Mahīśāsaka

• 1. Introduction

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  Some ancient records place Mahīśāsaka among the earliest Buddhist schools, though its own origins are murky even by ancient standards. One old Buddhist chronicle claims the Mahīśāsaka gave rise to a much larger rival school. A separate pair of texts insists the opposite, that the rival school came first and the Mahīśāsaka broke away from it later. Centuries afterward, a Chinese traveler followed the school's monks as far as Kashmir. There, he found a thinker whose ideas would help shape an entirely different, larger Buddhist movement. The school's own scripture, meanwhile, stages an argument over whether a woman could ever become a fully enlightened Buddha. Who founded the Mahīśāsaka, and where did its members live? What did they believe about the world, and about who was allowed to reach enlightenment?

• 2. Two Rival Origin Stories

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  At the Second Buddhist Council, held in the city of Vaishali, a dispute broke out that some records connect to Mahīśāsaka's founding. The Theravādin chronicle known as the Dīpavaṃsa holds that the Sarvāstivāda sect branched out of the Mahīśāsaka. Two other texts, the Śāriputrapariprcchā and the Samayabhedoparacanaćakra, tell it the other way around. In their account, the Sarvāstivādins came first, and the Mahīśāsakas were the ones who broke away.

  The scholars Buswell and Lopez side with this second version, treating the Mahīśāsaka as an offshoot of the Sarvāstivādins. They place the school inside a wider category called Vibhajyavāda, which they describe as "a broad designation for non-Sarvastivāda strands of the Sthaviranikaya." The Kāśyapīya sect belonged to this same category. A separate branch, the Dharmaguptaka, is believed to have broken away from the Mahīśāsaka itself. That break came sometime near the end of the 2nd century BCE, or the start of the 1st. That split would later carry into doctrine, too. The Dharmaguptaka came to disagree with the Mahīśāsaka on questions extending well past who came from whom.

• 3. A Founder and a Homeland

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  Mahishmati, a city in the Avanti region of India, gave the Mahīśāsaka sect both its birthplace and its name. A monk named Purāṇa is remembered as its founder. He is venerated at length in the Mahīśāsaka Vinaya, a monastic code still preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon. That same Vinaya would go on to travel far beyond Avanti, carried outward as the school itself expanded across Asia.

• 4. Following the Monks Across Asia

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  The writings of the pilgrim Xuanzang show that the Mahīśāsaka were active in Kashmir by the 4th century CE. Xuanzang also records that Asaṅga, an important Yogācāra master and the elder brother of Vasubandhu, received ordination into the Mahīśāsaka sect. Asaṅga's own frameworks for Abhidharma writing kept many underlying Mahīśāsaka traits. The scholar André Bareau summarized the connection this way: "It is sufficiently obvious that Asaṅga had been a Mahīśāsaka when he was a young monk, and that he incorporated a large part of the doctrinal opinions proper to this school within his own work after he became a great master of the Mahāyāna, when he made up what can be considered as a new and Mahāyānist Abhidharma-piṭaka."

  The Mahīśāsaka are also believed to have reached southern India, as far as Nāgārjunakoṇḍā, and eventually the island of Sri Lanka. The scholar A. K. Warder writes that the Indian Mahīśāsaka sect settled in Sri Lanka alongside the Theravāda, and was later absorbed into it. In the 7th century CE, the pilgrim Yijing grouped the Mahīśāsaka with the Dharmaguptaka and the Kāśyapīya as sub-sects of the Sarvāstivāda. Yijing noted that these three were absent from the "five parts of India." Instead, he placed them in parts of Oḍḍiyāna, the Kingdom of Khotan, and Kucha. None of these travel accounts mention what the monks themselves looked like on the road. That detail survives in an entirely different kind of source.

• 5. Blue Robes

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  Between 148 and 170 CE, the Parthian monk An Shigao arrived in China. He translated a work, titled the Da Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi, describing the robe colors, or kāṣāya, worn by five major Indian Buddhist sects. A later translation, the Śāriputrapariprcchā, contains a nearly identical passage that backs up his account. Both sources agree that Mahīśāsaka monks wore blue.

