Fables in the Vinaya-Pitaka of the Sarvastivad in School
By Jean Przyluski
The Indian Historical Quarterly
Vol.V, No.1, 1929.03
pp. 1-5.
p. 1
Many Indian fables are anterior to Buddhism. Some
of then must be anterior even to the invasion of
India by the Aryans.(1) The apostles of Buddhism had
quickly realized the utility of these tales in
appealing to the heart of man, and they had adapted
the old fables to the needs of their propaganda. Such
is the origin of the Jataka, and other moral tales,
which, on account of their antiquity and uncertain
sources, did not take long to be considered as "the
sayings of Buddha" (Buddhavacanam) and have been
classed as such in the Sutta-Pitaka after the
codification of the Scriptures.
Other tales, which are less ancient, have a
different character. They are no longer popular tales
handed down orally from generation to generation, but
literary compositions which were written by a known
author and the paternity of which could not in
consequence be attributed to Buddha. What was to be
done with these new productions? One
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1. On the subject of Austro-Asiatic elements contained
in Indian folklore,cf. Le prologue-cadre des Mille
et une Nuits et le theme du svayamvara, JA, 1924,
II, pp.101 ff.; and La Princesse a l'odeur de
poisson et la nagi, Etudes Asiatiques publiees
a l'occasion du 25e Anniversaire de l'Ecole
Francaise d'Extreme Orient, II, pp.265 ff.
p. 2
could either exclude them from the Canon, or include
them in one or the other Basket (Pitaka). The
alternative adopted has been different according to
the schools and the sects. Let us examine that which
the Sarvastivadins have chosen. I purposely pass over
the sectarian ramifications of this impor tant group,
and I confine myself to a consideration of the two
principal schools, viz., that of Mathura and that of
Kasmir.
One reads in the Ta tche tou louen, which is the
Chinese translation of a commentary (attributed to
Nagarjuna) on the Pancavimsati-sahasrika-
prajnaparamita, (1) "That which, is called Vinaya is
(a statement) of the faults committed by the
bhiksus: according to the precepts laid down by
Buddha, this must be done; this must not be done; in
doing this one commits such a fault. The abridged
statement is in eighty chapters. There is besides a
second part. On the one hand, in the Vinaya of
Mathura, the Avadanas and the Jatakas are in eighty
chapters. On the other, the Jatakas and the Ava-danas
are excluded from the Vinaya in the country of Kasmir
(Ki-Pin). (The latter) does not contain anything more
than the essential, which has been divided into ten
chapters; (but) there is a vibhasa in eighty chapters
which comments on it."
It appears that the Vinaya of Mathura and that of
Kasmir differ considerably. At Mathura, the Vinaya,
properly so called, was in eighty chapters, while at
Kasmir we have to distinguish between a text in ten
chapters and a vibhasa eight times longer. Again,
while the fables (Jatakas and Avadanas) remain
excluded from the Vinaya of Kasmir those tales
constitute at Mathura a collection as voluminous as
the Vinaya itself. Several facts support the
indications furnished by the Ta tche tou louen.
The Mahavastu, the complete title of which is
Mahavastv-
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1. Cf. Tripit., Tokyo edition, xx, 5, p.105, col.2.
This text was kindly communicated to me by M.
Pelliot and I have published a first translation
of it in my Legends of the Emperor Asoka (p.214).
It is this translation that I reproduce here with
modifications in certain places.
p. 3
avadana,(1) actually contains a large number of
fables, avadanas and jatakas. We know that this
collection was attached to the Vinaya-pitaka of the
Lokottaravadins of the Mahasanghika School.
The Tibetan catalogue of Tanjur supplies a fact
of the same kind for the Sarvastivadin School. Volume
XC of Mdo'grel contains, among other pieces:
No. 17 Suvarnavarnavadana
No. 18 Kunalavadana
No. 19 Aryanandimitravadana
No. 20 Saptakumarikavadana
Now, according to the index (f.129, 2-3) cited by
Cordier (Bstan 'gyur, III, p.416), the above four
avadanas are mentioned to be included in the
cycle('khor) of the Vinaya-Pitaka ('dul-ba'i
sde-snod).
In short, the Vinaya-Pitaka of the Kasmir School,
like that of most of the sects, contains nothing more
than the texts of Discipline, while the Vinaya-Pitaka
of Mathura, like that of the Lokottaravadins of the
Mahasangha, contains in addition an important
collection of fables in eighty chapters.
