Sarvāstivāda

Sarvāstivāda (Skt.; Pāli, sabbatthivāda). Important school of Indian Buddhism that separated from the main body of the Elders (Sthaviras) around the mid 3rd century bce. Its name—‘the school that holds that everything exists’—derives from its philosophical views concerning the nature of phenomena. Like other early schools its ontology was pluralist and realist, and the Sarvāstivādins believed (not unlike the ancient Greek atomists) that that reality could be analysed into a collection of discrete entities, known as dharmas. In the Sarvāstivāda taxonomy there are 75 dharmas, 72 conditioned (saṃskṛta), and three unconditioned (asaṃskṛta). While agreeing with other schools that conditioned dharmas are momentary (kṣanika), they nevertheless maintained that they also enjoy real existence in both the past and future. Four theories were proposed to explain this, one being that these dharmas exist from beginningless time and simply undergo a change of mode from latent to manifest. Time itself, it was suggested, was simply the change of mode undergone by dharmas (see Vasumitra). Although the Sarvāstivādins were apparently expelled at the Council of Pāṭaliputra (see Council of Pāṭaliputra II), they went on to become extremely influential particularly in the north-west of India in Kashmir and Gandhāra, where they surivived until Buddhism disappeared from the subcontinent. The school possessed its own canon, much of which survives today, and is renowned for its Abhidharma texts, notably the Abhidharma-kośa of Vasubandhu, and the Mahāvibhāṣā. The Kashmiri branch of the school is alternatively known as the Vaibhāṣika, from the name of this text, while the Gandhāri branch became known as the Mūla-Sarvāstivāda or Sautrāntika.