The Schools Multiply: Twenty Schisms in Full
The schism narrative continues at full speed: a second controversy over Mahādeva drives one faction into the mountains, producing two more schools; the separate lineage of the Sthavira school is traced teacher to teacher until it too splits, at year three hundred, into the Sarvāstivāda; and from the Sarvāstivāda in turn come the Vātsīputrīya and its own four descendants, an early Vedic-scholar convert's school, and finally the Sautrāntika. Jizang closes by reconciling the final tally of twenty schools against a rival count of five hundred, and by stating precisely which schools the three treatises actually mean to refute.
1. Mahādeva's Second Controversy, and the Mountain Schools
A separate incident, again involving Mahādeva, splits the Mahāsāṃghika a second time — this time over a dispute about whether an unqualified preceptor can validly transmit the precepts to others, a controversy severe enough that the losing faction relocated permanently into the mountains and produced two schools named for their new homes.
於二百年滿有一外道。名大天。爾時摩伽陀國有優婆塞。大弘佛法。諸外道為利養故。皆剃頭出家。便有賊住比丘。大天為賊住主。大天身自出家。所度弟子依大天眾出家受戒。爾時眾人共諍斯事。上座部云。和上無戒及破戒。闍梨有戒。大眾亦有戒。受戒則得。戒從大眾得。大眾知和上無戒。而與共受戒者。大眾得突吉羅罪。問戒既不從和上得。何故稱和上名。答欲令受戒後和上攝錄教誨弟子耳。薩婆多用此解。餘部言。和上無戒及破戒。大眾有戒則不得戒。戒從和上得故。因此諍論遂不容大天。徒眾因爾別住山間。於此山間執義又異。故有支提山部及北山部。佛得道及轉法輪處。大眾處名支提。此處有山。名支提山。於彼山北別有山。名北山部也。
At the close of the two hundredth year, there was an outsider named Mahādeva. At that time, in the kingdom of Magadha, there was a lay devotee who vigorously propagated the Buddha's teaching, and various outsiders, for the sake of material support, all shaved their heads and went forth as monks — among them came monks who were, in truth, mere thieves in monastic robes, and this same Mahādeva became the leader of these thieving impostors. Mahādeva had himself gone forth properly, but the disciples he ordained went forth and received the precepts only through this assembly under Mahādeva's leadership. At that time the whole community disputed this very matter. The Sthavira said: "The preceptor himself may be without the precepts, or may even have broken them, yet the officiating instructor has the precepts, and the assembly likewise has the precepts — so the precepts are still validly received, obtained from the assembly as a whole. Since the assembly knew the preceptor was without the precepts, and yet still conferred ordination together with him, the assembly incurs only a minor offense for having done so." Question: If the precepts are, in that case, not actually obtained from the preceptor at all, why is he still given the title "preceptor"? Answer: It is simply so that, after the precepts are received, the preceptor may take responsibility for gathering in and instructing his disciples. The Sarvāstivāda adopted this very explanation. The other schools said instead: "The preceptor, being without the precepts or having broken them, and the assembly merely having the precepts in a general sense, means that the precepts are not actually obtained at all in such a case — for the precepts must be obtained specifically from the preceptor himself." On account of this dispute, the community would no longer tolerate Mahādeva, and his followers were thereupon forced to dwell apart, among the mountains. Within these mountains their doctrines diverged yet again, and so there came to be the Caitika school and the Uttaraśaila, "the Northern Mountain" school. The place where the Buddha attained the way and turned the Dharma-wheel, where the great assembly gathered, is named Caitya; there is a mountain at this place, named Caitya Mountain. To the north of that same mountain there stands a separate mountain, and this is the origin of the name of the Northern Mountain school.
This second Mahādeva controversy is a genuinely distinct episode from the "Five Points" dispute recounted in Part 8, though both bear his name and both, on this treatise's telling, further splinter the Mahāsāṃghika. The technical dispute here — whether ordination validly transmitted through a corrupt preceptor is still binding — is a question of real and lasting consequence in Vinaya law, not merely of antiquarian interest, and Jizang records both sides' reasoning in full rather than simply declaring a winner.
