Gilgit Manuscripts Vol 01

SR No.: 020346
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nalinaksha Dutt, D M Bhattacharya, Shivnath Sharma
Publisher: Government of Jammu
Total Pages: 266
Language: Sanskrit, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Catalogue
File Size: 20 MB

Page 19

8
931
BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR
extraordinary thoughts in a treatise which taught heresy." An attempt was made to drown into the Ganges these monks who however saved themselves by flying through the air to Kashmir where they settled on the hills and the valleys. On hearing this, Aśoka felt remorse and requested them to return, and on their refusal, built for them 500 monasteries and "gave up all Kashmir for the benefit of the Buddhist Church." The fact underlying this story is that the "investigators of name and reality" were none other than the Sarvästivādins, whose principal tenet is that nāma and rūpa are real and are divisible into 64 elements which exist for ever (sarvam asti), and it is for this they had the appellation of Sarvāstivāda.2 Then the statement that they resorted to the hills and valleys of Kashmir corroborates the flight of the Sarvastivādin monks to the north in Kashmir.
name
Yuan Chwang must have fallen into confusion in regard to the name Mahadeva. There were very probably two persons of this “one an influential abbot of Pataliputra" who preached the Devadita-sutra. and the other a monk who introduced the tenets relating to the imperfections of an Arhat." Mahadeva the investigator of name and reality must have been a Sarvästivādin while the other Mahadeva, who attributed imperfections to an Arhat, was a Mahasanghika. Yuan Chwang further confused the Theravādins with the Mahasanghikas when he wrote that Aśoka supported the Mahāsanghikas as against the Theravādins, and that 500 Arhats left Pataliputra and propagated the Sthavira School in Kashmir, while
1 Watters, I, p. 267.
2 See my paper on the Doctrine of the Sarvästivada School in the IHQ., XIV, pp. 114-20, 799 ff.
3 Watters, I. p. 269.
4 Majjbima, III, 179.
5 Watters, 1, p. 268. See my paper on the Doctrines of the Mahasanghika School in the IHQ., XIII, pp. 549-80; XIV, 110 ff.