Who Were the Artharvans?

Zaraθuštra
the first aθauruuan 

In this essay I look for possible connections between the Sanskrit Atharvans (Pāḷi ātabbaṇa) and the Iranian aθauruuan or āθravan. The few references to ātabbaṇa in Pāḷi, in the Suttanipāta and its (Canonical) commentaries, portray them has hostile wizards and trouble makers. This is in stark contrast to how Vedic texts saw them, and of course Brahmins adopted Atharva text as an honorary Veda by about 300 BCE. The Iranian aθauruuan is a Zoroastrian missionary who spends time travelling, teaching about the religion, and making converts.

It's fairly well known that the Buddhist texts make repeated reference to the three Vedas. The Tevijjā Sutta (DN 13) is the one text that gives us some sense of which Vedas might have been around in the early Buddhist milieu. It lists different kinds of Brahmins who teach different paths: “Various Brahmins—addhariya, tittiriya, chandoka, and bavhārijjha Brahmins—all teach a way out for one seeking merger with Brahmā.” (D i.238). Jayatilleke (1963) shows that these names correspond to the Sanskrit: adhvaryus, taittirīya, chāndogya, and bahvṛca.  These are in turn associated with Śatapatha, Taittirīya, Chāndogya, and Bahvṛca Brāhmaṇa texts respectively. The Bahvṛca Brāhmaṇa is now lost, but appears to have been related to the Aitareya and Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇas. These four Brāhmaṇa texts in turn are associated with the White Yajurveda, the Black Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda, and the Ṛgveda. (Jayatilleke 1963: 479-480).

Originally only three vedas were canonical. For instance in the Sela Sutta (MN 92), the Brahmin Sela is said to be “well versed in the three vedas”.  This is a pericope, or stock formula for describing a ‘good Brahmin’, which occurs many places. Julius Lipner (1994) suggests that by about 400-300 BCE the Atharvaveda had been included in the Vedic canon to make the traditional four vedas. Even earlier, both Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Chāndogya Upaniṣad (ca. 800-600 BCE) have a more tolerant attitude to the Atharvaveda than do the Pāli texts. At CU 7.1 the “atharvan” is included amongst the Vedas, and at BU 2.4.10 & 4.5.11 the mantras of the Atharvans and Aṅgirases are included in a list of things to be learned, though not labelled ‘veda’. In Signe Cohen's account of the internecine conflicts between Brahmanical groups, BU represents the more progressive faction, living well east of the Kurukṣetra (in the region of Kosala) and championing the authority of the Yajurveda; whereas CU represents a more conservative faction, living within the Kurukṣetra and retaining the authority of the Ṛgveda (Cohen 2008).

Despite drawing on the Ṛgveda, the Atharvaveda represents a different tradition, one which would eventually have an influence on the lifting of mantra out of the sacrificial ritual context so that they could be applied in the mundane, day to day context. The Gṛhya Sūtras, which came much later, are concerned with precisely this application of mantras to the household life, and also made them accessible, in theory at least, to all strata of society, even the śudras, lowest rank of the four classes or varṇa. Lipner refers to the Atharvaveda as :

“Earthy verse-spells for the protection against life’s problems (fevers and sicknesses, enemies, sorcery, snake bites, bad dreams, and so on), and for bringing something about (e.g. the good will of others, victory in battle, success in love, healthy cattle, good crops and rain, virility, and power in society); it also contains hymns of homage to gods.” Lipner p.33

“Verse-spells” are mantras of course, used as magical spells, and in the Atharvaveda about one quarter of the verses are taken from the Ṛgveda. Lipner suggests that the spells of the Atharvaveda are popular right up to the present. That the Atharvaveda contains a large number of passages recycled from the Ṛgveda is further puzzling. The Atharvans seem to have been outsiders in the eyes of both śrāmaṇas and brāhamaṇas, though view more favourably by the latter and with access to sacred texts theoretically known only to the latter. 

There are a number of protective verses or paritta in the early Buddhist scriptures, texts which are intended to be chanted to gain protection from malign influences. For example the Karaṇīya Metta Sutta or the Āṭānāṭiya Sutta (See also Piyadassi 1999). There is an apparent similarity of purpose between the Atharvaveda mantras and the paritta texts – especially when they are used as magical protection from harm and misfortune. 

Buddhists and the Atharvaveda

In the Tuvaṭaka Sutta, of the Suttanipatta 927

Āthabbaṇaṃ supinaṃ lakkhaṇaṃ, no vidahe athopi nakkhattaṃ;
Virutañca gabbhakaraṇaṃ, tikicchaṃ māmako na seveyya.

Not practising spells, oneiromancy, or even astrology
One of mine would not divine animal sounds, do fertility magic, or healing.

"One of mine" is a reference to a Buddhist follower. The Pāli word I'm translating as "spells" is āthabbaṇa. The athabba part is the Pāli equivalent of the name of the Sanskrit atharva. With the addition of the -ana suffix (and vṛddhi of the first vowel) we get the derivative āthabbaṇa meaning 'connected with the atharva'. Monier-Williams records atharvaṇa as a name of Śiva, but doesn't provide a context. According to the Paramatthajotikā commentary, from a slightly later period: 

Āthabbaṇanti āthabbaṇikamantappayogaṃ (Pj 2.564) 

Āthabbaṇa here means one who engages (payoga) in the spells (manta) of the Atharvans.

The Mahāniddessa commentary (Nidd I 2.381) expands further on this theme

Āthabbaṇikā āthabbaṇaṃ payojenti, nagare vā ruddhe saṅgāme vā paccupaṭṭhite parasenapaccatthikesu paccāmittesu ītiṃ uppādenti, upaddavaṃ uppādenti, rogaṃ uppādenti, pajjarakaṃ karonti, sūlaṃ karonti, visūcikaṃ karonti, pakkhandikaṃ karonti. 

The Atharvans are those who practice the Atharva; they cause disturbances in towns; they cause calamity amongst hostile armies, opposing armies, and other adversaries; they cause misfortune and disease; they cause illness, pain, cholera (?), and dysentery. 

Now Monier-Williams (sv atharvan) described the Atharvaveda as "consisting chiefly of formulas and spells intended to counteract diseases and calamities." Which is the opposite of the early Buddhist description. So the early texts and the canonical commentaries (which are earlier than Buddhaghosa) have a very dim view of the Arthavans. Moriz Winternitz (1927) links the Atharvans with the Aṅgiras, who were also priests in a fire worshipping cult (cf. BU 2.4.10 & 4.5.11 as above). He suggests that the former were interested in healing magic, while the latter were focussed on magic that could harm. The Bṛghus were another group of priests mentioned in the Ṛgveda. We see therefore that there were a variety of Brahmin, or Brahmin related, groups in contact with the early Buddhist milieu.

In this light we might think again of the Kassapa brothers of Gaya (Vin i.23ff; you can read a translation here). They were fire worshippers, but clearly not of the Brahmin variety, because, for example, they have a fire worship house (agyāgāre), where Brahmins did their rituals outside on temporary alters constructed for the purpose. The Kassapas are described as matted-hair ascetics (jaṭila). The Buddha performs a number of miracles and magical feats that convince to them to convert and throw away their fire worshipping paraphernalia. The Buddha then preaches the famous Fire Sermon.

I often wonder how much the survival of texts has influenced our views of the history of this period. Only Buddhist and Brahmin texts survive from the this period in India. Only Brahmin texts from before it. And yet clearly there were other groups around at the time. Other perspectives. It's just that they left no record. It's easy to forget that we only have a very narrow and biased view of these times. Early Buddhists had no commitment to accurately present the historical circumstances or other points of view. They were very often concerned with self-justification.