2. Counting the Mahāsāṃghika's Descendants: Five, Seven, or Eight
Jizang pauses the narrative to reconcile what looks like conflicting arithmetic — sources that speak of five Mahāsāṃghika sub-schools, seven, or eight — showing that all three counts are consistent once it is understood which schools each scheme is, and is not, including.
大眾部合別數。或五或七或八。言五部者。初一說部。二出世說部。三灰山住部。此初破成三也。次多聞部。次多聞分別部。故成五部。言七部者。因外道分成二部。謂支提山部及北山部。前五因內執起。後二因外道起。故成七部。言八部者。則數根本大眾部也。
Counting the Mahāsāṃghika's descendants together with the root school, the total is given variously as five, seven, or eight. As for "five schools": the first is the Ekavyavahārika; the second, the Lokottaravāda; the third, the Kaukkuṭika — these three arose from the original first split. Next comes the Bahuśrutīya, and next the Prajñaptivāda — making five schools in all. As for "seven schools": on account of the controversy over the outsider Mahādeva, two further schools split off, namely the Caitika and the Uttaraśaila. The first five arose from disputes internal to the tradition, while these last two arose on account of an outsider — making seven schools in all. As for "eight schools": this simply means counting the root Mahāsāṃghika school itself alongside its seven descendants.
The Bahuśrutīya ("the widely learned school") and Prajñaptivāda ("the school of designation") are introduced here for the first time by name in this reconciliation of counts, though their fuller origin stories — a hidden sage who preserved both shallow and profound teaching, and a reinterpretation of the earlier schools' own doctrine — belong to the narrative already summarized in Part 8. Jizang's habit of reconciling variant counts rather than silently choosing one, seen already with the First Council's five hundred versus a thousand participants, is on full display here: five, seven, and eight are not competing claims but three different stopping-points along the very same lineage.
3. The Sthavira's Own Transmission, Down to the Sarvāstivāda Split
Jizang now turns to the other half of the original schism, the Sthavira school, and traces its own separate lineage of transmission — teacher to teacher, generation to generation — down to the moment, two hundred years further on, when this lineage too finally split, over the very same question of relative emphasis on sūtra against Abhidharma that has organized so much of this treatise already.
次上座弟子部者。佛滅度後。迦葉以三藏付三師。以修多羅付阿難。以毘曇付富樓那。以律付優婆離。阿難去世。以修多羅付末田地。末田地付舍那婆斯。舍那婆斯付。優婆掘多。優婆掘多付富樓那富樓那付寐者柯。寐者柯付迦旃延尼子。從迦葉至寐者柯二百年已來無異部。至三百年初。迦旃延尼子去世。便分成兩部。一上座弟子部。二薩婆多部。
Next, as for the Sthavira's own disciple lineage: after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, Kāśyapa entrusted the Three Baskets to three separate masters — the sūtras he entrusted to Ānanda, the Abhidharma he entrusted to Pūrṇa, and the Vinaya he entrusted to Upāli. When Ānanda's own life drew to a close, he entrusted the sūtras to Madhyāntika; Madhyāntika entrusted them to Śāṇakavāsin; Śāṇakavāsin entrusted them to Upagupta; Upagupta entrusted them to Pūrṇa; Pūrṇa entrusted them to Maitreyaka; and Maitreyaka entrusted them to Kātyāyanīputra. From Kāśyapa down to Maitreyaka, across two hundred years, there arose no divergent school whatsoever. It was only at the beginning of the three-hundredth year, when Kātyāyanīputra's own life drew to a close, that the lineage split into two schools: first, the Sthavira Disciple school; second, the Sarvāstivāda.
