Pudgalavada
Pudgalavāda means "Personalism" in Sanskrit. Its followers defended the reality of persons within a tradition otherwise committed to rejecting any permanent self. Dan Lusthaus has written that no Buddhist school has been more vilified by its peers or misunderstood by modern scholars than this one. Yet the same tradition endured for over a thousand years. During the reign of emperor Harshavadana, who ruled from 606 to 647 CE, the school had become especially prominent. Harsha's own sister Rajyasri joined it as a nun. What did the Pudgalavādins actually claim? Why did that claim generate such hostility? And what accounts for a school so widely condemned yet so widely followed? The controversy traces to a single elder named Vātsīputra, believed to have founded the school in the third century BCE.
The Pudgalavādins pointed to the Bhārahārasūtras as their core scriptural evidence. It states that the five aggregates are burdens and the burden-carrier is the person. Like all Buddhists, the Pudgalavādins accepted that there is no ātman, no permanent unchanging self. But they insisted that something real had to undergo rebirth, accumulate karma, and eventually attain nirvāṇa.
Their answer was the pudgala, a person they called "inexpressible." It could not be said to be identical to the five aggregates that constitute a human being. Nor could it be said to be entirely separate from them. The Kathāvatthu records that they cited the Buddha's words: "There is a person who exerts for his own good." They held that denying the person entirely would mean nothing gets reborn and nothing can be the object of loving-kindness meditation.
The Abhidharmakośa preserves their most striking analogy. Think of fire and fuel. The five aggregates are the fuel; the pudgala is the fire. Fire exists because of fuel but has properties that fuel does not. Say fire and fuel are the same thing: that is one mistake. Say they are wholly different and fire needs no fuel: that is another. The Pudgalavādins took a middle road between both. Their texts also held that the liberated person persists even after parinirvāṇa. Thiện Châu notes that they saw nirvāṇa as "a transcendental domain" and "an existence in the beyond."
L. S. Cousins pinpoints the philosophical divide. For those who rejected the pudgala, the person is merely a label for the aggregates. For the Pudgalavādins, the relationship between person and aggregates cannot be described as either the same or different.
The Sammatiyanikayaśāstra, one of the school's surviving texts, systematically examined seven possible positions on the self. These ranged from "self exists" to "self neither exists nor does not exist" to "self is eternal." All seven were rejected. The text concluded that the pudgala is neither an existent nor a purely conceptual label.
Dan Lusthaus frames the school's driving concern. For the Vātsīputrīyas, karma requires a person to carry the consequences of an action across time and across lives. Without such an entity, Buddhist practice becomes incoherent. Lusthaus argues that other Buddhist schools quietly assumed a person without naming one, and that the Vātsīputrīyas simply made this assumption explicit.
The Traidharmakaśāstra, another surviving work, named three distinct ways to speak about the pudgala. The first addressed how the person relates to the aggregates in the present. The second concerned how the person persists or changes across lifetimes. The third asked what becomes of the person at the moment of final liberation. Vasubandhu would later mount the most systematic philosophical challenge to this entire framework.
The Puggalakatha of the Kathāvatthu is the earliest surviving record of the doctrinal controversy over the pudgala. It is attributed to Moggaliputtatissa and dated to roughly the third century BCE. The Vibhajyavādins registered their objection there. The Sarvastivādins responded in the Vijñanakaya. The Sautrantikas engaged the question in the Abhidharmakośa. The Madhyamaka philosopher Candrakirti also addressed it in his Madhyamakavatara.
Vasubandhu's treatment in the Abhidharmakośa was the most systematic. He took the Vātsīputrīya claim that the pudgala "is based on" the five aggregates and showed that this could mean one of two things. Either the aggregates form an object named pudgala, in which case pudgala is just a label. Or the pudgala is caused by the aggregates, in which case it again reduces to them. Vasubandhu then pressed the question of perception. We either perceive the pudgala directly or we perceive it through perceiving the aggregates. If through the aggregates, it is only a name for those aggregates. If directly, then the aggregates would have to depend on the pudgala, which reverses the school's own position.
Peter Harvey, a modern scholar, sides with these critics. He finds no support for the pudgala concept in the Pali Nikāyas.
Bhikṣu Thiện Châu offers a different reading. In his view, the pudgala theory was a deliberate reaction against the "depersonalization" of the abhidharmika tradition. The Pudgalavādins were preserving the doctrine of substancelessness while still accounting for lived human experience. Thiện Châu draws on a distinction the school itself relied on. A chariot is merely an assemblage of separate parts. A person, by contrast, develops as a totality, with psycho-physical dimensions that unfold after conception and birth. Of the school's full Tripiṭaka, only four texts would survive, all in Chinese translation.
The Vātsīputrīya communities were established at Kosambi and Sarnath. Sometime between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, four sub-schools branched off from them. These were the Saṃmitīyas, the Dhammuttariyas, the Bhadrayanikas, and the Sandagarikas. The Saṃmitīyas quickly eclipsed the parent school in influence. By the 4th century they had displaced the Sarvastivādins as the leading community at Sarnath. Inscriptions confirm their presence in Mathura and Sarnath between the 2nd and 4th centuries. The Tibetan historian Buton Rinchen Drub noted that the Saṃmitīyas used Apabhraṃśa as their main language.
