根本說一切有部毘奈耶

Gēnběn shuōyīqiēyǒubù pínàiyē 根本說一切有部毘奈耶

The Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya (Bhikṣu-vibhaṅga) by 義淨 (Yìjìng, 譯)

About the work

The Gēnběn shuō-yīqiē-yǒu-bù pínàiyē 根本說一切有部毘奈耶 — the Bhikṣu-vibhaṅga of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya — in fifty fascicles. 根本說一切有部 Gēnběn shuō-yīqiē-yǒu-bù renders Skt. Mūlasarvāstivāda (“Root-Sarvāstivāda”); 毘奈耶 pínàiyē transliterates vinaya. Translated at Cháng’ān 長安 between 700 and 703 CE by Yìjìng 義淨 (義淨), the great Tang-dynasty pilgrim-translator who studied at Nālandā 那爛陀 from 675 to 685 and brought back to China some 400 Sanskrit manuscripts. This text is the first and longest of the eighteen Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya texts Yìjìng translated (KR6k0023–0040) — the most extensive single-author Vinaya translation project in the history of East Asian Buddhism.

Prefaces

The text is preceded by Yìjìng’s own preface (preserved in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù T55n2154 j. 9), describing his Indian sojourn at Nālandā and his motivation for translating the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya: he had observed that the Mūlasarvāstivāda was the dominant practical Vinaya at all major Indian Buddhist universities of the late 7th century, and considered its full transmission essential for Chinese Buddhism.

Abstract

The Mūlasarvāstivāda (根本說一切有部) is the late form of the Sarvāstivāda lineage that became dominant at the great monastic universities of north India (Nālandā, Vikramaśilā, Odantapurī) in the period c. 600–1200 CE. It is to be distinguished from the older Sarvāstivāda represented by the Shísòng lǜ (KR6k0016): the two share doctrinal core but diverge in the structure and content of their Vinayas, with the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya being roughly three times longer and incorporating a great deal of narrative-mythological material (the avadāna genre) absent from the older Sarvāstivāda. Yìjìng’s translation made available to Chinese Buddhism the practical Vinaya as observed at Nālandā in the 7th century — but it arrived too late: the canonisation of the Dharmaguptaka Sìfēn lǜ in 709 left Yìjìng’s project without the institutional uptake it might otherwise have had, and the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya never displaced the Sìfēn lǜ as the practical Chinese ordination Vinaya.

The Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya did, however, become the Vinaya of Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibetan translation (Dunhuang fragments + bKa’-‘gyur recension) corresponds substantially to Yìjìng’s Chinese, and the two together — with Sanskrit fragments from Gilgit (Dutt 1942–1950) — provide a remarkably complete witness to the late-Indian Mūlasarvāstivāda monastic tradition. Yìjìng’s translation is the most extensive Buddhist text translated by a single Chinese translator from a single Sanskrit Vorlage.

The bhikṣu-vibhaṅga (this text) presents the 249 monastic prātimokṣa rules with their vibhaṅga exposition: case-narrative + rule-formulation + word-by-word gloss. It is preceded in canonical order by the ten vastu “matters” (KR6k0025–0034) — the Mūlasarvāstivāda skandhakas on ordination, uposatha, vassa, pravāraṇā, and the like — and is followed by the Bhikṣuṇī-vibhaṅga (KR6k0024) and the various procedural and exegetical works (KR6k0033–0040).

Translations and research

• Schopen, Gregory. Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004. — Schopen’s many studies on the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya are the principal modern scholarly resource.
• Schopen, Gregory. Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters: Recent Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014.
• Clarke, Shayne. Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014. — Substantial use of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya.
• Clarke, Shayne. Vinaya Mātṛkā — Mother of the Monastic Codes, or Just Another Set of Lists? A Response to Frauwallner’s Handling of the Mahāsāṅghika Vinaya. Indo-Iranian Journal 47 (2004): 77–120.
• Dutt, Nalinaksha. Gilgit Manuscripts. 4 vols., Srinagar/Calcutta, 1939–1959. — Sanskrit text of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya from Gilgit.
• Yamagiwa Nobuyuki 山極伸之. Konponsetsu issaiubu ritsu no kenkyū 根本説一切有部律の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 2003.
• Hu von Hinüber, Haiyan. Das Poṣadhavastu: Vorschriften für die buddhistische Beichtfeier im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins. Reinbek: Inge Wezler, 1994.
• Vogel, Claus & Klaus Wille. Das Pravrajyāvastu im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984; subsequent volumes.
• Eimer, Helmut. Rab tu ‘byuṅ ba’i gźi: die tibetische Übersetzung des Pravrajyāvastu im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins. 2 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983.

Other points of interest

The narrative material in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya is one of the principal sources for late-Indian Buddhist Avadāna literature; its accounts of legendary monastic episodes, doctrinal disputes, and Buddha-biographies have been mined extensively by Buddhological scholarship for evidence of the social, economic, and ritual life of the great north-Indian monastic universities. Schopen’s many studies have demonstrated that the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya is the single most important primary source for the institutional history of Indian Buddhism between the 4th and 8th centuries.

Links

• CBETA T23n1442
• Wikipedia (English)
• 義淨 DILA
• Dazangthings date evidence (705): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. (source)
• Kanseki DB