The Sautrāntika or Sutravadin (, Suttavāda in Pali; ; ; ) were an
early Buddhist school generally believed to be descended from the
Sthavira nikāya by way of their immediate parent school, the
Sarvāstivādins.
[Westerhoff, Jan, The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 73.] While they are identified as a unique doctrinal tendency, they were part of the Sarvāstivāda
Vinaya lineage of monastic ordination.
[Tadeusz Skorupski, Sautrāntika, Oxford Bibliographies, LAST MODIFIED: 29 MAY 2015, DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195393521-0210]
Their name means literally "the conclusions of the
sutra
''Sutra'' ()Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a ...
s" where ''sūtra'' is lengthened into the ''vṛddhi'' derivative ''sautra,'' and combined with the word ''anta,'' meaning end or conclusion, with a final nominal marker ''ika'' (compare with the term
vedānta), meaning their philosophy is derived from the ''sūtras.'' As stated by the commentator Yasomitra, they hold the
sutra
''Sutra'' ()Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a ...
s, but not the
Abhidharma commentaries (
sastras), as authoritative.
The views of this group first appear in the ''
Abhidharmakośabhāṣya'' of
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; floruit, fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Indian bhikkhu, Buddhist monk and scholar. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary on the Abhidharma, from the perspectives of th ...
''.
''
Name
The name Sautrāntika indicates that unlike other North Indian
Sthaviras, this school held the Buddhist sutras as central to their views, over and above the ideas presented in the
Abhidharma literature. The Sarvastivada scholar Samghabhadra, in his ''Nyayanusara'', attacks a school of thought named Sautrantika which he associates with the scholars Śrīlāta and his student
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; floruit, fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Indian bhikkhu, Buddhist monk and scholar. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary on the Abhidharma, from the perspectives of th ...
.
[Dessein, Bart; Teng, Weijen. Text, History, and Philosophy: Abhidharma across Buddhist Scholastic Traditions, BRILL, 2016, pg 232] According to Samghabhadra, a central tenet of this school was that all sutra is explicit meaning (''nitartha''), hence their name.
The Sarvāstivādins sometimes referred to them as the school, meaning "those who utilize the method of examples". This latter name may have been a pejorative label. It is also possible that the name 'Dārṣṭāntika' identifies a predecessor tradition, or another related, but distinct, doctrinal position; the exact relationship between the two terms is unclear. Charles Willemen identifies the Sautrāntika as a Western branch of the Sarvāstivādins, active in the
Gandhara
Gandhara () was an ancient Indo-Aryan people, Indo-Aryan civilization in present-day northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar valley, Peshawar (Pushkalawati) and Swat valleys extending ...
area, who split from the
Sarvāstivādins sometime before 200 CE, when the Sautrāntika name emerged. Other scholars are less confident of a specific identification for the Sautrāntika; Nobuyoshi Yamabe calls specifying the precise identity of the Sautrāntika "one of the biggest problems in current Buddhist scholarship".
History
The founding of the Sautrāntika school is attributed to the elder
Kumāralāta (c. 3rd century CE), author of a "collection of dṛṣtānta" (''Dṛṣtāntapaṅkti'') called the ''Kalpanāmaṇḍitīkā''. The Sautrāntikas were sometimes also called "disciples of Kumāralāta". According to Chinese sources, Harivarman (250-350 CE) was a student of Kumāralāta who became disillusioned with Buddhist
Abhidharma and then wrote the
Tattvasiddhi-śāstra in order to "eliminate confusion and abandon the later developments, with the hope of returning to the origin". The Tattvasiddhi was translated into Chinese and became an important text in Chinese Buddhism until the Tang Dynasty.
Other works by Sautrāntika affiliated authors include the ''Abhidharmāmṛtarasa-śāstra'' attributed to
Ghoṣaka, and the ''Abhidharmāvatāra-śāstra'' attributed to
Skandhila. The elder
Śrīlāta, who was
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; floruit, fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Indian bhikkhu, Buddhist monk and scholar. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary on the Abhidharma, from the perspectives of th ...