One of the constant refrains of the Buddha is that the traditional beliefs are not efficacious. In Dhammapada we find the Buddha saying:  

Bahuṃ ve saraṇaṃ yanti, pabbatāni vanāni ca;
Ārāmarukkhacetyāni, manussā bhayatajjitā. | 188 |

Netaṃ kho saraṇaṃ khemaṃ, netaṃ saraṇamuttamaṃ;
Netaṃ saraṇamāgamma, sabbadukkhā pamuccati. | 189 |

People driven by fear seek a great refuge,
A mountain, forest, temple, tree, or shrine.

This is not a safe refuge, not the ultimate refuge
Going to this refuge one is not released from all disappointment

Despite the modern rhetoric of tolerance, Buddhists texts are full of expressive denunciations of what they consider wrong views. At times these polemics cross over into apparent irritation and vexation. The Atharvans were seen in a very negative light.

The Atharvaveda associates misfortunes with the Vedic gods, and protection against misfortune is achieved by appealing to the gods, especially Agni, Varuṇa, and Indra. However it is not entirely clear what the difference is between this and, say, the Āṭānāṭiya Sutta where one is appealing to the power of yakkhas and other daemonic spirits; or, say, the Sambula Jātaka where Sambula is rescued from a malicious yakkha by Indra. Buddhists were not always averse to invoking gods and demons to aid them in difficult times. There is an apparent paradox here: the early Buddhist texts both ridicule the Vedic or autochthonic gods, and also at times call on them for aid. So the antipathy to the Atharvaveda could be part of a struggle going on between traditional beliefs and the new dispensation of the Buddha.

The one thing that Buddhist texts do not do is lump the Atharvans in with Brahmins. At least they don't see the Atharvaveda aligned with the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, and the Yajurveda. Thus there is a real question about the identity of the Atharvans. And at this point that we turn to ancient Iranian literature to see if it sheds any light.

The aθauruuan: Priest and Proselytiser.

As I mentioned in my introduction the Sanskrit word arthavan has a counterpart in Old-Iranian aθauruuan or āθravan.† It is apparent that both Sanskrit and Iranian words continue an Indo-Iranian form *atharuan 'provided with athar' (compare the -van possessive suffix in Sanskrit), however authorities do not agree what athar might be (see Hintze 2009: 179, n.28 for a discussion of this). 

† θ is pronounced like the th in 'theory'. The former spelling is used by Hintze, the latter by Boyce, but they appear to be discussing the same phenomenon.

Although the priest is often connected with fire worship Boyce argues that "The evidence points rather to fire having acquired such importance later, in India through the part played by fire (agni-) in the cult, in Iran through Zoroaster’s reform." By "later" she means ca. 4th century BC. It seems that the aθauruuan were the missionary wing of Zoroastrianism:

"The oldest attestation of the word āθravan is in the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti, where the worshippers honor “the return of the priests who go afar (to those who) seek righteousness in other lands,” that is, it seems to āθravans acting as Zoroastrian missionaries (Y. 42.6)." (Boyce)

According to the Avestan text, Hērbedestān, there was a tradition of each (extended) family allowing (or perhaps requiring) one person to leave home for "priestly service" (Hintze 2015: 38,  2009: 172). Both males and female could undertake this duty. They would study and then preach what we now call Zoroastrianism, the Mazdayasnian religion, and perform the rituals of the religion. Hērbedestān says that they ought to be able to return home three times per year, and not more that three nights of travelling (2009: 176). Zoroaster (i.e. Zaraθuštra) is described as the first priest (paoiryāi aθaurune), the first warrior and the first herdsman. That Zoroastrianism was an evangelical religion is suggested by references to spreading to other countries:

"From here then / the good, Mazdā-Worshipping religion / will spread over all seven regions." (Hintze 2009: 177)

"We worship the return of the priests / who will have gone far away to the truth-seekers of the countries." (Hintze 2009: 178)

So the aθauruuan was a missionary, though the Hērbedestān appears to be ambivalent about how far they might have spread Zoroastrianism: far, but not too far. Hintze interprets these passages as suggesting that the selected aθauruuans would travel to a community and convert it. Then that community would in turn contribute missionaries to spread Zoroastrianism in a domino effect (2015: 38). As Boyce observes "In due course, by their endeavors, Zoroastrianism, first established in eastern Iran, reached western Iran also, to be adopted there by the hereditary priests of the Medes and the Persians, known to the Greco-Roman world as the “magi.”"

Conclusions

From this information we do not have enough information to form a definite conclusion, but if we assume that the name Atharvan was relatively stable then we may conjecture a relationship between the Iranian aθauruuan and the Indian Atharvan. Most likely the word is used in its general sense of 'priest' and we know little about the function of such priests in India. 

There is a slight possibility that the missionary activity of the aθauruuan took them across the Hindukush and into India. We do know that the Achaemanid Persian Empire had political influence in the Indus Valley. We know that cultural contacts with Iran were significant. For example, writing was introduced into India from Iran (in the form of the Aramaic script that Persian Administrators adopted after they conquered that part of the Middle-East). The Sanskrit words for writing and book, lipi and pustaka, are loan words from Old-Iranian. And so on. 

The main problem of course is that the Sanskrit Atharvans are not Zoroastrians or anything like it. They are magicians who use spells to protect or harm. So perhaps the simplest answer is that there is no relationship except that an old-Indo-Iranian label for a priest was recycled. Against this is the fact that on the Indian side of the border, the name of a group of priests seems to be more than a general label and to refer to a distinct cultural group: the Atharvans, the Aṅgirasas, the Bṛgus, all seem to have coherent groups which at the time probably meant being kin based. In this they contrasted with the sāmaṇas who had begun to form groups based on loyalty to a religious teacher.

In my work on the Iranian origins of the Śākyas (Attwood 2012) one of the stand out features was that though they has originated form Iran and had perhaps been Zoroastrian, by the time they settle on the Himalayan foothills on the margins of the Kingdom of Kosala, the Śākyas seem to have adopted an Indian language and forgotten most of their history. Only a few glimpse of Iran are possible. Indeed the few facts presented are probably not decisive enough to convince most people, though my sense is that taken together they are difficult to explain any other way. So if the Śākyas end up in Kosala having become thoroughly Indianised, then perhaps something similar happened to the Atharvans?

The Atharvans have adapted chunks of the Ṛgveda into their religious spiel. There are only two possible explanations for this. They might have come from Vedic speaking Brahmins who memorised the verses and perhaps converted to the religion of the Atharvans. Or the verses in question pre-date either the Ṛgveda or the Atharvaveda and were the common cultural property of Vedic speaking Indians who were divided into distinct groups. We see a similar process at work in the different collections of the Dharmapada for example. Some of the verses of the Dhp are also found in Jain texts and in the Sanskrit Epics. Although exclusivity was a feature of the mature Brahmanical sacrificial religion, it may be that some parts of the Ṛgveda reflect an earlier phase which was less exclusive.

In any case, from the point of view of the early Buddhists, the Atharvans were a distinct group from the Brahmins and seem to have been viewed with fear and loathing. Whereas Brahmins are sometimes mocked, they are also sometimes seen in a very positive light and many of them convert to Buddhism, the few mentions of the Atharvans are all negative. Although the name has an obvious link to Iran, there is not enough evidence to make any stronger link. Still it is an intriguing possibility, and my feeling is that the interactions between Iran, especially the Achaemanid Empire, and Pre-Asoka India have had too little attention to date and will most likely repay careful attention with new discoveries.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Attwood, Jayarava. (2012) Possible Iranian Origins for Sākyas and Aspects of Buddhism. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 3. http://www.ocbs.org/ojs/index.php/jocbs/article/view/26 

Boyce, M.  (1987) Āθravan. Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, New York, 1996-. Vol. III, Fasc. 1, pp. 16-17. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/atravan-priest.  