所以分成二部者。上座弟子但弘經。以經為正。律開遮不定。毘曇但釋經。或過本或減本。故不正弘之。亦不棄捨二藏也。而薩婆多謂毘曇最勝。故偏弘之。從迦葉至掘多。正弘經。從富樓那稍棄本弘末。故正弘毘曇。至迦旃延大興毘曇。上座弟子部見其棄本弘末。四過宣令遣其改宗。遂守宗不改。而上座弟子部移往雪山避之。因名雪山住部。
The reason the lineage split into two schools is this: the Sthavira Disciples propagated the sūtras alone, taking the sūtras as primary, since the Vinaya's own rules of permission and prohibition are not fixed absolutely, while the Abhidharma is simply an explanation of the sūtras that sometimes exceeds and sometimes falls short of the original text — and for this reason they did not make the Abhidharma their primary focus of propagation, though neither did they discard either of the other two baskets. The Sarvāstivāda, by contrast, held that the Abhidharma was supreme above all, and so propagated it exclusively. From Kāśyapa down to Upagupta, the lineage had properly propagated the sūtras; from Pūrṇa onward, it gradually set aside the root in favor of the branch, and so came to propagate the Abhidharma as primary instead. By the time of Kātyāyanīputra, the Abhidharma flourished greatly. The Sthavira Disciples, seeing this abandonment of the root in favor of the branch, issued four separate formal warnings urging a change of course, but the other side held fast to its own position and would not change. And so the Sthavira Disciples withdrew to the Himalayan snow mountains to remove themselves from the dispute — and this is the origin of the name Haimavata, "the school dwelling in the snows."
This unbroken chain of named teachers — Kāśyapa to Ānanda to Madhyāntika to Śāṇakavāsin to Upagupta to Pūrṇa to Maitreyaka to Kātyāyanīputra — is one of the standard Indian patriarchal lineages preserved across multiple Chinese Buddhist historical sources, and its final figure, Kātyāyanīputra, is the same Kātyāyana already named in Part 2 as the author of the Eight Aggregations, the foundational Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma text. The dispute recorded here — sūtra-primacy against Abhidharma-primacy — is the identical fault line this entire treatise has used since Part 3's ten-point refutation of the Abhidharma school for having lost sight of its own root tradition in the Āgamas.
4. The Vātsīputrīya, and Its Own Four Descendants
From the Sarvāstivāda itself, a new school now emerges: the Vātsīputrīya, whose curious name Jizang traces through three full generations of teacher and disciple, and which itself further divides into four schools a century later, each dissatisfied in its own way with Śāriputra's own Abhidharma.
三百年從薩婆多出一部。名可住子弟子部。即是舊犢子部也。言可住子弟子部者。有仙人名可住。有女人。是此仙人種。故名可住子。有阿羅漢。是可住女人之子。故名可住子。此部是此羅漢之弟子。故名可住子弟子也。舍利弗是羅睺羅和上。羅睺羅是可住子和上。此部復是可住子之弟子。舍利弗釋佛九分毘曇名法相毘曇。羅睺羅弘舍利弗毘曇。可住子弘羅睺羅所說。此部復弘可住子所說也。
In the three-hundredth year, one school split off from the Sarvāstivāda, named the Vātsīputrīya Disciple school — this is the same as the school formerly called the Vātsīputrīya, "the school of Vatsa's son." As for the name "Vātsīputrīya Disciple": there was a sage named Vatsa, and a woman who was of this sage's own lineage — hence she was named "Vatsa's daughter." There was, in turn, an arhat who was the son of this woman named Vatsa's daughter — hence he was named "Vatsa's grandson" [Vātsīputra]. This school consists of the disciples of this very arhat — hence it is named the Vātsīputrīya Disciple school. Now, Śāriputra was the preceptor of Rāhula, and Rāhula was the preceptor of Vātsīputra, so this school is, in turn, a school of Vātsīputra's own disciples. Śāriputra's own exposition of the Buddha's ninefold Abhidharma is named the Abhidharma of Dharma-Characteristics; Rāhula propagated Śāriputra's Abhidharma; Vātsīputra propagated what Rāhula had taught; and this school, in turn, propagates what Vātsīputra himself taught.