's teacher is also known as a famous Sautrāntika who wrote the ''Sautrāntika-vibhāṣa''. Ghoṣaka's Abhidharmāmṛtarasa and Harivarman's Tattvasiddhi have both been translated into English.
The Buddhist philosopher
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; floruit, fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Indian bhikkhu, Buddhist monk and scholar. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary on the Abhidharma, from the perspectives of th ...
wrote the famous Abhidharma work ''
Abhidharmakośakārikā'' which presented
Sarvāstivāda-
Vaibhāṣika Abhidharma tenets, he also wrote a "
bhāṣya" or commentary on this work, which presented critiques of the
Vaibhāṣika tradition from a Sautrāntika perspective. The Abhidharmakośa was highly influential and is the main text on Abhidharma used in Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism up until today.
Buddhist logic (''
pramāṇavāda'') as developed by
Dignāga and
Dharmakīrti is also associated with the Sautrāntika school.
Doctrine
No separate
vinaya (monastic code) specific to the Sautrāntika has been found, nor is the existence of any such separate disciplinary code evidenced in other texts; this indicates that they were likely only a doctrinal division within the Sarvāstivādin school.
The Sautrāntika criticized the Sarvāstivādins on various matters such as
ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...
,
philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world.
The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...
and
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
. While the Sarvāstivādin
abhidharma described a complex system in which past, present, and future phenomena are all held to have some form of their own existence, the Sautrāntika subscribed to a doctrine of "extreme momentariness" that held that
only the present moment existed. They seem to have regarded the Sarvāstivādin position as a violation of the basic Buddhist principle of
impermanence. As explained by Jan Westerhoff, this doctrine of momentariness holds that each present moment "does not possess any temporal thickness; immediately after coming into existence each moment passes out of existence" and that therefore "all dharmas, whether mental or material, only last for an instant (ksana) and cease immediately after arising".
The Sarvāstivādin abhidharma also broke down human experience in terms of a variety of underlying phenomena (a view similar to that held by the modern
Theravadin abhidhamma); the Sautrāntika believed that experience could not be differentiated in this manner.
Sautrantika doctrines expounded by elder Śrīlāta and critiqued in turn by Samghabhadra's ''Nyayanusara'' include:
*The theory of ''anudhatu'' (or *''purvanudhatu'', "subsidiary element"), which is also associated with the theory of seeds (''
Bīja'') espoused by Vasubandhu. This theory was used to explain karma and
rebirth.
*The doctrine that
caitasikas (mental factors) are but modes of
citta (mind) and are ''not'' separate elemental
dharmas which come together in "association" (''samprayoga'') as the Vaibhāṣika believed. This view is also expoused at length in Harivarman's Tattvasiddhi.
*The doctrine that the sense-elements (''
dhatu'') alone are real existents, not the aggregates (''
skandha
' (Sanskrit) or (Pāḷi) means "heaps, aggregates, collections, groupings, clusters". In Buddhism, it refers to the five aggregates of clinging (), the five material and mental factors that take part in the perpetual process of craving, cli ...
'') or sense spheres (''
ayatana'').
*A process of direct
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
(''
pratyaksha'') which differed from the
direct realism of the Vaibhāṣika, and instead posited a form of indirect
representationalism
In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences.Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Con ...
.
[Ronkin, Noa, "Abhidharma", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = ]
According to
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; floruit, fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Indian bhikkhu, Buddhist monk and scholar. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary on the Abhidharma, from the perspectives of th ...
, the Sautrāntika also held the view that there may be many Buddhas simultaneously, otherwise known as the doctrine of contemporaneous Buddhas.
See also
*
Schools of Buddhism
*
Nikaya Buddhism
References
Bibliography
*
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External links
*
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{{Buddhism topics
Nikaya schools
Sthaviravāda
Yogacara
Early Buddhist schools