Cohen, Signe. (2008) Text and Authority in The Older Upaniṣads. Leiden: Brill.

Hintze, Almut. (2009) Disseminating the Mazdayasnian Religion. An Edition of the Avestan Hērbedestān Chapter 5*. Exegisti monumenta. Festschrift in Honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams. Edited by Werner Sundermann, Almut Hintze and François de BloisHarrassowitz Verlag, 251-278. 

Hintze, Almut. (2015) Zarathustra’s Time and Homeland: Linguistic Perspectives. In: M. Stausberg and Y. Vevaina (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism. With the assistance of Anna Tessmann. Oxford: OUP, 31–38. 

Jayatilleke, K. N.  1963. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge. George Allen and Unwin.  

Lipner, J. (1994) Hindus: their religious beliefs and practices. London : Routledge.

Piyadassi. (1975) The Book of Protection: Paritta. Buddhist Publication Society. Online: Access to Insight (1999)

Winternitz, Moriz (1927) A History of Indian Literature, Vol. 1. Motilal Banarsidass, 1996  

Early Mahāyāna: Everything You Know is Wrong

Revised 5 Jul 2015.

The origin of the Mahāyāna has been a subject of some fascination over the years. In its mature form, Mahāyāna Buddhism could hardly be more different from Mainstream Buddhism and still be thought of as Buddhism. A variety of theories have been proposed for how the Mahāyāna came about. In this article, I will précis some recent articles which revise or review of the origins and development of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Note that the articles that this essay is based on are all available on the internet via academic.edu (individual links are included in the bibliography). I highly recommend the two articles by Drewes (2010a, 2010b). They are very accessible and thought provoking. Karashima's articles are long and technical and general readers may find them a bit daunting, but they never-the-less also provide important insights (and post date Drewes by some years and thus also provide a contrast to his work).

The Name Mahāyāna

Like some other Buddhist terms coined in Prakrit, it seems Mahāyāna might have been the victim of a wrong Sanskritisation. We already suspect that sūtra 'thread' ought to have been sūkta 'wise saying', both words assimilate to sutta in Pāḷi; while satva† 'being' ought to have been sakta 'committed, intent on', both satta in Pāḷi. Hence, bodhisatva ought to be bodhisakta 'committed to awakening', and it's possible that mahāsakta might have signified 'one whose commitment is great'. Karashima (2015b) provides a comprehensive survey of the word mahāyāna in the various versions of the Lotus Sutra. He argues that the word was probably intended to be the equivalent of the Sanskrit mahājñāna 'great knowledge', but that this was pronounced mahājāna in Prakrit. There was a natural ambiguity with the word mahāyana 'great vehicle', and the Lotus Sutra plays on this to some extent (see Karahima 2015b: 215-217). Later, the ambiguity was resolved in the wrong way and mahāyāna became the standard interpretation instead of mahājñāna. So, the fact that we talk about a great vehicle and not a great knowledge is a quirk of history.

†Buddhist manuscripts virtually always spell this word satva, so that, arguably, the correct form in Buddhist Sanskrit is satva. It has been further over-corrected to sattva by editors to make it conform with Classical Sanskrit.

Karashima argues that the use of the word was transferred from the Lotus to the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (2015a: 115) where the word only occurs in the parts of the text that are considered to have been added towards the end of the composition/compilation process.

The term mahājñāna is probably synonymous with terms like sarvajñā, found frequently in Prajñāpāramitā texts, and to prajñāpāramitā, as well. 

Karashima further conjectures, from his own research and work done independently by Peter Skilling (cited 2015a: 117), that the title sūtra or mahāyāna sūtra is a later affectation. Such texts are frequently referred to as paripṛccha (question), nirdeśa (description), vyākaraṇa (explanation/analysis), or vyūha (arrangement/manifestation), as well as sūtra. The addition of sūtra is frequently superfluous.

Many texts have the word Mahāyāna in their title. These titles first appear around 400 CE. Karashima (2015a) shows, by surveying the Chinese Canon, that this was a change that happened over time. He proposes that, originally, they were known as 'irregular' sūtras, signified by Middle Indic *vedulla = Pali vetulla, Gāndhārī *veulla or *vevulla. This corresponds to Sanskrit vaitulya. This word started appearing in Chinese texts about the 2nd century. However, because of the ambiguity in the Middle Indic forms and a change in the perception of these texts, by the 5^th century the Middle-Indic word began to be interpreted as vaipulya, 'extensive, incomparable'. One of the characteristics of the vedulla suttas was that they consisted of a series of questions and answers, characteristic of the paripṛccha texts, but also the Prajñāpāramitā texts. Later again, these vaipulya texts were renamed Mahāyāna texts.

* The asterisk here stands for a term derived from grammatical rules, but not found in any extant text.

So it seems that history has tricked us once again. As we will see below, the early Mahāyāna texts seem to have been composed in Prakrit and only translated into Sanskrit much later, late enough for the translators to no longer have a clear understanding of the intentions of the original authors, and to be mislead by the received tradition. We have so many examples of this kind of thing that we must admit that Buddhist lineages of passing on teachings were quite unreliable. Buddhist lineages amount to a game that American kids call "Telephone". The idea that because your teacher tells you they taught you what their teacher taught them, is no reason to believe that what you have received reflects an unchanging tradition.

What the Mahāyāna is Not

"Mahāyāna was not a distinct sect. It did not involve the worship of bodhisattvas. It was not developed by lay people. It was not an offshoot of the Mahāsāṃghikas. It was not a single religious movement." Drewes (2010a: 59)

Early theories

In his two articles, Drewes sums up a generation of research into the early Mahāyāna. Mostly, it is the story of wrong turns and false assumptions, many of which have the origins in the 19th century. For example, the idea that Mahāyāna was primarily a lay movement can be traced to an 1865 article by V. P Vasilev. The first actual lay origin for the Mahāyāna was put forward by Jean Przyluski in the 1920s and 1930s. Similarly, the idea that the Mahāyāna involved the rejection of the (so-called) arhat ideal was first put forward by T. W. Rhys Davids in 1881. Linking Mahāyāna to the Mahāsāṃghika sect was a popular 19th century idea, being found in the works of Hendrik Kern, L. A. Waddell, and T. W. Rhys Davids.

Stories of this kind proliferated and became a kind of standard narrative with some variations. The Mahāyāna was a reaction against the narrow mindedness and formalism of the Hīnayāna. Hīnayāna was portrayed as a religion in terminal decline that had preserved texts they didn't really understand (and the 19th century Sangha didn't do much to dispel this view). Mahāyāna was said to have embraced a universal ideal whereas the Hīnayāna was all about self liberation. Mahāyāna was institutionally distinct from existing forms of Buddhism. And so on. In the 1950s, Japanese scholar Akira Hirakawa proposed a new theory, which was that Mahāyāna was a lay movement focused on stūpa worship. (Drewes 2010a: 55)

I would observe that many of these historical narratives owe a great deal to the historical narratives of the schism in the Christian Church that gave birth to the Protestant movement, especially as perceived by Protestant Western Europeans. Protestants identify with the breakaway sect which brings with it a renewal of values and ideals, and (in their own estimation) a greater authenticity. They identify the Mainstream (in this case Roman Catholicism) as intellectually moribund (whereas the Catholic Church has always been more intellectually lively) and morally bankrupt (which was certainly true at the time of the Luther and various other points in history).

