Mahaparinibbana-sutta and Cullavagga
Finot, Louis
The Indian Historical Qutlrterly
8:2
1932.06
p.241
Mahaparinibbana-sutta and Cullavagga
The Cullavagga (henceforth abbreviated as Cv.) of
the Vinaya- pitaka consists of two parts differing
vastly in length, matter and form: the first part
(chaps. I-X) being a code of disciplinary
regulations, and the second (chaps. XI-XII) a history
of the two councils, one of which assembled at
Rajagaha directly after the Parinibbana of Buddha,
and the other at Vesali, a century later. No link, no
transition connects the two parts together. While
chap. X (leaving aside the usual mnemonic summary)
closes with a rule concerning the bath of the nuns,
chap. XI opens abruptly with the words: "Then the
venerable Maha-Kassapa said to the Bhikkhus: 'Once I
was travelling along the road from Pava to
Kusinara....'' Where, when, and under what
circumstances was this discourse held, who were the
bhikkhus thus addressed, nobody knows. The record has
no historical introduction (nidana), thus lacking a
regular feature of the Buddhist canonical texts;
also, if its first word "then" (atha) implies that it
is the sequel of something else, we have just seen
that it could not be the sequel of chap. X. Here are
two anomalies bound to strike the reader, and we must
acknowledge that, as they now stand preserved in
chaps. XI-XII, these Acta Conciliorum appear as a be-
headed trunk, the head of which has to be sought
elsewhere.
p.242
It has been observed long ago by several
scholars(1) that the events contained in Cv. XI
follow chronologically those which form the subject-
matter of the Mahaparinibbana-sutta (henceforth
abbreviated as MPS.), a remark from which none
apparently seems to have drawn its most natural
conclusion, viz., that MPS. and Cv. XI-XII were
originally parts of a whole. Such an inference,
reasonable in itself, is further strengthened by the
fact that, besides the unbroken sequence of the
events which they relate, the two sections share a
peculiar character Suggestive of a common origin,
that is their historical, annalistic garb. Indeed,
MPS. looks in the Sutta-pitaka quite as strange and
heterogeneous as Cv. XI-XII in the Vinaya-pitaka,
whilst if removed from their respective surroundings
and joined together, the two give a perfectly
coherent "Chronicle" of the last journey of the
Buddha, of his death, his obsequies, and of the first
two councils.
The existence of such a work being provisionally
admitted, it ensues that the present place in the
Canon of those historical records must be the result
of some later interference. As to their former
setting, we are driven to mere conjectures; yet the
sacred books of other schools may offer us some
helpful analogies: for instance, the Vinaya of the
Mula-Sarvastivadins contains, under the title of
Samyukta-vastu (Nanjio, No. 1121), an account of
both Parinirvana and Councils, which answers exactly
to the kind of "Chronicle" presupposed by our
hypothesis. Why should not the Theravadins have had
among their sacred books an his- torical record of
the same description?
What was then the motive which induced the
Diaskeuasts to dismember that work? Many
explanations to such a step might be found. Let us
proffer here one which seems plausible enough. Since
it extended over a long time after the death of the
Tathagata, the subject-matter of the "Chronicle"
could not be styled as the Word of the Buddha
(Buddhavacanam);it was necessarily extra-canonical.
Still, it preserved utterances of the Master which
were not only most beautiful and pathetic, but highly
important for the doctrine, and which the com-
----------------------
1 E.g. Oldenberg, Vinaya, I, xxv1: "The tradition
of the councils takes up the thread of the story
where the accounts of the life and work of Buddha,
given in the Suttapitaka, end". Id., Buddhistische
Studien, in ZDMG., xxii, 615 "Die Erzahlung des
Cullavagga, die sich genau an die des MPS.,
anschliesst..."
p.243
pilers of the Canon ould have been loath to
discard. It was therefore perfectly natural that they
should wish to introduce them into the Basket of
Discourses, a thing easily achieved by setting apart
the section relative to Parinibbana and inserting it
into the Sutta-pitaka. As to the remnant being
chiefly concerned with disciplinary questions, it
occurred to them that it might he conveniently
annexed to the Vinaya-pitaka as a kind of Appendix or
Parisista.
Here we are confronted with the so-called
discrepancy, which Oldenberg thought that he detected
between MPS. and Cv. XI, with the consequence that,
in hiS opinion, the First Council, so fully narrated
in the latter, was totally ignored by the former.
The alleged contradiction is supposed to lie in
the way in which the Subhadda incident is related by
both. In MPS., Maha-Kassapa, on hearing the
subversive prattle of that bad monk, confines himself
to several banal remarks on Impermanence; while in
Cv. XI, he reacts earnestly by proposing the
convocation of a council to crush the growing
heretical tendencies. This would lead the reader to
infer that the two accounts could not have proceeded
from the same hand.
Such a conclusion would however be founded on a
misapprehension of the facts: the two accounts do not
stand on the same plane. In MPS., Maha-Kassapa and
his disciples, while on their way from Pava to
Kusinara, hear the tidings of the Master's decease,
whereupon Subhadda hails cynically the future freedom
of the monks. At that moment, Maha-Kassapa says
nothing about an eventual council: very properly too,
his only companions, his pupils, not having the least
qualification to consider such an important scheme,
much less to decide upon it. On the contrary, the Cv.
introduces Maha-Kassapa relating the Subhadda
incident in presence of the general Samgha, headed
by the great theras Ananda, Anuruddha, etc. Speaking
before the leading authorities of the Buddhist
Church, fully competent to take any neces- sary
measure for the maintenance of the Dhammavinaya, he
seizes quite naturally the proffered opportunity to
suggest the calling of a general meeting. Personally,
we cannot detect in that the shadow of a discrepancy.
