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Art. IX.—The Sects of the Buddhists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

T. W. Rhys Davids
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Extract

We find in the Dīpavamsa (Chapter V. 39–48) a list of the eighteen sects (or schools rather) into which the Buddhists in India had, in the course of the second century of the Buddhist era, been divided. In the Mahāvamsa (Chapter V.) there is a similar list, evidently drawn from the same sources, but omitting (in Tumour's texts) numbers 1–7 of the older list. It is curious that precisely where these names ought to come in (at line 5), the text given by Tumour is evidently corrupt, a half-sloka at least being missing, and probably more.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1891 , pp. 409 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1891

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References

page 409 note 1 Since the above was written I find that the missing passage has actually been found by Baṭuwan Tuḍāwa. It contains exactly what we find in the Dīpāvamsa.

page 410 note 1 The Mahā-bodhīvamsa, being edited this year for the Pāli Text Society, also gives the eighteen schools of Buddhists in India. But its data are merely derived from the older Ceylon sources, and it adds nothing new.

All our Ceylon information is really derived from the Mahāvihāra at Anurādhapura.

Three of the eighteen sects hare been found in inscriptions of the second and third century A.D.—The Bhadrāyanīyā in the “Archæological Survey of Western India,” II. 85; IV. 109.111—the Cetikā, ibid. IV. 115, and “Arch. Survey of Southern India,” I. 100—and the Mahāsaṃghikā in the “Arch. Survey of Western India,” IV. 113.

page 411 note 1 This school was very probably the source of the schools of the Eastern and Western Caves at Dhanakaṭaka (the Pubba- and Apara-selikā of Table I. (B.)) as its name occurs once on the Amaravatī Tope in the description of one of the donors, a member of the order resident in one or other of these mountain vihāras.

page 421 note 1 In his “Life of the Buddha,” Chapter VI.

page 421 note 2 MrBeal, , in the “Indian Antiquary.” ix. 300Google Scholar, gives us the same details as we find in Mr. Rockhill, hut through a Chinese instead of a Tibetan translation.

page 422 note 1 Sarva Darṣaha Sangraha, Chapter III.