The irony is that the heartland of Protestant Buddhism was and is Theravādin Sri Lanka (the story becomes inverted without anyone quite noticing). But there never was this kind of schism in Buddhism! Or at least there is no evidence for it. Mahāyāna activity started small, operated within existing monasteries, and only very gradually over centuries came to dominate Indian Buddhism. Nor, for that matter did Theravāda dominate Sri Lanka until 10^th century reforms purged non-Theravāda Buddhism from Sri Lankan monasteries and standardised forms. Many of the features we take to be characteristic of Mahāyāna Buddhism are, in fact, culture norms from Tibet, China or Japan. They bear no direct relationship to Buddhism in India.

The tide began to turn in the 1970s. Greg Schopen's 1975 article introduced a new theory of Mahāyāna origins that directly challenged Hirakawa. Schopen argued that early Mahāyāna groups rejected stūpa worship in favour of what Schopen called "the cult of the book". Drewes (2007) himself critiques this seminal article at length, but it began an American-led re-evaluation of the origins of Mahāyāna.

The decisive moment, however, was Paul Harrison's article "Who Gets to Ride in the Great Vehicle? Self Image and Identity Among the Followers of Early Mahāyāna." (1987). This was based on an examination of the first sūtras to be translated into Chinese. This showed that Mahāyāna was overwhelmingly a monastic movement. The texts show little desire for establishing sectarian identity. Some of them even acknowledge the legitimacy of arhatship. They do not recommend devotion to bodhisattvas. They do show a generally negative attitude towards women. (Drewes 2010a: 55-6). And so the lay origins theory died.

The Breakaway Thesis

The standard story about Mahāyāna was that it began life as a breakaway sect from Mahāsāṃghika. There are several highly contradictory accounts of the schism at the second council which saw the conservative Sthāviras split from the more progressive Mahāsāṃghikas over matters relating to Pratimokṣa rules. Here I find the only bum note in Drewes' analysis. He describes this theory of Mahāsāṃghika origin as having died a quiet death. However, Karashima apparently disagrees because he continues to see, for example, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra as being connected with Mahāsāṃghika (2013). However, the part about Mahāyāna being a breakaway sect is deprecated both for lack of evidence and for positive evidence of continued coexistence for many centuries between the Mainstream and the so-called Breakaways. In fact, what evidence we do have suggests that there was only ever one kind of ordination lineage in India (nikāya^†), there was no distinct Mahāyāna ordination, and no distinct Mahāyāna institutions. Harrison argued that there was no way to determine any sectarian affiliation of the early Mahāyāna.

† The word nikāya is used in different ways, but here means "a group". The nikāya ordinations are basically the same the Buddhist world over. Theravādins also use the term nikāya to indicate ordination lineages within their school.

Mahāyāna Buddhism appears to have developed slowly. It certainly produced many texts in the early centuries, but little hard evidence. Schopen has noted a single statue of Amitābha, broken off at the ankle, but labelled as such on the pedestal, dating from ca. 153 CE. The oldest epigraphical^‡ evidence dates from the 4^th or 5^th centuries CE.

‡ Epigraphical evidence is from inscriptions typically carved into stone at a Buddhist site. Many record donations of money, often from monks.

Once we strip away all the unsupported conjectures and suppositions about Mahāyāna, little remains. There was no "the Mahāyāna", per se, (and I have tried to avoid the definite article in this essay). We know, from epigraphical, textual and eye-witness reports of Chinese pilgrims that Mahāyāna monks lived alongside Mainstream monks in the same monasteries. These monks were mainly concerned with the production and spread of new Buddhists texts, a major preoccupation of the texts themselves. Over many centuries the emphasis of monasteries changed so that Mahāyāna ideas and values predominated, but the ordination lineages remained the same (as they do in Tibet and parts of China to this day). According to Drewes, there were reactions, but these were by the Mainstream against Mahāyāna, or indeed by one branch of Mahāyāna against another. There was no Mahāyāna reaction against the Mainstream. There was a slow evolution over at least 600-800 years.

Karashima, however, points out that in second stratum of the Lotus Sūtra the dharmabhāṇaka (Dharma preacher) proclaiming the Lotus Sutra were "harshly criticised, slandered for having composed the kāvyas (i.e., the Lotus Sutra itself) and for propagating a heresy" and thus "it is evident that their belief was a very dangerous heresy in the eyes of the Buddhist authorities of that time" (2015a: 115). Similarly, Schopen argues that Mahāyāna authors were defensive with respect to the Mainstream. Discussing the Ratnāvalī, a text attributed to Nāgārjuna:

"Even in the hands of one of its most clever advocates it does not appear as an independent, self-confident movement sweeping all before it as... But rather—and as late as the second or third century—it appears as an embattled movement struggling for acceptance." (Schopen 2005: 7)

And also:

"Sociologists, however, who have studied sectarian groups in a variety of contexts, have shown that [the sort of characterization found in the Ratnāvalī] is typical of small, embattled groups on the fringes or margins of dominant, established parent groups." (Schopen 2005: 9)

This suggests that Drewes is playing down the antagonism between Mahāyāna and the Mainstream. It seems clear that Mahāyāna believers did co-exist with Mainstream Buddhists, but they did not necessarily co-exist without tensions and conflicts.

The Role of Texts

It seems that in trying to understand Mahāyāna we have placed too much emphasis on the proliferation of texts. Too many assumptions were made about the conditions under which a religious group might produce and transmit new texts. Here, again, we can point to the influence of Protestantism. To our Eurocentric minds, the production of new texts must be preceded by schism and must represent irreconcilable differences. But this assumption does not apply in India, generally. The history of Indian religions is very different from the history of Christianity in Europe, especially as seen through Protestant eyes. Buddhist India was far more pluralistic than Christian Europe; more tolerant of heterodoxy, though polemics do survive; and more likely to syncretise. 

For some time it seemed that Schopen was right to say that "each text placed itself at the centre of its own cult" (cited in Drewes 2010a: 59). However, Drewes calls this into question. Firstly, there was no evidence of distinct Mahāyāna communities. Mahāyāna existed within the Mainstream institutional framework. Some have pointed to the divergent doctrinal views of Mahāyāna texts as evidence requiring distinct cults, but Drewes counters that accepting the authenticity of texts with divergent points of views is not a problem today and there is no evidence that it ever was. Drewes suggests that the different sūtras probably reflect the ideas of different authors rather than distinct communities.

So, Mahāyāna was primarily a literary movement, operating within and alongside mainstream Buddhism. It was unlikely to have been a unified movement.

We now have good evidence in the form of the old Aṣṭasāhasrikā manuscript described by Karashima and Falk that the first Prajñāpāramitā texts were composed and/or compiled in Gandhāra in the local language, Gāndhārī (see Karashima 2013).

It is fairly certain, however, that writing was in use before the development of Mahāyāna. Drewes notes one Mainstream text with a 2σ range 184-46 BCE and another with 2σ range 206 BCE - 59 CE (2010a: 60). The mid points of these ranges are 110 BCE and 146 BCE respectively. But, on the whole, it seems that Mahāyāna textual practices were not different from Mainstream practices and Drewes notes that the distinction between categories like "oral" and "written" is not hard and fast in India. Even written texts are memorised and studied orally.