次三百年中從可住子部復出四部。以嫌舍利弗毘曇不足。更各各造論取經中義足之。所執異故。故成四部。一法尚部。即舊曇無德部也。二賢乘部。三正量弟子部。有大正量羅漢。其是弟子。故名正量弟子部。此三從人作名。四名密林部。從住處作名也。
Next, within the same three-hundredth year, four further schools split off from the Vātsīputrīya, each dissatisfied that Śāriputra's own Abhidharma was insufficient, and each separately composing its own treatise, drawing on meanings found within the sūtras to supplement it. Since what each held to differed, four schools resulted. The first is the Dharmottarīya school. The second is the Bhadrayānīya school. The third is the Sāṃmitīya Disciple school: there was a great arhat named Sāṃmitīya, and this school consists of his disciples — hence it is named the Sāṃmitīya Disciple school. These three schools all take their names from a person. The fourth is named the Ṣaṇṇagarika school, taking its name instead from where it dwelt.
The etymological chain given here for "Vātsīputrīya" — sage Vatsa, to Vatsa's daughter, to her son "Vatsa's grandson," to his own disciples — is offered by Jizang with evident care, and the school is more usually known in Western scholarship simply as the Pudgalavāda, "the school of the person," for its distinctive and controversial doctrine that a real, though ineffable, person (pudgala) exists apart from the five aggregates — the same doctrine already invoked, without being named outright, in Part 5's ranking of Hīnayāna schools by depth of insight into emptiness, where the Vātsīputrīya was placed at the very bottom for failing to attain either of the two emptinesses.
5. The Vedic Scholar's School, and Two More from the Sarvāstivāda
The Sarvāstivāda continues to branch: a Vedic scholar's conversion produces one new school built on ornamenting Buddhist teaching with the language of the Vedas; his own successor's mystical connection to Maudgalyāyana produces a school claiming a fivefold canon rather than three; and a prodigy ordained at the age of seven produces yet another.
三百年從薩婆多部復出一部。名正地部。有婆羅門。是國師名。正地部善解四韋陀。出家得羅漢。取四韋陀好語莊嚴佛經。執義又異。時人有信其所說。故別為一部。三百年中從正地部又出一部。名法護部。其本是目連弟子。得羅漢恒隨目連往色界中。有所說法皆能誦持。自撰為五藏。三藏如常。四呪藏。五菩薩藏。有信其所說者。故別成一部也。
Also in the three-hundredth year, a further school split off from the Sarvāstivāda, named the Mahīśāsaka school. There was a brahmin who served as a royal chaplain, and Mahīśāsaka was skilled in expounding the four Vedas; going forth from household life, he attained arhatship, and took the fine language of the four Vedas to embellish the Buddhist scriptures. What he held to differed from the rest, and people of the time believed what he taught, and so a separate school was formed. Within the same three-hundredth year, a further school split off from the Mahīśāsaka, named the Dharmaguptaka school. Its founder was originally a disciple of Maudgalyāyana, who attained arhatship and constantly followed Maudgalyāyana into the form realm, where he was able to memorize and recite in full whatever Dharma was taught there. He compiled his own canon of five divisions: the usual three baskets, plus a fourth basket of mantras, and a fifth, the Bodhisattva Basket. There were those who believed what he taught, and so a separate school was formed.
三百年中從薩婆多部又出一部。名善歲部。迦留陀夷是其父。及多比丘尼是母。七歲得羅漢。值佛聞法皆能誦持。撰集佛語次第相對。破外道為一類。對治眾生煩惱復為一類。時人有信其所說者。故別為一部也。三百年中從薩婆多部又出一部。名說度部。謂五陰從此世度至後世。得治道乃滅。亦名說經部。謂唯經藏為正。餘二皆成經耳。
Also within the three-hundredth year, yet another school split off from the Sarvāstivāda, named the Kāśyapīya school. Udāyin was his father, and the nun Mahāmatī was his mother; he attained arhatship at the age of seven, and having encountered the Buddha and heard the Dharma, he was able to memorize and recite all of it. He compiled the Buddha's own sayings into matched sequences, one category directed at refuting outsiders, another category directed at counteracting the afflictions of sentient beings. People of the time believed what he taught, and so a separate school was formed. Also within the three-hundredth year, still another school split off from the Sarvāstivāda, named the Saṃkrāntivāda, "the school of transmigration" — holding that the five aggregates transmigrate from this present life across into the next, and are extinguished only upon attaining the path that remedies them. It is also named the Sautrāntika, "the school taking the sūtras as the final authority" — holding that the sūtra-basket alone is the correct standard, while the other two baskets serve merely as its exposition.
