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The Dharmaguptaka are one of the eighteen or twenty schools of Early Buddhism
Early Buddhism

The term Early Buddhism can refer to:* Pre-sectarian Buddhism, which refers to the Teachings and monastic organization and structure, founded by Gautama Buddha....
, depending on one's source. It originated from another sect, Mahisasaka
Mahisasaka

Mahisasaka is one of the twenty schools of early Buddhism according to a Mahayana record. Its origins go back to the dispute in the Second Buddhist Council....
. It had a prominent role in early Central Asian and Chinese Buddhism, and its monastic rules are still in effect in some East Asian countries to this day.

Dharmaguptaka doctrine appears to have been characterized by an understanding of the Buddha
Gautama Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama was a Spirituality teacher in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent who founded Buddhism. He is generally seen by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddhahood of our age....
 as separate from Sangha
Sangha

Sangha is a word in Pali or Sanskrit that can be translated roughly as "association" or "assembly," "company" or "community" with common goal, vision or purpose....
 so that his teaching is superior to the one given by Arahants.






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The Dharmaguptaka are one of the eighteen or twenty schools of Early Buddhism
Early Buddhism

The term Early Buddhism can refer to:* Pre-sectarian Buddhism, which refers to the Teachings and monastic organization and structure, founded by Gautama Buddha....
, depending on one's source. It originated from another sect, Mahisasaka
Mahisasaka

Mahisasaka is one of the twenty schools of early Buddhism according to a Mahayana record. Its origins go back to the dispute in the Second Buddhist Council....
. It had a prominent role in early Central Asian and Chinese Buddhism, and its monastic rules are still in effect in some East Asian countries to this day.

Doctrinal development

The Dharmaguptaka doctrine appears to have been characterized by an understanding of the Buddha
Gautama Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama was a Spirituality teacher in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent who founded Buddhism. He is generally seen by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddhahood of our age....
 as separate from Sangha
Sangha

Sangha is a word in Pali or Sanskrit that can be translated roughly as "association" or "assembly," "company" or "community" with common goal, vision or purpose....
 so that his teaching is superior to the one given by Arahants. They also emphasise the merit of devotion to the religious monument (stupa
Stupa

A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, once thought to be places of Buddhist worship, typically the remains of a Buddha or saint....
), which often had pictorial representation of the stories Buddha's previous life as bodhisattva
Bodhisattva

In the Buddhist context, a bodhisattva means either "enlightened existence " or "enlightenment-being" or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one for enlightenment "....
 (Jatakas). Consequently, they regarded the path of bodhisasttva and the path of Buddhist discipline (sravaka
Sravaka

Sravaka or Shravaka or Savaka means "a hearer" or, more generally, "disciple."This term is used by both Buddhists and Jains. In Jainism, a shravaka is any lay Jain....
-hearer) to be separate. Dharmaguptakas's tripitaka
Tripitaka

The is the Sanskrit term used by Westerners for a Buddhist canon of scriptures. Asian Buddhists of the Theravada Buddhist school use the term Tipitaka to refer to the Pali Canon....
 contain two new addition, Bodhisattvapitaka and Dharanipitaka.

School's flourishing and demise

The Gandharan Buddhist texts
Gandharan Buddhist Texts

The Gandharan Buddhist Texts are the oldest Buddhism manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the first century CE and also the oldest Indian manuscripts yet discovered....
, the earliest Buddhist texts ever discovered, are apparently dedicated to the teachers of the Dharmaguptaka school. They tend to confirm a flourishing of the Dharmaguptaka school in northwestern India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
 around the 1st century CE, and this would explain the subsequent influence of the Dharmaguptakas in Central Asia and then northeastern Asia.

The Dharmaguptaka vinaya
Vinaya

The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Gautama Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline....
 was translated into Chinese
Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
 by Buddhayasas in the early fifth-century, and thereafter became the predominant vinaya
Vinaya

The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Gautama Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline....
 in Chinese Buddhist monasticism. When Hsuan-Tsang travelled in Asia during the 7th century however, he reported that the Dharmaguptakas had almost completely disappeared from India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
 and Central Asia
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
.

Vinaya legacy

The Dharmaguptaka vinaya
Vinaya

The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Gautama Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline....
, or "monastic rules", are still followed today in Taiwan
Taiwan

Taiwan is an island in East Asia. "Taiwan" is also commonly used to refer to the country governed by the Republic of China and to the ROC itself, which governs the island of Taiwan, Orchid Island and Green Island, Taiwan in the Pacific Ocean off the Taiwan coast, the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait, and Kinmen and the Matsu Islands...
, China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
  and Vietnam
Vietnam

Vietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People's Republic of China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east....
 as well as some of sects in Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 and Korea
Korea

Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries, a civilization, and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia....
 and its lineage for the ordination of nuns (bhikkhu
Bhikkhu

A Bhikkhu , Bhiksu is a fully ordained male Buddhism monastic. Female monastics are called Bhikkhunis . Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis keep many precepts: they live by the vinaya's framework of monastic discipline, the basic rules of which are called the patimokkha....
ni) has survived uninterrupted to this day.

Ordination under the Dharmaguptaka vinaya only relates to monastic vows and lineage, and does not conflict with the actual Buddhist tradition one follows.

See also

  • Early Buddhist Schools
    Early Buddhist schools

    The Early Buddhist schools are those schools into which, according to most scholars, the Buddhist monasticism Sangha initially split, due originally to differences in Vinaya, and later also due to doctrinal differences and geographical separateness of groups of monks....
  • Schools of Buddhism
    Schools of Buddhism

    Schools of Buddhism are classified in various ways. Normal English-language usage divides Buddhism into Theravada and Mahayana. The most common classification among scholars is threefold, with Mahayana split into East Asian and Vajrayana, or Tibetan Buddhism ....


Literature


External links