As Drewes points out, contra to a popular theory, there is no evidence that Mahāyāna Sūtras were initially composed in written form (2010a: 60). Karashima (2015a: 113) reinforces the point that the texts were most likely composed orally in Prakrit. He proposes a rough time line:

1. Oral transmission in Prakrit. 1^st Century BCE.
2. Oral transmission in Prakrit. Written Prakrit in Kharoṣṭhī script. 1^st~3^rd centuries CE.
3. Broken Sanskrit mixed with Prakrit. 2^nd~3^rd centuries CE.
4. (Buddhist) Sanskrit. Written in Brāhmī script. 3^rd/4^th centuries onwards.

Drewes places the translation into Sanskrit about a century later than Karashima, i.e., 4^th/5^th century.

To sound a contrary note, I have to point out that propagating a literature is generally a community activity. Written texts require a medium, ink, and implements, all of which suggest an economy in which such things were either produced or could be bought. For oral texts to survive for any length of time, they must be memorised by more than one person at a time. But such communities could have existed as cliques within monasteries.

Forest Dwelling Bodhisatvas

Paul Harrison (1992) and Reginald Ray(1994) independently floated the idea that forest dwelling ascetics were a significant influence on the development of Buddhism, generally, and Mahāyāna, specifically. The idea seems to have caught on and many scholars have found textual support for this thesis, not least Jan Nattier in her 1993 book A Few Good Men. Indeed, if the heart of the Mahāyāna was in forest renunciants, then this would explain the lack of inscriptional evidence (though for the same reason it is inconsistent with written texts).

The forest renunciate is a Romantic figure, or at least a focus for Romantic projections, both for their mode of life and for the location of it in wild nature. They are saintly, dedicated to religious practices, especially self-denial, and is associated in many cultures with sacredness. Research has shown that such personal sacrifices are important in encouraging the faith of ordinary people (see Martyrs Maketh the Religion). Thus, the forest renunciate appeals to the Romantic aspect of modernist world view and self view.

However, as Drewes remarks, "The main problem with the forest hypothesis is that Mahāyāna sūtras, the final court for any theory of early Mahāyāna, provide little support for it." (2010a 61). Of course, the texts do mention forest dwelling, but it is hardly the sine qua non of Buddhist practice in most early Mahāyāna texts. Some texts, e.g., the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, even discourage it! The majority of Mahāyāna texts seem to be concerned with easy practices that enable one to get out of saṃsāra with the minimum of effort.

Ray turns out to have used a very narrow selection of texts to justify his thesis (and those only in translation). He excludes the large majority of the texts that have been translated, let alone of those which are preserved in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. But what is worse is that the texts he does cite frequently undermine his thesis on closer examination. For example, he cites the Ratna-guṇasamcayagāthā as advocating forest dwelling, when, in fact, it explicitly discourages it! (Drewes 2010a: 62). Jan Nattier's forest dwelling thesis is also, I hate to say, built on shaky ground. It is based on one text, the Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra, that is admittedly very early, but "advocates forest dwelling and monasticism inconsistently" (Drewes 2010a: 62). Her other contribution focuses on Akṣobhya's pure land, but here also she seems to overlook the ease with which practitioners are promised entry to Abhirati. "Nattier's general idea that earlier forms of Mahāyāna advocated difficult, jātaka-like practices and that easy means of practice were developed only later has no obvious evidentiary support" (Drewes 2010a: 62).

Clearly, forest dwelling played a continuing part in Buddhism. It is evidently an important practice for Mainstream Buddhists, but Mahāyāna texts are equivocal about the benefits. They seem to prefer other kinds of practice; often much easier practices.

The Bodhisatva Ideal.

The earlier models of Mahāyāna Buddhism had a break-away group who rejected the arhat ideal in favour of the new bodhisatva ideal. We've seen that the break-away thesis is wrong, that the arhat ideal was not rejected in all early Mahāyāna texts. And, in fact, there is no strong evidence that the bodhisatva ideal was particularly influential in Mahāyāna. We also know that the bodhisatva ideal was not missing from the early Buddhist texts. But a number of other characteristics distinguish Mahāyāna texts from Mainstream texts:

• expanded cosmologies and mythical histories
• pure lands
• 'celestial' Buddhas and bodhisatvas
• descriptions of powerful new religious practices
• new ideas on the nature of the Buddha
• a range of new philosophical perspectives

There's nothing in the actual texts to suggest that the bodhisatva ideal was either the cause of the others, or that it was more prominent than the other characteristics (Drewes 2010b: 66-67). So it seems the focus on the bodhisatva idea is a retrospective emphasis, and the insistence that it was not found in Mainstream Buddhism is a straw man argument, a mistake or a disingenuous piece of misinformation.

Conclusions

A generation of scholarship has transformed our understanding of the origins and early development of Mahāyāna Buddhism. However, that scholarly understanding has yet to fully permeate the Buddhist community. Certainly when I got involved in Buddhism in the early 1990s the standard narrative was still basically the 19th century one. I believe that it survives largely intact. Part of the reason might be that it strikes at Buddhist self-views and identity building narratives. My understanding of religious belief is that these are the beliefs that are most resistant to counterfactual arguments. Judging by how reluctantly Buddhists have received the knowledge that the Heart Sutra is an apocryphal Chinese text, I suspect that it will be some time before Buddhists catch up with the academy on this, if they ever do.

A significant drawback in Drewes' articles is that they only relate the etic view, i.e., the views of European and American scholars. They tell us little or nothing of the emic, i.e., of what Buddhists themselves thought about Mahāyāna. I think it likely that etic views were formed in part by the normative stories told by Buddhists themselves. The views held by Western scholars were almost certainly informed by existing Buddhist narratives. It would be useful to know more about the process of view forming amongst these early scholars and the extent to which they were simply repeating what Buddhists themselves believed about their own history.

It is quite significant if the Buddhist normative stories are at odds with the actual history that we can derive from textual and archaeological studies. My sense is that many of the false stories about the origins of the Mahāyāna are promoted by the sectarian followers of Mahāyāna in order to bolster their own prestige. Buddhists often seem to see themselves as being in a competition to present (and represent) the most "authentic" or most "authoritative" version of Buddhism. Or else they are justifying their own heterodoxy. Many of these historical narratives are dismissive of Mainstream Buddhism, which in light of the actual history now seems bizarre. And the competitive side of Buddhists is still evident in the present.

This new historical paradigm may well shed new light on old debates about the sectarian affiliations of the some more prominent Mahāyāna śāstra writers, like Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu. The idea that these writers could have a foot in both camps no longer seems odd. Assigning them to either Mainstream or Mahāyāna might be to misunderstand where their loyalties lay. It is only our perception of sectarian divides that make us struggle to place a figure Nāgārjuna, who both cites āgama texts and uses Mahāyāna ideas, like śūnyatā. As monk, Nāgārjuna can only have been ordained in a Mainstream lineage, because that was the only kind of Buddhist ordination. Perhaps it was entirely natural at the time to have loyalty to a conservative ordination lineage and an innovative textual tradition at the same time.

Drewes argues against the use of the term Mainstream Buddhism, largely because different scholars have used it in widely varying ways. He suggests non-Mahāyāna, but I disagree. It would be better to have a positive term for what was, after all, the mainstream of Indian Buddhism for a millennium, and to seek a consensus on how it is used. Defining the mainstream in terms of not being part of a minority movement seems perverse. In light of this new picture that has emerged, "Mainstream" seems the best candidate yet as a term to contrast the Mahāyāna tendency in Buddhism over a period of many centuries. We need to be clear that this is a term for discussing the history of Buddhism in India. It does not apply to groups outside India, nor beyond the demise of Indian Buddhism, though, arguably, now that there are millions of new (Ambedkarite) Buddhists in India, it is once again relevant. So the term cannot apply to modern Buddhism movements. Nor is it a fixed term. The mainstream of Buddhism in India was changing all the time; the point that Drewes makes is that the mainstream was gradually taken over by Mahāyāna Buddhism. For an example of this kind of change see my JBE article on how karma changes over time (Attwood 2014).