The Sautrāntika, introduced here at the very end of this long chain of schisms, is the school already identified in Part 3 as one of the traditions Harivarman may have drawn on in composing the Satyasiddhi-śāstra — Paramārtha's own testimony, cited there, that "he made use of the Sautrāntika doctrine specifically." Its founding principle, that the sūtra-basket alone is authoritative and the Abhidharma merely secondary exposition, places it, by this treatise's own repeated logic, closer to the Buddha's own original teaching than the Sarvāstivāda it split from — one more piece of evidence for why Satyasiddhi consistently ranks above the Abhidharma throughout this collection.
6. The Final Tally: Twenty Schools, Reconciled Against Five Hundred
Jizang now totals the entire genealogy — eleven schools descending from the Sthavira, seven from the Mahāsāṃghika, plus the two root schools, for twenty in all — and reconciles this figure against two further counting traditions: a scheme of "five teachers" told two different ways, and the alarming figure of five hundred schools mentioned in the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom.
從上座部都合有十一部。大眾部有七部。合成十八部。足根本二部為二十部。而羅婆多傳有異世五師。有同世五師。異世五師者。一迦葉。二阿難。三末田地。四舍那婆斯。五優婆掘多。此五人持佛法藏各得二十餘年更相付屬。名異世也。同世五師者。於優婆掘多世即分成五部。一時並起。名同世五師。一曇無德。二摩訶僧祇。三彌沙塞。四迦葉維。五犢子部。
From the Sthavira school there descend, in all, eleven schools. From the Mahāsāṃghika there are seven schools. Together these make eighteen schools; adding the two root schools themselves brings the total to twenty schools. Now, the biography of Rāhula's own transmission speaks of "five teachers across different ages" and also of "five teachers within a single age." As for the five teachers across different ages: first, Kāśyapa; second, Ānanda; third, Madhyāntika; fourth, Śāṇakavāsin; fifth, Upagupta. Each of these five held the Buddha's Dharma treasury for a little over twenty years apiece, entrusting it in turn to the next — hence they are called "of different ages." As for the five teachers within a single age: in Upagupta's own generation, the tradition split at once into five schools, all arising together at the same time — hence they are called "of a single age." These are: first, the Dharmaguptaka; second, the Mahāsāṃghika; third, the Mahīśāsaka; fourth, the Kāśyapīya; fifth, the Vātsīputrīya.
又大集經亦明五部。而文殊師利經部執論及羅什分別部論。此三皆明二十部。所以有五部復有二十部不同者。取其始終異執故有二十。取其當世盛行故但說五部。而言五部一時起者。則與上二十部義相違。或可見聞各異故也。
The Mahāsaṃnipāta Sūtra likewise makes clear a scheme of five schools. As for the Mañjuśrī-paripṛcchā Sūtra's section on the schools' divergent doctrines and Kumārajīva's own Treatise Distinguishing the Schools — these three sources all make clear a total of twenty schools. As for why there should be both a scheme of five schools and a scheme of twenty schools, differing from one another: taking into account every divergent doctrine from beginning to end yields twenty; taking into account only which schools were flourishing at any one given time yields merely five. As for the claim that these five schools "arose all at one and the same time," this does appear to conflict with the sense of the twenty-school scheme described above — though it may simply be that different sources report what they themselves happened to see and hear.
