kashmir.

For this translation, Buddhayaśas recited the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya entirely from memory, rather than reading it from a written manuscript.

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 Taiwan, 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 this tradition is the Si Fen Lü (四分律), or Four-Part Vinaya, and the equivalent Sanskrit title would be Caturvargika Vinaya.

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).

Āgama collections

The Dīrgha Āgama ("Long Discourses," 長阿含經 Cháng Āhánjīng) (T. 1) corresponds to the Dīgha Nikāya of the Theravada school.

A complete version of the Dīrgha Āgama of the Dharmaguptaka sect was translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian (竺佛念) in the Later Qin dynasty, dated to 413 CE.

It contains 30 sūtras in contrast to the 34 suttas of the Theravadin Dīgha Nikāya.

The Ekottara Āgama ("Incremental Discourses," 增壹阿含經 Zēngyī Āhánjīng) (T. 125) corresponds to the Anguttara 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.

However, according to A.K. Warder, the Ekottara 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 extant Ekottara Āgama is that of the Dharmaguptakas.

Abhidharma

The Śāriputra Abhidharma Śāstra (舍利弗阿毘曇論 Shèlìfú Āpítán Lùn) (T. 1548) is a complete abhidharma text that is thought to come from the Dharmaguptaka sect.

The only complete edition of this text is that in Chinese.

Sanskrit fragments from this text have been found in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, and are now part of the Schøyen Collection (MS 2375/08).

The manuscripts at this find are thought to have been part of a monastery library of the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda sect. Additional piṭakas

The Dharmaguptaka Tripiṭaka is said to have contained two extra sections that were not included by some other schools.

These included a Bodhisattva Piṭaka and a Mantra Piṭaka (咒藏 Zhòu Zàng), also sometimes called a Dhāraṇī Piṭaka.

According to the 5th 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).

Abhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra

The Dharmaguptaka biography of the Buddha is the most exhaustive of all classical biographies of the Buddha, and is entitled Abhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra. Various Chinese translations of this text date from between the 3rd and 6th century CE. Relationship to the Mahāyāna

Paramārtha, a 6th century CE Indian monk from Ujjain, 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 (127-151 CE) of the Kuṣāṇa Empire presided over the establishment of Prajñāpāramitā 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 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.

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.

Source

www.sgilibrary.org