This fictitious difficulty being removed, it
seems that nothing really withstands the working
hypothesis of a later redistribution of the texts
p.244
as stated above. We even thus get rid of several
perplexing singularities, such as, for example, those
connected with the question of lesser and minor
precepts.
According to the tradition of the Theravadins,
the First Council begins with the expounding of the
Vinaya by Upali and its rehearsal by the whole
Assembly. One of the rules so recited (Pacittiya,72)
runs as follows:
"Whatsoever Bhikkhu, when the Patimokkhs is
being recited, shall speak thus: 'What comes
of these lesser and minor precepts being here
recited,save only that they tenet to misgiving,
and worry, and perplexity?', there is Pacittiya
in thus throwing contempt on the precepts."
The rule is admitted without any reservation,
Ananda silently assenting. But when the said Ananda,
having in his turn taken the chair to settle the
question of the wording of the Suttas, proceeds to
recite the Mahaparinibbana-sutta, he quotes the
following words of the Buddha (MPS., VI, 3.):
"When I am gone, Ananda, let the Order, if
it should so wish, abolish all the lesser
and minor precepts."
Now this amounts to no less than allowing the
removal of those very regulations which, as it had
been recalled, it was strictly. forbidden even to
criticise. Nor is it all The rehearsal of the Dhamma
being completed, Ananda goes on and says:
"The Blessed One, Sirs, at the time of his
passing away, spake thus to me: 'When I am
gone, Ananda, let the Samgha, if it should so
wish, abolish all the lesser and minor precep-
ts",
thus seeming to impart to the Samgha, as a fresh
piece of news, an information which he had already
given them before. In its present state the text is
manifestly incoherent: our suggestion that What is now
known to us as the MPS. on one hand, and the Cv.
XI-XII on the other, primitively united in one work,
was later on arbitrarily divided and awkwardly thrown
into the Pitakas without hardly any attempt at making
it fit with its new setting, would account for such
inconsistencies in the result.
p.245
A closer examination of the text even brought us
to the conclusion that the lost or at least the
dismembered work must have been a good deal older
than the recension of the Canon into which it was
inserted. Any- how what has come over to us in its
present mnutilated form still bears witness to a
previous state of the Dhamma as well as of the
language. The episode of Channa's punishment and that
of Yasa's quarrel with the bhikkhus of Vesali will
serve to illustrate our point.
Before passing away, the Buddha ordered that the
brahmadanda penalty be inflicted upon the bhikkhu
Channa. Ananda who, curiously enough, ignores what
the brahmadanda is, asks for a definition, which is
given to him. As this penalty is not mentioned
anywhere, except in the two parallel passages of the
MPS., VI, 4, and Cv. XI, 1, 12-15, one can hardly
escape from coming to the conclusion that the rule
concerning the brahmadanda belonged to an older
stage of the Buddhist Vinaya.
The twelfth and last chapter of the Cullavagga
has also given rise to manifold discussions. It is,
however, practically certain that the sharp
dissension which arose, a century after the
Parinibbana, between Western and Eastern monks, who
advocated respectively a more or less rigid
discipline, takes us back to a period when the
monastic rule were not yet so strictly defined as in
the existing Vinaya-pitaka.
The case opens with a dispute between the thera
Yasa and the bhikkhus of Vesali about the latter's
practice of accepting gold and silver from lay
disciples. Such a contest is hardly conceivable
in face of the rule Nissaggiya XVIII: "Whatsoever
bhikkhu shall receive gold or silver......that is
a Pacittiya offence involving gotgriyutr." the
bhikkhus indulging in that lax habit deem themselves
justified, not only in persisting in
it, but even in censuring their censor. Yasa is
called upon to defend his point of view before the
laymen, a thing which he does by quoting three texts:
(a) a sutta of a general character, upon the four
upakkilesa, A., II, 53; (b) a sutta-not to be found
in the Sutta-pitaka--in which the Buddha, speaking
to Maniculaka, confirms the interdiction of receiving
either gold or silver; (c) finally, the only
pertinent and decisive text, viz., Sutta-vibhanga on
Nissaggiya XVIII; yet, while the first two are quoted
in extenso, the last one is merely referred to, which
makes it look like a posterior addition.
p.246
The contested point on the acceptation of gold
and silver is but one of the ten indulgences claimed
by the monks of Vesali and which were condemned by
the Council held in order to consider their case.It has
been shown(2) that the list of the Ten Points was
primitively drawn up in a Prakrit no longer perfectly
understood at the time of the redaction of the Second
Council, the bulk of which is still preserved in
Cullavagga XII, and enlarged with some additions,
such as the minutes of the session, composed
evidently after the same pattern as those of the
First Council.
In short, the several data gathered above entitle
us to suppose that the account of the councils of
Rajagaha and Vesali once formed the latter part of
a Iarger historical work, which, at the time of the
compulation of the Tripitaka, was severed into two
sections, the former being converted into the
Maha-parinibbana-sutta and the latter annexed as
capitula extravagantia to the tenth Khandhaka of the
Cullavagga.
LOUIS FINOT
----------------------
2 Sylvain Levi, Observations sur une langue
prrcanonique du bouddhisme.
(JA., Nov.-Dec. 1912, p.508).