58 CHAPTER THREEmessage that could not be supported by the texts: The transcendent Buddha
had placed such insights in the mind of the person who proposed them.
Despite the wide differences, the common denominator running through
the Mahasanghikas' positions was that the texts were not the sole authority in
determining the Buddha's true teachings. However they interpreted the means
of transmission, they agreed that there was the possibility of transmission out-
side of the texts. This point of view has continued to resurface throughout the
Buddhist tradition, and is found today not only in Zen and Tibetan schools,
which articulate it most clearly, but also in some Theravadin lineages. The
Mahasanghikas reportedly allowed monks who were not fully Awakened to
participate in their deliberations on the proper way to interpret the Dharma.
This shows that they were more inclined than the Sthaviravadins, the elders
from whom they split, to give credence to the role of individual inspiration
and reasoning, regardless of whether it was backed up by an experience of
Awakening and could be tested against a full reading of the texts. The positive
side to this approach was that it opened the door to a personal transmission of
the Dharma, free from the tyranny of scholastics, patterned on the personal
approach the Buddha himself used. The negative side was that it provided an
opening for what has been termed "designer Buddhism," in which parts of
the tradition are suppressed or denigrated because they do not fit with princi-
ples derived either from outside the tradition or from personal preferences and
a mere partial reading of the texts. Although we do not have complete ver-
sions of the Mahasanghika Abhidharmas, outside reports indicate that they
denied aspects of the teaching that seem to have been central to it. For in-
stance, they accepted only linear causal patterns and denied that the Buddha
was subject to the laws of karma. All accounts indicate that the
Mahasanghikans' liberal attitude toward the tradition eventually engendered
the Mahayana movement, which asserted that the early arhants may have not
only misunderstood certain details in the Buddha's original teachings, but ac-
tually missed the entire point.
The Mahasanghikans maintained a center in the capital at Pataliputra, but
their primary strength developed in the South, especially around the great re-
ligious centers at Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda. They maintained their sep-
arate identity until the fall of Buddhism in northern India. Chinese travelers
in the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. list them as one of the four major
schools of Buddhism still extant in India at that time. Only a few of their texts
survive.3.2.2 The Personalist School
Because the Mahasanghikans were united primarily around a negative posi-. tion-their questioning of the authority of the canon-the wide number of
subschools they developed in a fairly short time is easily explained. However,
the Sthaviravadins, who remained united in their acceptance of the full canon,
similarly began undergoing splits in the course of trying to develop a consis-
tent philosophical system that could fully account for everything in the texts.