The Pudgalavāda (Sanskrit: "Personalism"; Pali: Puggalavāda; ; ) was a Buddhist philosophical view and also refers to a group of Nikāya Buddhist schools (mainly known as Vātsīputrīyas) that arose from the Sthavira Nikāya. The school is believed to have been founded by the elder Vātsīputra in the third century BCE. According to Dan Lusthaus, they were "one of the most popular mainstream Buddhist sects in India for more than a thousand years".

Doctrines

Pudgala thesis

The Pudgalavādins asserted that while there is no ātman, there exists a pudgala (person) or sattva (being) which is neither a conditioned dharma nor an unconditioned dharma.<br />The five aggregates are truly burdens, and the burden-carrier is the person. Taking up the burden is suffering in the world; Laying the burden down is blissful.|multiline=yes

The Kathāvatthu also mentions that the Pudgalavādins relied on the following statements by the Buddha: "There is a person who exerts for his own good" and "There appears a person who is reborn for the good and happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world of beings." The Pudgalavādins held that this person was "inexpressible" and indeterminate in its relation to the five aggregates and could not be said to be neither the same as the aggregates nor different. However, the person could not be denied entirely, for if this were so, nothing would get reborn and nothing would be the object of loving-kindness meditation. Thus, according to L. S. Cousins:<blockquote>The difference is that for the voidist the person is a label for the aggregates experienced as objects of consciousness whereas for the personalist the relationship between the person and those objects cannot be described as either the same nor different. However, as Thiện Châu notes in his survey of their literature, the Pudgalavādins carefully developed this theory especially to be compatible with anātman and the Middle Way and thus the pudgala is "not an absolute reality totally separated from compounded things."

The Abhidharmakośa shows how the Pudgalavādins explained their theory by using the analogy of fire and fuel. The five aggregates are the fuel and the pudgala the fire. The fire exists as long as there is fuel, but it is not the same as the fuel and has properties that the fuel does not. They are co-existent and the fuel (aggregates) are the support for the fire (pudgala), and thus are not the same nor wholly different. They sought to refute the view of other Buddhists that the aggregates and the person were the same. They held that, at death when the aggregates are destroyed, the person would then also be destroyed, thus not be reborn. They also believed it contradicted the Buddha's words i.e. "the bearer of the burden" exists.

The Kathāvatthu also mentions that the pudgala can be likened to what is called a being (sattva) and also to what is called jiva (life force), but that it is neither identical nor different from the body (kaya). One Pudgalavādin text explains the nature of this relationship as being based on clinging or appropriation (upādāna):<blockquote>The designation of appropriation (upādāna-prajñapti) is the designation of life (jiva) (which is) internal appropriation (upādāna) in the present and is composed of the aggregates (skandha), elements (dhātu) and domains (āyatana); that is to say that the phenomena of appropriation concerning the internal life in the present, which is formed by compounded things – (saṃskāra) and the fetters is what is called the designation of appropriation.</blockquote>The Pudgalavādins also seem to have held that the liberated person exists even after parinirvāṇa in a state of supreme bliss, or as Thiện Châu notes, they saw nirvāṇa as "a transcendental domain" and an "existence in the beyond".

Three designations of the pudgala

According to the Pudgalavādin text known as the Traidharmakaśāstra, the pudgala can be designated in three ways, called the three prajñaptis:</blockquote>Lusthaus also explains their reasoning for the second and third designations as follows:<blockquote>But what remains constant or continuous between such [past and future] lives? If it is a self-same invariant identity, then this would indeed be a case of atmavada, a view the Vātsīputrīyas, like all Buddhists, reject. In what sense would someone be the same or different from the person in one's previous life? If completely different, then to posit a continuity between them is incoherent. If the same, then their real discontinuities are ignored, leading to a form of eternalism, another impermissible view for Buddhists. Hence, they are neither the same nor different, but linked by a fictional pudgala. Finally, Buddhist practice leads to nirvana; but who attains this? If there is an integral individual that ceases on attaining nirvana, then this would entail the unwarranted view of annihilationalism. If there is no cessation of the karmic individual, then there is no nirvana. Both extremes, though implicit in standard Buddhist formulations, render Buddhism itself incoherent, a problem only solved, the Vātsīputrīyas argue, if one admits the fictional pudgala implicit in standard Buddhist doctrine.</blockquote>With this system, Pudgalavādins held that they could explain karmic moral retribution and personal identity by positing an ineffable (avaktavya) dharma that avoids falling into the extremes of annihilation (ucceda) and eternity (sasvata).</blockquote>

Criticism

Because they felt that Vātsīputrīya views were close to the view of a self or ātman, they were sharply criticised by the Vibhajyavādins (a record of this is found in the Theravādin Kathāvatthu), as well as by the Sarvastivādins (in the Vijñanakaya), Sautrantikas (most famously in the Abhidharmakośa), and the Madhyamaka school (Candrakirti's Madhyamakavatara). The earliest source for the pudgala doctrinal controversy is the Puggalakatha of the Kathāvatthu, attributed to Moggaliputtatissa (c. third century BCE).