According to the Ta tche tou louen, these fables
were of two kinds, jataka and avadana. They perhaps
formed two series, which I propose, in order to fix
the ideas, to call avadanamala and jatakamala. We
should thus have, in the Vinaya-Pitaka of the
Sarvastivadins, the equivalent of the two
collections, Jatakamala and Pratyekabuddhamala,
which, according to the Report of Nandimitra, were,
in another Canon, attached to the
Abhidharma-Pitaka.(2)
What was the original word which the translator
of the Ta tche tou louen has rendered in Chinese by
pou(class, group or category) and which I have
provisionally translated
----------------------
1. M. H. Zimmer insists rightly on this point: Zum
Mahavastu-Avadana in Zeitschr. f. Ind. u. Iran,,
vol. III, pp, 201 ff:
2. Sylvain Levi et Ed. Chavannes, Les Seize Arhat
Protecteurs de la Loi, JA, 1916, p.20 of extract.
p. 4
by "chapter"? We are told that the Vinaya-Pitaka of
Kasmir was in ten pou's. On the other hand, we know
that the Vinaya of the Sarvastivadins was called the
"Vinaya in ten narratives (adhyaya)" in Chinese: che
song liu. It is therefore probable that the ten pou's
of the Vinaya of Kasmir were adhyayas or "narratives."
We have to remember here that the Divyavadana,
which likewise belongs to the literature of the
Sarvastivadins, is found in several recensions, of
which at least one has preserved the ancient
division into adhyayas. Ms. 88 of the Bibliotheque
Nationale of Paris contains a Divyavadanamala which
consists of only twenty-one avadanas distributed
among thirty adhyayas.(1) On the other hand, the
printed Divya vadana contains thirty-eight avadanas,
of which only one, the Sardulakarnavadana, is still
divided into adhyayas. Divyavadana and
Divyavadanamala are so entirely different that we
cannot draw any conclusions regarding the contents
of the collection which is doubtless their (common)
source. But it does not seem improbable that both of
them were attached to the ancient avadanamala of the
Sarvastivadins. The epithet "divya" given to the
collections actually known implies that this
collection stood on a higher level than the others.
Its success and its popularity sufficiently account
for the rehandlings which it has undergone in the
course of the centuries, and consequently also for
the diversity of our collections. The Divyavadana
which contains a Mahayana sutra(2) has probably been
rehandled lately. The Avadana mala of Mathura perhaps
contained the four avadanas of Mdo 'grel, three of
which are not to be found at the present day in our
Divyavadana.
At first sight, the above considerations seem to
be in contradiction with the very plausible opinion,
according to which the Vinaya of the Mulasarvasti-
vadins has been
----------------------
1. Cf. Divyavadana, edited by Cowell and Neil,
Appendix C.
2. The 34th avadana, entitled Danadhikaramahaya-
nasutra.
p. 5
compiled in Kasmir.(1) This monumental Vinaya
contains a large number of avadanas, but we also find
that the Vinaya of Kasmir discarded, according to
the Ta tche tou louen, the avadanas. The diffculty is
not insoluble. The Vinaya of the Mulasarvastivadins
seems to be a sort of reservoir, into which have
flowed all the currents of the Sarvastivadin
literature. It is the Total in which have been
doubtless incorporated, by the side of an older
Vinaya, the Avadanamala and the Jatakamala of the
Sarvastivadins. We should not therefore be surprised
to find in it pieces of diverse character and
especially some important tales extracted from the
Divyavadana.
MM. Edouard Huber and Sylvain Levi, the first
authors who have noted the pieces common to the
Vinaya of the Mula sarvastivadins and the Divyavadana
hold that the first work was the origin of the
second. Quite recently, again, M. Sylvain Levi has
written that the Divyavadana is "a collection of
tales sliced out, almost all of them, from the huge
Vinaya of the Mulasarvastivadins." (JA,
July-September, 1927, pp. 103 ff). This view is
probably incorrect. It does not appear that the
Vinaya is the source of the Divyavadana. The
compilers of the Vinaya of the Mulasarvastivadins are
likely to have borrowed from the Divyavadana, or, to
be more precise, from the ancient collection of
fables of which our Divyavadana is only a late
recension.
----------------------
1. The North-west of India in the Vinaya of the Mula-
sarvastivadins, JA, 1914, II, p.493 ff.