Sthaviravāda (
Sanskrit;
Chinese 上座部) literally means "Teaching Of The Elders". They were one of the two main movements in early Buddhism that arose from the Great Schism, the other being that of the
. "The Elders" referred to the Arahants and elder monks, who were naturally the leaders of the community, and whose voice and views carried more weight than more junior monks; some scholars believe that this was the primary cause of the Schism.
[Dutt (1978).]The Sthaviravāda were the proponents of an orthodox understanding of the Buddha's teachings which later became known in
Pali as the Theravāda. They criticised the school for adding additional rules to the
Patimokkha.
The Schism happened between the
second (350 BC) and
third (250 BC) Buddhist Council. According to the
Mahavamsa, after the
Second Council was closed, those taking the side of junior monks monks did not accept the verdict but held an assembly of their own attended by ten thousand calling it a Mahasangiti (Great convocation) from which the school derived its name
.
Another belief on the cause of the Great Schism, were the disagreements in the five theories about an Arahant, put forward by Mahadeva, who later founded
. The rest of the monks who rejected the five theories named themselves as "Sthaviravāda" to differentiate from the
.
The Sthaviravāda doctrine survives today in the
Theravāda tradition, but "although they share the same name (Thera and Sthavira being the
Pāli and
Sanskrit forms of the same word meaning 'elder'), there is no historical evidence that the Theravāda school arose until around two centuries after the Great Schism which occurred at the Council of ." The Theravada is often recognized as being a continuation of the Sthaviravada, after the
Third Buddhist Council.
See also