The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu argued against the pudgala theory in his Abhidharmakośa. Vasubandhu begins by stating that the Vātsīputrīya hold that the pudgala 'is based' on the five aggregates, and that this could mean one of two things:

  1. The five aggregates form an object, the pudgala. In this case, pudgala is just a nominal designation for the five aggregates, and not an independent object.
  2. The pudgala is caused by the aggregates. In this case, pudgala also refers to just the aggregates and not to something else independent of them.

Vasubandhu argues then that 'pudgala' is identical to the aggregates and just a label for them. Vasubandhu first argues that we can either perceive the pudgala directly or perceive it by perceiving the aggregates. If the latter, then its just a label for aggregates. If we perceive it directly, then the aggregates would be based on the pudgala, not the other way around. Only four of their texts survive in Chinese translation:

  1. The San fa tu lun, Traidharmakaśāstra, Taishō Tripiṭaka XXV, 1506.
  2. The Ssu a-han-mu ch'ao chieh, Taishō Tripiṭaka XXV, 1505.
  3. The San-mi-ti pu lun, Sammatiyanikayaśāstra, Taishō Tripiṭaka XXXII. 1649.
  4. The Lu erh-shih-erh ming-liao lun, Vinayadvavimsatividyaśāstra, Taishō Tripiṭaka XXIV. 1461.

One surviving Pudgalavāda text is the Traidharmakaśāstra (Taishō Tripiṭaka XXV, 1506 pp.&nbsp;15c-30a), an Abhidharma work which was translated twice into Chinese.

  1. There is no self
  2. Self neither exists nor does not exist
  3. Self exists
  4. Self is the same as the five aggregates
  5. Self is different than the five aggregates
  6. Self is eternal
  7. Self is not eternal

All of these views are ultimately rejected. The text claims that the pudgala is neither an existent nor a purely conceptual construct.

However, according to Bhikṣu Thiện Châu:<blockquote>The creation of the theory of the pudgala represents a reaction against the "depersonalization" of the abhidharmika tradition. The Pudgalavadins, on the other hand, tried to preserve the essence of the doctrine of substancelessness (anātmavāda). The theory of the pudgala has been misinterpreted by the polemical literature; nevertheless, it offers much of doctrinal interest to Buddhist thinkers.</blockquote>According to Dan Lusthaus, "no Buddhist school has been more vilified by its Buddhist peers or misunderstood by modern scholars." Lusthaus argues that, far from promoting the view of a self (ātmavāda), the Vātsīputrīya position which can be seen in their surviving texts is that the pudgala is "a prajñapti (only a nominal existent) that is neither identical to nor different from the skandhas."

Saṃmitīya and other sub-schools

thumb|[[Khambhalida Caves|Khambhalida Buddhist Caves, Gujarat.]]

According to Thiện Châu, the Vātsīputrīyas were the initial parent school out of which branched off four sub-schools (sometime between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE); mainly the Saṃmitīyas, Dhammuttariyas, Bhadrayanikas, and the Sandagarikas. The Vātsīputrīya communities were established in Kosambi and Sarnath, living side by side with the Saṃmitīyas, a school which quickly eclipsed them in popularity.

The most prominent of the Pudgalavādin schools were certainly the Saṃmitīyas (Sanskrit; ) who were especially prominent in Sindh and in Gujarat during the Maitraka dynasty (470–788 CE). Inscriptions have also established the existence of Saṃmitīya communities in Mathura and Sarnath between the 2nd and 4th centuries. The Tibetan historian Buton Rinchen Drub noted that the Saṃmitīya used Apabhraṃśa as their main language. By the 4th century, this school had become so influential that they replaced the Sarvastivādins in Sarnath as the most prominent school. By the time of King Harsha in the seventh century, they were the largest Nikāya Buddhist school in India. Due to their geographic spread, this led to them being divided into two further sub-schools, the Avantakas centered in Avanti and the Kurukulas centered around Kuru on the upper Ganges. Yijing, who visited Gujarat in 670 CE, noted that the Sammitiyas had the greatest number of followers in Western India and that the learning center at Valabhi rivaled that of Nalanda. although scholar L. S. Cousins revised his estimate down to a quarter of all non-Mahāyāna monks, still the largest overall. The Saṃmitīya sect seems to have been particularly strong in the Sindh, where one scholar estimates 350 Buddhist monasteries were Saṃmitīya of a total of 450. This area was rapidly Islamised in the wake of the Arab conquest. They continued to be a presence in India until the end of Indian Buddhism, but, never having gained a foothold elsewhere, did not continue thereafter.

Ancient sources such as Xuanzang and Tibetan historian Tāranātha reported that the Saṃmitīyas were staunch opponents of Mahāyāna. According to Tāranātha, Saṃmitīya monks from the Sindh burned tantric scriptures and destroyed a silver image of Hevajra at Vajrāsana monastery in Bodh Gaya. In the biography of Xuanzang, it is recounted that an elderly Brahmin and follower of the Saṃmitīya sect named Prajñāgupta composed a treatise in 700 verses which opposed the Mahāyāna teachings. In response, while living at Nālandā, Xuanzang wrote a Sanskrit work in 1600 verses to refute this text, called The Destruction of Heresy.