I've noted a few points of discussion and disagreement. These ought not to distract from the overview provided by Drewes. Overall, these articles are an important contribution to our understanding of the history of Buddhism. The articles benefit from being well written and organised. Although many scholars contributed to the change in worldview, to see all that work expertly summarised is quite an experience. It brings with it that frisson that the true intellectual feels when they experience a paradigm shift. One's worldview does not simply adjust to the new knowledge, but the new knowledge restructures the world view. The case Drewes makes seems to sit on firm foundations and to completely supersede the legacy view of Mahāyāna. Personally I love it when this happens. Everything we thought we knew was wrong. Fantastic!

~~oOo~~

Bibliography


Attwood, Jayarava. (2014) Escaping the Inescapable: Changes in Buddhist Karma. Journal of Buddhist Ethics 21: 503-535.

Drewes, David.

• (2007) Revisiting the Phrase “sa prṛthivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet” and the Mahāyāna Cult of the Book. Indo-Iranian Journal 50: 101–143DOI 10.1007/s10783-007-9052-z https://www.academia.edu/9225110/Revisiting_the_phrase_sa_prthivipradesas_caityabhuto_bhavet_and_the_Mahayana_cult_of_the_book
• (2010a). Early Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism I: Recent Scholarship. Religion Compass 4/2: 55-65. DOI:10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00195.x https://www.academia.edu/9226456/Early_Indian_Mahayana_Buddhism_I_Recent_scholarship
• (2010b). Early Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism II: New Perspectives. Religion Compass 4/2: 66-74. DOI:10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00193.x https://www.academia.edu/9226471/Early_Indian_Mahayana_Buddhism_II_New_perspectives

Seishi KARASHIMA

• (2013) Was the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Compiled in Gandhāra in Gāndhārī. ARIRIAB XVI: 171-188. https://www.academia.edu/9211788/Was_the_Aṣṭasāhasrikā_Prajñāpāramitā_Compiled_in_Gandhāra_in_Gāndhārī
• (2015a) Who Composed the Mahāyāna Scriptures? ––– The Mahāsāṃghikas and Vaitulya Scriptures. ARIRIAB XVIII: 113–162. https://www.academia.edu/12854001/Who_Composed_the_Mahāyāna_Scriptures_The_Mahāsāṃghikas_and_Vaitulya_Scriptures
• (2015b) Vehicle (yāna) and Wisdom (jñāna) in the Lotus Sutra: the Origin of the Notion of Yāna in Mahāyāna Buddhism. ARIRIAB XVIII: 163-196. https://www.academia.edu/12854029/Vehicle_yāna_and_Wisdom_jñāna_in_the_Lotus_Sutra_the_Origin_of_the_Notion_of_yāna_in_Mahāyāna_Buddhism

Schopen, Gregory. (2005) Figments and Fragments of Mahayana Buddhism in India. University of Hawai'i Press. http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/books/schopen-figments-chap1.pdf

See also Bhikkhu Bodhi et al., The Bodhisattva Ideal: Essays on the Emergence of Mahāyāna. Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, 2013. [Reviewed by Dhīvan in the Western Buddhist Review. And seems to make many of the same points from a mostly Theravāda point of view.]

Kātyāyana in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra

One of my long time fascinations is with the Pali Kaccānagotta Sutta or Sanskrit Kātyāyana Sūtra. It survives in three versions: Pāḷi, Chinese, and Sanskrit. It is fairly well known that Nāgārjuna quotes a Sanskrit version of this text in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK 15.7). It's less well known that a number of Mahāyāna Sūtras appear to quote this sūtra, as well. Long term, I would like to do a complete survey of how this text was used in Buddhism over time, but we can say that it forms an important link between Mahāyāna and Mainstream forms of Buddhism. Some very useful reading on this subject can be found in Salvini (2011). There is also some discussion focussed on MMK in Kalupahana (1986).

In this essay I'll translate and discuss a passage from the first chapter of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra and argue that it recapitulates the argument about dharmas from the Kātyāyana. The implication here is that Kātyāyana provides a conceptual continuity link between trends of Buddhism. It represents a truth about experience that is widely acknowledged by different Buddhist schools of thought.

In my next blog essay I'll be exploring some important ideas about the history of the early Mahāyāna. One thing that has emerged recently is that Mahāyāna texts were almost certainly composed orally and in Prakrit. In the case of the Aṣṭa, we have physical evidence in the form of a birch bark manuscript, written in the Gāndhārī Prakrit in Kharoṣṭhī script and carbon dated to the first century CE (the mid-point for the probability curve is 79 CE). So the Sanskrit text is a translation. Aṣṭa might have been translated into Sanskrit as late as the 5th century CE. This undermines the claim of the Sanskrit version of Aṣṭa (or any Mahāyāna text) to be "the original". In some ways, the early translations into Chinese might better represent the original text, though this is debatable. 

The passage that I want to explore is Chapter 1, section 19; Vaidya (1960). In Conze's translation (1973) this passage occurs on p.87-88. My translation is:

When that was said, the Bhagavan said this to Elder Śāriputra, "thus training, Śāriputra, the bodhisattva mahāsattva does not train in any dharma. What is the reason for it? For the dharmas do not exist in the way that the foolish, ignorant hoi polloi take them to exist."  

Elder Śāriputra said, "How then do they exist, Bhagavan?"  

The Bhagavan said, "They exist as though they don't exist. Not being found in that sense they are said to be unfound (avidye). The foolish, ignorant hoi polloi are engrossed in them. All dharmas imagined by them are non-existing. Having imagined them, they are obsessed by the two extremes. They don’t know or see those dharmas. Therefore, all dharmas they imagine are non-existing. Having imagined [the non-existing dharmas], they are engrossed in the two extremes; engrossed, they rely on the observed object as a basis and imagine dharmas in the past, in the future, and in the present moment. Having imagined them, they become engrossed in name and form. Non-existing all-dharmas are imagined by them. Imagining those non-existing all-dharmas, they do not know and do not see the path as it really is. Not knowing or seeing the path as it really is, they don’t depart from the triple realm and do not awaken to the highest truth. They go by the name “fools”. They do not develop faith in the true dharma. The bodhisattva mahāsattva does not become engrossed in any dharma, Śāriputra."

Typically, Conze manages to make this section paradoxical. He has dharmas both existing and not existing at the same time, which does not make sense on any terms. For Conze, such non-sense is a way of pointing to a transcendent, ineffable truth that words are incapable of communicating. Supposedly, the contradiction temporarily confuses the rational mind (as conceived) and allows the intuitive mind (as conceived) to make an intuitive leap to the transcendent truth. There are many false assumptions here about the nature of reason^† and imagination. 

† See for example: Reasoning and Beliefs. (10 Jan 2014)

The important point of the Kātyāyana is that existence (astitā) and non-existence (nāstitā) are not terms that can be applied to dharmas qua mental objects. The typical Mahāyāna explanation, following the Two Truths doctrine, is that dharmas both exist and do not exist. Kātyāyana makes sense, the Two Truths explanation does not. I believe that, in this passage from Aṣṭa, the Kātyāyana argument about dharmas is being recapitulated in much the same terms, and with the same warning about what happens if we do get caught up in the dichotomy. In other words, that this is, in fact, a tacit reference to Kātyāyana.