Their geographic strength was greatest in Sindh and Gujarat. During the Maitraka dynasty, which lasted from 470 to 788 CE, they held a commanding presence in both regions. One estimate places 350 of the 450 Buddhist monasteries in the Sindh under Saṃmitīya control. Étienne Lamotte, drawing on the travel writings of Xuanzang, concluded that the Saṃmitīyas were the most populous non-Mahāyāna sect in India. L. S. Cousins later revised this estimate, placing them at roughly a quarter of all non-Mahāyāna monks, still the largest single share. Their most celebrated center of learning was Valabhi University in Gujarat. Yijing, who visited Gujarat in 670 CE, found that the Saṃmitīyas had the greatest number of followers in western India. He also recorded that Valabhi rivaled Nalanda as a center of Buddhist study.
The Saṃmitīyas were fierce opponents of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Tāranātha reported that their monks from the Sindh burned tantric scriptures and destroyed a silver image of Hevajra at Vajrāsana monastery in Bodh Gaya. An elderly Brahmin follower of the sect named Prajñāgupta composed a treatise in 700 verses opposing Mahāyāna teachings. Xuanzang, living at Nālandā, replied with a 1600-verse Sanskrit work called The Destruction of Heresy.
The Arab conquest brought rapid Islamisation to the Sindh, ending the school's dominant presence there. Never having established a foothold outside India, the Saṃmitīyas did not survive the end of Indian Buddhism. One surviving text, the Traidharmakaśāstra, was translated into Chinese twice, suggesting it held particular interest for later readers.
The Ssu a-han-mu ch'ao chieh and the Vinayadvavimsatividyaśāstra are among the four Pudgalavāda texts preserved in Chinese translation. Together with the Sammatiyanikayaśāstra and the Traidharmakaśāstra, they represent everything that survives of a school that once maintained a complete Tripiṭaka. The Traidharmakaśāstra also discusses the indefinable, a category the text applies to the pudgala itself.
Dan Lusthaus argues that a close reading of these texts reveals a position quite different from how the school's ancient opponents characterized it. In the surviving works, the Vātsīputrīyas describe the pudgala as "a prajñapti," meaning a nominal existent only. It is neither identical to the aggregates nor separate from them, and makes no claim to being a permanent self. Lusthaus argues the school was not smuggling a self back in. It was naming something that other Buddhist traditions had already assumed in their doctrines but never articulated.
Thiện Châu reaches a similar conclusion. The pudgala theory, he writes, "has been misinterpreted by the polemical literature; nevertheless, it offers much of doctrinal interest to Buddhist thinkers." The school also maintained that even an arahant, a fully enlightened person, remains susceptible to falling from that attainment. That position reaches beyond the Pudgalavāda itself, touching a question about persons and spiritual progress that Indian Buddhist philosophy never fully resolved.
Common questions
Who founded the Pudgalavāda school of Buddhism?
The Pudgalavāda school is believed to have been founded by the elder Vātsīputra in the third century BCE. It arose from the Sthavira Nikāya as one of a group of early Nikāya Buddhist schools.
What is the pudgala doctrine in Pudgalavāda?
The pudgala is a "person" or "being" that the Pudgalavādins held to be real but "inexpressible." It is neither identical to the five aggregates that make up a human being nor entirely separate from them. The doctrine was the school's way of accounting for karma, rebirth, and the attainment of nirvāṇa.
Why was Pudgalavāda criticized by other Buddhist schools?
Critics argued that the pudgala doctrine too closely resembled belief in a permanent self, which all Buddhist traditions reject. The Vibhajyavādins, Sarvastivādins, Sautrantikas, and Madhyamaka philosopher Candrakirti all wrote formal responses. The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu's critique in the Abhidharmakośa became the most widely cited refutation.
What were the major Pudgalavāda sub-schools and where were they active?
The main sub-school was the Saṃmitīya, which was especially prominent in Sindh and Gujarat during the Maitraka dynasty (470-788 CE). Three other sub-schools were the Dhammuttariyas, Bhadrayanikas, and Sandagarikas. The Saṃmitīyas maintained an important center of learning at Valabhi University in Gujarat.
What Pudgalavāda texts survive today?
Four Pudgalavāda texts survive, all in Chinese translation: the Traidharmakaśāstra, the Ssu a-han-mu ch'ao chieh, the Sammatiyanikayaśāstra, and the Vinayadvavimsatividyaśāstra. The Traidharmakaśāstra was translated into Chinese twice.
How large was the Pudgalavāda Saṃmitīya following in ancient India?
Étienne Lamotte, drawing on the travel writings of Xuanzang, concluded the Saṃmitīyas were the most populous non-Mahāyāna sect in India. L. S. Cousins later revised this to roughly a quarter of all non-Mahāyāna monks, still the largest single share. One estimate places 350 of 450 Buddhist monasteries in the Sindh under Saṃmitīya control.
All sources
2 references cited across the entry
- 2NewsBuddhism in Gujarat2010-01-17