Chapter 5: The Roster of Opponents¶

Whomever the Mahāvibhāṣā refutes, it first writes down what he said. By that habit the two hundred fascicles have preserved an entire documentary layer of sectarian thought: the positions of the Dārṣṭāntikas, the Bhadanta, the Vibhajyavādins, the Vātsīputrīyas, the Mahāsāṃghikas and the Mahīśāsakas, many of which are recorded only here. This chapter does two things. The first is the roster itself: who stands on it, how densely each appears, and how far the reports have been preserved. The second is the mechanism: that a school should establish itself by cataloguing its opponents entry by entry and refuting them entry by entry is a thing that deserves to be analyzed head-on.

Who is on the roster, and how densely each appears. On a search of the classical text: the Dārṣṭāntikas ninety times, the Vibhajyavādins one hundred twenty-five, the Bhadanta one hundred sixty-one (of which "the Bhadanta says" accounts for one hundred twenty-four), the Vātsīputrīyas seventeen, the Mahāsāṃghikas eleven, the Mahīśāsakas four, and besides these the Dharmaguptakas seven and the Kāśyapīyas three.¹ For comparison, the school's own Venerable Pārśva appears one hundred four times. Two things are visible at a glance. First, the standing opponents are two, the Dārṣṭāntikas and the Vibhajyavādins; they appear at the same density as the school's own venerable elders, while the remaining schools are only occasional visitors. Second, the Bhadanta appears more densely than anyone. Whether the Bhadanta and Dharmatrāta are one man has been argued in several directions for a long time; the vernacular translation joins the two names once, at fascicle one, as "the Bhadanta Dharmatrāta," and everywhere else has the Bhadanta alone. This book's position is to record the two names separately and to leave their identity or difference an open question (a scholarly case). Which school the Vibhajyavādins are is a matter on which several scholarly positions stand side by side, and it is likewise entered as a scholarly case.

How the positions are preserved. In refuting others this book has one habit worth prizing: it first sets the opponent's words down at paragraph length, and only then answers them point by point. Fascicle fifty-five records the Dārṣṭāntika thesis that conditions have no real nature, and records their scriptural warrant and their inference along with it: scripture says that ignorance is the condition of formations, but ignorance has no distinguishing characteristic of its own, and how should a dharma without a differentiating characteristic serve as condition to dharmas that have one and be itself really existent? There follows the Bhadanta's blunter sentence—the masters posit the names of the conditions each according to his own notion, and there is no real nature to them.¹ A complete anti-realist position has come down to us in the records kept by its opponent. Passages of this kind make it possible to reconstruct one school's position after another. Whether the reports distort systematically, and whether the doctrine of a single school stays consistent from fascicle to fascicle, are questions on which no ruling should be risked until the schools have been compared one by one; this chapter records the method first and does not spend conclusions it has not yet earned.

Refutation comes in grades. For the two schools entered at paragraph length the reply is mostly in the shape of an argument. The answer fascicle fifty-five gives to the thesis that conditions have no real nature (if the nature of the conditions is not really existent, then no dharma at all has real nature) is a reductio that yields ground in order to gain it. With the occasional visitors it is another matter. In fascicle nine the Mahāsāṃghikas bring forward a simile, and the answer is that it need not be reconciled, since it is not comprised in sūtra, vinaya, or abhidharma: your simile need not be squared with anything, because it does not stand within the three baskets.¹ One and the same book reasons with its standing opponents and checks the papers of its marginal ones. The gradation of treatment is itself information: whoever is taken seriously is the real threat.

An orthodoxy defines itself by its opponents. Here is the philosophical function of the roster. Very nearly every boundary of the doctrine that all exists was drawn while refuting some particular school: refuting the Dārṣṭāntikas drew the line at the real existence of the conditions, refuting the Vibhajyavādins drew it at the real existence of past and future, refuting the Vātsīputrīyas drew it at the floor of non-self. The guide to Part 15 said that readers are too familiar with this school's vocabulary, and that familiarity blocks examination; what this chapter adds is that every edge of that vocabulary was ground down on the roster. The boundaries are drawn by the other side, and so the roster is not an appendix to this book but its outline. Chapter 1 of Part 15 recorded that the school's opponents habitually set up their targets where the Sarvāstivāda had asserted nothing; turn it around, and the Sarvāstivāda's own shooting ranges are all pitched at its opponents' doors. Each side takes the other for its blueprint. That is the normal condition of sectarian scholastics; what is peculiar to the Mahāvibhāṣā is that it carried the normal condition to the scale of a catalogue.

It is handed on to Chapter 6. The roster having been read through, the part turns to the doctrine Part 15 had no room for, beginning on the home ground of Vaibhāṣika classification: mental factors and association.

References¶