  The Mahāsāṃghika Śāriputrapariprcchā puts it directly: "The Mahīśāsaka school practice dhyāna, and penetrate deeply. They wear blue robes." That single line ties the sect's appearance to a specific meditative discipline, dhyāna, one thread among the beliefs that set the school apart.

• 6. Core Teachings

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  The Four Noble Truths, in Mahīśāsaka teaching, were meant to be meditated upon all at once rather than in sequence. The sect also taught that everything exists, but only in the present moment. Giving a gift to the Saṃgha, the monastic community, counted as more meritorious than giving one straight to the Buddha. That put the Mahīśāsaka at odds with the Dharmaguptakas. The Dharmaguptakas taught the reverse, that a gift to the Buddha earned more merit than one to the Saṃgha.

  The earliest Mahīśāsakas do not appear to have taught any intermediate state between death and rebirth. Later generations of the school came to accept that such a state existed. These teachings, along with the rest of the school's doctrine, were carried forward inside its own Vinaya and inside Mahāyāna works tied to Mahīśāsaka monks.

• 7. Preserving the Texts

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  Around 406 CE, the pilgrim Faxian obtained a Sanskrit copy of the Mahīśāsaka Vinaya at Abhayagiri Vihāra in Sri Lanka. Buddhajiva and Zhu Daosheng completed its Chinese translation in 434 CE. That translation survives today in the Chinese Buddhist canon, catalogued as Taishō Tripiṭaka number 1421.

  The Mahāyāna Infinite Life Sūtra is thought to have been compiled during the Kushan Empire, in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. It is credited to an order of Mahīśāsaka bhikṣus active in the Gandhara region. The related Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra likely owes much of its own compilation to the Lokottaravāda sect, and shares many elements with the Mahāvastu. Traces in the earliest translations suggest they were rendered from Gāndhārī, a Prakrit language spoken in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Manuscripts written in the Kharoṣṭhī script are also known to have circulated in China during this same period. Not every Mahīśāsaka text was concerned with lineage or language. One scripture took up a very different question: who was allowed to reach full enlightenment at all.

• 8. Views on Women

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  Full buddhahood, according to the Mahīśāsaka sect, was a path closed to women entirely. That position is directly challenged in the Nāgadatta Sūtra, through a story about a bhikṣuṇī named Nāgadatta. In it, the demon Māra disguises himself as her father and urges her to settle for arhatship instead of full buddhahood. He tells her: "Your thought is too serious. Buddhahood is too difficult to attain. It takes a hundred thousand nayutas of kotis of kalpas to become a Buddha. Since few people attain Buddhahood in this world, why don't you attain Arhatship? For the experience of Arhatship is the same as that of nirvāṇa; moreover, it is easy to attain Arhatship." Nāgadatta refuses, answering: "A Buddha's wisdom is like empty space of the ten quarters, which can enlighten innumerable people. But an Arhat's wisdom is inferior."

  Five specific obstacles, in Mahīśāsaka teaching, stood before every woman. She could never become a Cakravartin, a Māra king, a Śakra king, a Brahma king, or a Buddha. A second version of the story, the Nāgadatta Sūtra as recorded by the Sarvāstivādins, ascribes this same view to Māra directly. There he says: "I have not even heard that a woman can be reborn as a cakravartin; how can you be reborn as a Buddha? It takes too long to attain Buddhahood, why not seek for Arhatship and attain nirvāṇa soon?" Nāgadatta answers: "I also have heard that a woman cannot be reborn as a cakravartin, a Sakra, a Brahma, and a Buddha, and yet I shall make the right effort to transform a woman's body into a man's. For I have heard that those Noble Ones, by the practice of bodhisattvacarya for a hundred thousand nayutas of kotis of kalpas diligently attain Buddhahood."

  Both versions rest on the same underlying belief. A woman, in this view, could not change the fundamental nature of her mind or body, and doing so would cause Buddhism's teachings to decline. The scholar David Kalupahana traced this to plain distrust: "The Mahīśāsaka prejudice against women is based upon the traditional view of women. Like some of the other early Buddhist practitioners, they did not trust women, even nuns. This explains why they restricted nuns' social and religious activities in the sangha. Sometimes they liken the nuns' existence to hail which damages a good harvest." That comparison, a nun's place in the community likened to hail ruining a harvest, is the closing image the Mahīśāsaka's own record leaves behind.