Perhaps it is worth rehearsing why the denial of existence and non-existence is accurate and not at all paradoxical. My starting point, as always, is to take the subject under discussion to be experience. Being naive realists, or what the text calls "foolish, ignorant hoi-polloi" (bālapṛthagjanā aśrutavanto), we have an experience and we imagine ourselves to be in contact with something real, be it internal or external with respect to our first-person perspective. Ignoring what the experience implies about the world of sense experience, ignoring matters of ontology, the focus of the Kātyāyana is on the experience itself. Is the experience of an object an existing thing or a non-existing thing, irrespective of the nature of the object? Clearly, the answer is that it is neither. An experience cannot be described in terms of existence or non-existence. It arises, lingers for a short time, and then passes away. But the experience itself is entirely internal to us. Two people may see the same object and agree on its characteristics. But their experience of it is individual and cannot be agreed on. And thus Conze, in affirming both existence and non-existence, has come to precisely the opposite conclusion because he seeks a transcendent truth behind the words; a noumenon of the text. Conze's Romanticism has a Platonic flavour to it.

The answer that an experience is neither existent nor non-existent is important, because it is the understanding of the nature of experience that has soteriological value. We say that "things" are arising and passing away, but the Buddhist texts seem to refer mainly (if not solely) to the arising and passing away of experiences. In the Kātyāyana, it says that only dukkha arises and only dukkha ceases. The same point is made in the Simile of the Chariot. Dukkha, here, is a synonym for unenlightened experience. This search for understanding is deprecated by Conze, by modern Zen commentators, and many Tibetan lamas, because they, too, believe in a transcendent truth that requires the suspension of reason (as they conceive reason). In the Spiral Path texts the experience of liberation (vimutti) is initiated by becoming fed up  (nibiddā) with the objects of the senses, i.e., with the intoxicating play of experience. Suspension of reason is not a prerequisite for awakening in these texts.

Central to Buddhist soteriology is the fact that our sense of self, our first person perspective, is also an experience, and partakes in the nature of all experiences. Streams of sensory information converge and are woven together to create the persistent illusion of being a self. Though, of course, we know that the illusion of the first-person perspective can be broken by drugs, trauma, brain injury and, of course, by meditation. In this view, insights consist of seeing experience, particularly the first person experience, in such a light that it ceases to intoxicate and fascinate. The word for 'insight', vipassana, literally means to 'see through', not, as our translation suggests, 'to see into'. 

In our naivete about experience, we imagine each experience signifies something real and we respond to it as though it were real. But, in addition to this, we are burdened with ideas about what constitutes happiness as the goal of our lives. The unenlightened, the bālapṛthagjanā aśrutavanto, believe, deep down inside, that happiness is about having pleasant experiences and avoiding unpleasant experiences. Maximising the former and minimising the latter seems to be the operational definition of happiness. If we can only arrange things so that we have the optimum amount of both, then we will be happy and free of unhappiness. For most of us this means living in an unsatisfactory compromise and a lot of self-delusion about how happy we really are. Our pleasures do not satisfy. Our pains are all too many and not the least of them is mortality!

The line of thought in the Kātyāyana is often mixed up with attempts to apply dependent arising to all kinds of other processes, particularly karma and rebirth. And I have showed how this leads to inconsistencies and incoherent statements about the nature of the world across a number of essays (see the Afterlife tab for a list). Many Buddhists end up believing that the impermanence of "things" (e.g., tables, chariots, or other physical objects) is the key teaching of Buddhism, when it's just a truism that everyone is already aware of (See Everything changes, but so what?). The Kātyāyana is one of the texts where the intent of the idea, by which I mean the application to experience and only experience, is apparent. And it was this intent that was, I argue, taken up by the Aṣṭa and by Nāgārjuna some centuries later. Although there are many loud voices arguing about what Nāgārjuna meant to say in his very confusing opus, with most of them seeing Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā as having deep ontological implications, I say that, in citing the Kātyāyana in the way that he does, we might understand his ideas better if we take the domain of application to be experience and forget about ontology. Nāgārjuna makes better, if not perfect, sense if we take him to be someone commenting on the phenomenology of experience, rather than speculating about metaphysics. 

In the Aṣṭa version of the idea, the author has chosen to use the words that are tricky to translate while retaining the connotations of the original. So in a key passage (Aṣṭa 1.19.4) the Buddha says to Śāriputra:

na hi te śāriputra dharmāstathā saṃvidyante yathā bāla-pṛthagjanā aśrutavanto 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | āyuṣmān śāriputra āha - kathaṃ tarhi te bhagavan saṃvidyante? bhagavān āha - yathā śāriputra na saṃvidyante, tathā saṃvidyante evam avidyamānāḥ | tenocyante avidyeti | 

"For the dharmas do not exist (na saṃvidyante) in the way that the foolish, ignorant hoi-polloi take them to exist (abhiniviṣṭāḥ)." 

Elder Śāriputra said, "How then do they exist (saṃvidyante), Bhagavan?" 

The Bhagavan said, "They exist as though (yathā) they don't exist. Not-being found (avidyamāna) in that sense (evaṃ), they are said to be unfound (avidyā)." 

The last statement in the Sanskrit text is:

yathā śāriputra na saṃvidyante, tathā saṃvidyante evam avidyamānāḥ | tenocyante avidyeti |

Conze translates "As they do not exist, so they exist. And so, since they do not exist [avidyamāna], they are called [the result of] ignorance [avidyā]", employing his usual hermeneutic of obscurity. He also translates avidyamāna as "do not exist", but avidye as "ignorance", but by his own logic the latter ought to mean 'not existing'.

Saṃvidyante is a passive form from sam√vid. Conze translates as ‘exists’. BHSD defines it as "is found, exists’ (= vidyate ‘is found; often virtually = asti)." PED saṃvijjati² ‘to be found, to exist’. MW ‘know, recognise; perceive; approve’. It's tricky because there are two homonyms √vid meaning 'to know' (cognate with our word 'wisdom') and √vid meaning 'to find'. The two are indistinguishable except by context. The same goes for vidyamāna, a present participle 'knowing, finding' (here negated by the prefix a-). The other word here is abhiniviṣṭāḥ (abhi+ni√viṣ) which has a range of meanings 'entered or plunged into; intent on, endowed with; determined, persevering). Conze (1973a) suggests "settled down in, is accustomed to suppose."

So Conze is treating almost all the verb forms as meaning "exists". And we ought to point out that if a Sanskrit author wished to assert the existence of something they can do so very directly with the verb asti or some variation on √vṛt. So we need to be alert here to connotations. I think that √vid as found is relevant here. So, to say that if we go looking for a dharma is it not found, is not the same as saying it means it does not exist. We certainly have experiences, and so, to that extent, they do sort of exist. But when we say they "exist", we mean only that we have an experience, not that some kind of really existent entity has arisen and persists. Clearly, the author of the Aṣṭa has something very like the Kātyāyana teaching in mind. And the consequence is similar in the sense that it leads to two extremes of thought: that dharmas either exist or do not exist and all the problems that this causes. And note that the Two Truth argument adopts both extremes rather than avoiding either of them. Compare Aṣta 1.19.7:

kalpayitvā dvāv antāv abhiniviśante abhiniviśya tan nidānam-upalambhaṃ niśritya atītān dharmān kalpayanti, anāgatān dharmān kalpayanti, pratyutpannān dharmān kalpayanti te kalpayitvā nāmarūpe 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | 

Having imagined [the non-existing dharmas], they are engrossed (abhiviviśante) in the two extremes (dvāv antāv); being engrossed (abhiniviśya), they rely on the observed object as a basis and imagine dharmas in the past, in the future, and in the present moment. Having imagined them, they become engrossed in name and form. 

