The
Dharmaguptaka are one of the eighteen or twenty schools of
Early Buddhism, depending on one's source. It originated from another sect,
Mahisasaka. 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 as separate from
Sangha so that his teaching is superior to the one given by
Arahants. They also emphasise the merit of devotion to the religious monument (
stupa), which often had pictorial representation of the stories Buddha's previous life as
bodhisattva (
Jatakas). Consequently, they regarded the path of bodhisasttva and the path of Buddhist discipline (
sravaka-hearer) to be separate. Dharmaguptakas's
tripitaka contain two new addition,
Bodhisattvapitaka and Dharanipitaka.
School's flourishing and demise
The
Gandharan Buddhist texts, 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 around the 1st century CE, with
Gāndhārī as the canonical language, and this would explain the subsequent influence of the Dharmaguptakas in Central Asia and then northeastern Asia. According to Buddhist scholar
A.K. Warder, the Dharmaguptaka originated in
Aparanta.
Scholars over the years have asserted that the Dharmaguptaka were founded by a
Greek monk:
One of the major missionaries was Yonaka Dhammarakkhita. He was, as his name indicates, a Greek monk, native of ‘Alasanda’ (Alexandria). He features in the Pali tradition as a master of psychic powers as well as an expert on Abhidhamma. He went to the Greek-occupied areas in the west of India. Long ago Przyluski, followed by Frauwallner, suggested that Dhammarakkhita be identified with the founder of the Dharmaguptaka school, since dhammarakkhita and dhammagutta have identical meaning. Since that time two pieces of evidence have come to light that make this suggestion highly plausible. One is the positive identification of very early manuscripts belonging to the Dharmaguptakas in the Gandhāra region, exactly where we expect to find Yonaka Dhammarakkhita. The second is that the phonetic rendering of his name in the Sudassanavinayavibhāsā evidently renders ‘Dharmagutta’ rather than ‘Dhammarakkhita’.
The Dharmaguptaka
vinaya was translated into
Chinese by
Buddhayasas in the early fifth-century, and thereafter became the predominant
vinaya 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 and
Central Asia.
Vinaya legacy
The Dharmaguptaka
vinaya (四分律), or "monastic rules", are still followed today in
Taiwan,
China and
Vietnam as well as some of the sects in
Japan and
Korea and its lineage for the ordination of nuns (
bhikkhuni) 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
