The Foundations of Buddhism

The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 53

future] exist' (sarviisti-viidin). Yet another group were known

as 'advocates of the doctrine of analysis' (vibhajyaviidin). In

some contexts this last group is represented as analysing exist-

ence as either in the past, present, or future, in oppositio,n to the

Sarvastivadins; elsewhere the exact significance of the appella-

tion is not made clear. The Sri Lankan Theravada or 'advocates

of the doctrine of the elders' in facttraces its lineage through the

Vibhajjavadins (Sanskrit vibhajyaviidin ). According to their tra-

ditions the Vibhajjavadins were the favoured party in a dispute

that took place at Pa!aliputra during the reign of the emperor

Asoka. Bareau therefore concluded that this dispute concerned

the split between the Sarvastivadins and Vibhajjavadins on the

matter of the abstruse Abhidharma question of existence in the

three times. The ancient accounts of this dispute are, however,

confused and inconsistent.^27 Its basis, in so far as it is stated in

the sources, seems to have been not so much the finer points

of Abhidharma philosophy as a Vinaya matter: the fact that non-

Buddhists were masquerading as Buddhist monks without being

properly ordained or keeping to the rules of the Vinaya. The

outcome is stated as the expulsion of the false monks from the

Sangha and a third communal recitation (after those of Rajagrha

and Vaisali) of the canon of Buddhist scriptures. The latter

turned on-rather incongruously given the stated nature of the

dispute-the exposition by Moggaliputtatissa of the Kathiivatthu

('Discussion Points'), a manual of moot Abhidharma points,

which was thereafter counted as one of the canonical works

of the Pali Abhidhamma Pi!aka. AsK. R. Norman suggests, it

would appear that two different events have been conflated.
The relevance of such abstruse matters as existence in the three

times of present, past, and future to the theory and practice of

Buddhism may not be immediately clear to the reader, and is

something I shall return to in Chapter 8. But the very technical.

nature of these matters makes it, I think, extremely unlikely that

they were ever the real impetus behind formal division in the

Sangha. It is inconceivable that a Buddhist monk who did or did

not adopt the position of, say, sarviistiviida should ever be charged

with a Buddhist equivalent of 'heresy' and that this should