所言五百部者。智度論釋般若信毀品云。佛滅度後五百歲後。有五百部。不知佛意為解脫故。執諸法有決定相。聞畢竟空如刀傷心。龍樹提婆為諸部異執失佛教意故。造論破迷也。
As for what is meant by "five hundred schools": the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, in its commentary on the chapter on faith and slander in the Perfection of Wisdom, says: "Five hundred years after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, there arose five hundred schools, not understanding that the Buddha's intent was liberation itself, and so clinging to all dharmas as possessing a fixed, determinate character — such that on hearing of ultimate emptiness, it wounded their hearts as though cut by a knife." It was on account of these various schools' divergent doctrines having lost the Buddha's own true intent that Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva composed their treatises, in order to refute this confusion.
Notice Jizang's candor in the middle paragraph above: rather than force an artificial harmony onto sources that genuinely conflict, he allows that the "five schools arising simultaneously" account may simply be irreconcilable with the twenty-school genealogy just given in careful, teacher-by-teacher detail, and offers only the modest explanation that different traditions record what they happened to witness. "Five hundred schools" in the final paragraph is best read as a rhetorical figure for pervasive doctrinal confusion rather than a literal school-by-school census — the number's real work is to justify the very existence of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva's treatises as a response proportionate to how widespread the confusion had become.
7. Does Nāgārjuna Refute Every School, or Only Some?
The part closes with a question that reaches back to the very method announced in Part 1: given this vast genealogy of twenty or more schools, does Nāgārjuna's own refutation target all of them indiscriminately, or does it discriminate among them? The answer reapplies the fourfold refuting-and-gathering-in scheme from the treatise's opening pages.
問論主為並破諸部。亦有不破耶。答凡有四句。一破而不取。若是諸部所說乖大小乘經自立義者。則破而不取。故智度論呵迦旃延弟子云。三藏無此說。摩訶衍中亦無此說。蓋是諸論義師自作是說。即是其事。
Question: Does the author of the treatise refute every one of these schools indiscriminately, or are there some he does not refute? Answer: There are, in all, four propositions. First, refuted and not gathered in: wherever what a given school teaches runs contrary to both the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna sūtras, and is simply a position that school has established on its own authority, it is refuted and not gathered in at all. Hence the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom rebukes a disciple of Kātyāyana, saying: "The Three Baskets contain no such teaching, and the Mahāyāna canon contains no such teaching either — this is simply something the various treatise-masters have fabricated and asserted on their own." This is exactly the case in point.
二取而不破。如文殊問經云。十八及本二皆從大乘出。無是亦無非。我說未來起。三亦破亦取。破諸部能迷執情。收取諸部所迷之教。四不破不取。就正道門。未曾有破。亦無所取也。
Second, gathered in and not refuted: as the Mañjuśrī-paripṛcchā Sūtra says, "The eighteen schools, together with the original two, all emerge from the Mahāyāna; there is no right and no wrong among them; I speak of how they will arise in the future." Third, both refuted and gathered in at once: refuting the confused, clinging state of mind capable of being misled that belongs to these various schools, while gathering in the very teaching that each school was itself confused about. Fourth, neither refuted nor gathered in: with regard to the gate of the correct way itself, there has never, at any point, been anything to refute, nor anything to be gathered in either.
This is the exact fourfold scheme first announced in Part 1 to answer why a Buddhist treatise would refute fellow Buddhists at all — refuted-not-gathered, gathered-not-refuted, both, and neither — now applied specifically to the entire twenty-school genealogy just traced across this and the preceding part. Its reappearance here, verbatim in structure, brackets the whole schism narrative as one extended illustration of a method the treatise announced from its very first pages, rather than as a self-contained historical digression.
Part Nine Complete
This closes Part Nine: Mahādeva's second controversy and the mountain schools it produced, the reconciliation of the five/seven/eight count of Mahāsāṃghika descendants, the Sthavira's own separate lineage down through its split into the Sarvāstivāda, the Vātsīputrīya and its four descendants, the Sautrāntika's origin, the final tally of twenty schools reconciled against five hundred, and the fourfold scheme determining exactly which schools the three treatises actually mean to refute.
Part Ten turns from history to structure, asking how the treatises themselves relate to one another and to the schools they address — which are "general" treatises spanning all confusion and which are "particular," how each treatise gets its own name, and what single doctrine each one takes as its own guiding thread.