Note the recurrence of abhini√viṣ here, translated as 'engrossed' this time (and as "settled down" by Conze). Taking dharmas to be real, settling into a view, we make mistakes about the nature of experience and, by implication, suppose that sense experience can be ultimately satisfying. And this is categorically a mistake. 

It has been argued that the Aṣṭa contains no direct reference to the Sarvāstivādin doctrine of sarva-asti (always existent), but Aṣṭa 1.19.7 might be just such a reference. Here, the deluded people imagine (kalpayanti) that dharmas exist in the past, future and present. This is precisely what Sarvāstivādins believe. If we recall the problem of Action at a Temporal Distance, this 'always on' feature of dharmas was the Vaibāṣika solution to the disconnect between action and result in time that the doctrine of karma requires. It earned the Vaibāṣikas the nickname Sarvāstivāda. However, after examining two of the early translations T224 《道行般若經》by Lokakṣema (179 CE) and T227 《小品般若經》by Kumārajīva (408 CE), both make the point about the two extremes, but neither of them have this passage about past, future and present. So we must conclude that it was interpolated into the Sanskrit text at a later date. So, if criticism of Sarvāstivāda was intended, it was not part of the original intention. Kumārajīva's translation of the dvāv antāv 'two extremes' is prosaically 二邊 'two extremes', whereas Lokakṣema has the more interesting 兩癡耳 literally 'two insane ears'.

Taking the text on face value, the criticism of the two extremes (existence and non-existence) is tilted towards criticising existence, presumably precisely because the existence view was prevalent at the time. If this interpretation is correct, then it may help explain the idiom in the next sentence (1.19.8)

tair asaṃvidyamānāḥ sarvadharmāḥ kalpitāḥ |

All dharmas imagined by them are non-existing.

Kalpita is a past participle from √kḷp. The literal meaning is 'made, fabricated'. I'm presuming here that the fabrication is a mental one. There's not really a word for "imagination" in Sanskrit (one of many differences in how they understand mind). Again, the idea here seems to be that one has an experience and in the way of naive realism mistakes it for something more substantial than it is. And when we treat experiences this way it obscures the Buddhist path or, as Aṣṭa puts it, yathābhūtaṃ mārgaṃ na jānanti na paśyanti, 'Not knowing or seeing the path as it really is...'

Interestingly, in 1.19.12 the wrong view is seen as an impediment to the development of faith in the truth of the dharma (satyaṃ dharmaṃ). This suggests that the mistake is foundational and must be sorted out right at the beginning of the religious life. My sense is that most modern Buddhism is already lost in speculation about ontology and supernatural forces. As Justin Whitaker recently pointed out to me, most Buddhists and scholars still invoke some variation of "seeing reality as it is" when describing Buddhist soteriology. But reality implies existence. Whatever we see as it is (yathābhūta) cannot be described in terms of existence or non-existence and, therefore, is neither real nor unreal. Reality can have nothing to do with Buddhist soteriology, by definition. To be real, whatever it is would have to be permanently existing and I don't think I need to explain why that is a problem.

I hope I have showed that at the very least the author of Aṣṭa had Kātyāyana in mind as they were writing this section. I think this shows that at least at the beginning of producing the Prajñāpāramitā texts the authors saw the domain of application of the Dharma as experience. They were not caught up in the metaphysical speculations of the Ābhidharmikas. They were, however, caught up in their own metaphysical speculations about the nature of the Buddha, though that is a story for another time. The importance of this discovery is that it helps us to understand the apparently paradoxical texts of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. In flirting with paradox they were trying to describe an attitude towards experience that had a liberating effect. They did not set out to confuse the reader, but to draw attention to our suppositions about experience and reality. The former we can know and understand; the latter we can only make inferences about, based on the commonality of experience with reference to the same object.

A first step in reforming modern Buddhism would be to establish the domain of application of our theory and practice, and in such a way as our theory and practice were complimentary. Despite all the bitching from Buddhists about the Mindfulness Therapy movement, I think they have a much better handle on this focus and integration of theory and practice. Better to be working with experience in a shallow way than to have a deep engagement with the kind of ontological speculation that typifies contemporary Buddhists discourse, because the latter is not beneficial in any way while the former at least is mildly beneficial and creates a basis for progress.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Conze, Edward. (1973). The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and its Verse Summary. San Francisco: City Lights.

Conze, Edward (1973a) Materials for a Dictionary of Prajñāpāramitā Literature. Suzuki Research Foundation.

Drewes, David (2009). Early Indian Mah ay ana Buddhism I: Recent Scholarship.Religion Compass 4/2 (2010): 55–65, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00195.x. https://www.academia.edu/9226456/Early_Indian_Mahayana_Buddhism_I_Recent_scholarship

Kalupahana, David J. (1986) Nāgārjuna, The Philosophy of the Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. SUNY.

Salvini, Mattia. (2011) The Nidānasamyukta and the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: understanding the Middle Way through comparison and exegesis. Thai International Journal of Buddhist Studies.II: 57-95. https://www.academia.edu/1925584/The_NidÄnasamyukta_and_the_M_lamadhyamakakÄrikÄ_understanding_the_Middle_Way_through_comparison_and_exegesis

Vaidya, P.L. (1960) Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute. (Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, 4). http://fiindolo.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/bsu049_u.htm

Sanskrit text 

Aṣṭa 1.19. (Vaidya 1960)

evamukte āyuṣmān śāriputro bhagavantam etad avocat – evaṃ śikṣamāṇo bhagavan bodhisattvo mahāsattvaḥ katamasmin dharme śikṣate? evam ukte bhagavān āyuṣmantaṃ śāriputram etad avocat evaṃ śikṣamāṇaḥ śāriputra bodhisattvo mahāsattvo na kasmiṃś cid dharme śikṣate | tatkasya hetoḥ? na hi te śāriputra dharmāstathā saṃvidyante  yathā bāla-pṛthagjanā aśrutavanto 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | āyuṣmān śāriputra āha - kathaṃ tarhi te bhagavan saṃvidyante? bhagavān āha - yathā śāriputra na saṃvidyante, tathā saṃvidyante evamavidyamānāḥ | tenocyante avidyeti | tān bālapṛthagjanā aśrutavanto 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | tair asaṃvidyamānāḥ sarvadharmāḥ kalpitāḥ  | te tān kalpayitvā dvayor antayoḥ saktāḥ tān dharmān na jānanti na paśyanti | tasmāt te 'saṃvidyamānān sarva-dharmān kalpayanti | kalpayitvā dvāv antāv abhiniviśante abhiniviśya tan nidānam-upalambhaṃ niśritya atītān dharmān kalpayanti, anāgatān dharmān kalpayanti, pratyutpannān dharmān kalpayanti te kalpayitvā nāmarūpe 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | tairasaṃvidyamānāḥ sarvadharmāḥ kalpitāḥ | te tān asaṃvidyamānān sarvadharmān kalpayanto yathābhūtaṃ mārgaṃ na jānanti na paśyanti | yathābhūtaṃ mārgam ajānanto 'paśyanto na niryānti traidhātukāt, na budhyante bhūtakoṭim | tena te bālā iti saṃjñāṃ gacchanti | te satyaṃ dharmaṃ na śraddhadhati | na khalu punaḥ śāriputra bodhisattvā mahāsattvā kaṃcid dharmam abhiniviśante ||

PS. If anyone has a pdf of Conze's Sanskrit edition of Aṣṭa I'd love to get a copy.