Transitoriness and Transformations 103By the early centuries of the Common Era, a proliferation of
commentaries and literature had commenced, much of which
involved the kind of philosophical speculation, analytical classi-
fication and even intellectual hairsplitting that the Buddha had
originally condemned as adherence to ditthi or ‘views’. As the monk-
philosophers sought to elaborate and explain the Buddha’s teachings
within their versions of the karma/rebirth framework, certain
contradictions developed that are apparent in the Theravada philo-
sophical ‘schools’. The term ‘dhamma’ was used in the Abhidhamma
for the various types of existing entities or processes (presumably
because these followed regularities or ‘laws’), which were classified
as mental as well as material. These began to be taken as a kind of
ultimate reality. For example, the Sarvastivada school—the term
came from ‘all exists’—denied change, seeing time as a ‘mode’ of
being; they thus saw the ultimate ‘dhammas’ or entities as always
existing. This meant seeing the Buddha as in some sense continuing
to exist even after his mahaparinibbana. This school also stressed
the systematisation of thepaticca samuppada, chain of logic in
a ‘wheel of life in which ‘twelve nidanas’ or stages began with
‘ignorance’, in contrast to the earlier emphasis on thirst or craving
as the beginning point—an idealistic metaphysics had replaced
psychology. The Puggulavada school, which took its name from the
term for ‘person’, argued that there was, if not a soul, an ultimately
real thing that served as a substratum for continuity in rebirth.
These scholastic developments were a result of the original
contradiction between the karma/rebirth frame and the denial of a
soul. The belief in rebirth did in fact require some kind of entity to
give continuity beyond one birth, linking the rewards or punish-
ments earned in one with a future birth. As we have seen, the
Jataka stories themselves implied such personalities. In this sense,
the Abhidhamma philosophies only systematised notions already
accepted in popular Buddhism.
This essentialism was criticised by another Theravada school, the
Sautrantikas, those who ‘based themselves on the Sutras.’ The
Sautrantikas (known now in Sanskrit), who derived their name
from the fact that they limited themselves to the classical suttas
(Sanskrit sutras) of the Pali canon, rejected the ‘existence-ism’ of
the Sarvastivadins and the Puggalavadins, as well as Mahayana
doctrines that had transformed the Buddha into a supreme, all-
encompassing being. As Singh puts it, the Sautrantikas saw the102 Buddhism in India
period, i.e., up to 250 CE; then there is something of a lull and
perhaps a decline after which the great Mahayana caves of Ajanta
appear from the 5th century (about 450–600 CE). The caves at Ellora
and Aurangabad contemporaneous with later Ajanta ones show
Tantric influence (Gokhale 1976: 39, 84–91, 111–16). Nagarjuna, the
famous philosopher of Mahayana, was born in eastern Maharashtra
around the 2nd century, studied at Nalanda in Bihar and then
settled in Andhra at Amravati or what is now called Nagarjunakonda.
While there were strong links of trade in goods and ideas between
these regions, the east on the whole, especially Bengal and Orissa,
seems to have been more strongly the land of Vajrayana (Sahu
1958). It was here that Buddhism also survived the longest.
Mahayana may not have ever been really dominant in India.
Taranatha, the Tibetan Buddhist chronicler who wrote in 1608,
says that at the time of Nagarjuna (2nd century) most of the monks
belonged to the Theravada school, and during the period of decline
in the second half of the first millennium, the Theravada sanghas
were greater in number and maintained their popularity among the
people while Mahayana was dominant among ‘the noble sections
of the population consisting of the kings and others’ (Taranatha
1990: 166, 256). Since Vajrayana was a secretive discipline, it is dif-
ficult to determine its spread—though the discovery of post-11th
century Vajrayana murals, statues and caves in Ladakh, where
monks had fled from Kashmir after a Shaivite restoration, indicates
an impressive culture and exquisite art of Tantric inspiration (Mehra
1998: 64–67). There is no doubt that these forms of Buddhism
were gaining in influence, but it seems that for a long period of time
these three versions of Buddhism coexisted.
The Religion of the Elders
Theravada, the ‘religion of the elders’, by and large held on to the
principles of early Buddhism that the Buddha was not a divine
being, but a teacher of a Dhamma which all could follow, though
this required fairly arduous discipline and a life style that was
supportable primarily within the monastic life. Further, the accep-
tance of the karma/rebirth frame almost demarcated Theravada,
distinguishing it from what we might call ‘original Buddhism’.