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Updated: July 17, 2025
But other parts seem to belong to the Gandharan period and the mention of Chinese and Hunnish writing points to a much later date. If it was originally a Vinaya treatise, it has been distended out of all recognition by the addition of legends and anecdotes but it still retains a certain amount of matter found also in the Pali and Tibetan Vinayas.
On the other hand this same Vinaya of the Mûlasarvâstivâdins probably gives us a fragment of history when it tells us that the Buddha had three wives, perhaps too when it relates how Râhula's paternity was called in question and how Devadatta wanted to marry Yaśodharâ after the Buddha had abandoned worldly life . The Pali Vinaya and also some Sanskrit Vinayas mention only one wife or none at all.
For some two centuries after Gotama's death we have little information as to the geographical extension of his doctrine, but some of the Sanskrit versions of the Vinaya represent him as visiting Muttra, North-west India and Kashmir.
But when one Vinaya composed in the north of India essays to give a biography of the Buddha and states that he had three wives, there is no reason for doubting that the compiler was in touch with good local tradition. Indian religions lay stress on meditation.
These treatises were probably current as separate portions for recitation before the suttas in which they are now set were composed. Similarly, the Vinaya clearly presupposes an old code in the form of a list of offences called the Pâtimokkha.
But contemporary opinion in India criticized his discipline as easy-going and lax. We frequently hear in the Vinaya that the people murmured and said his disciples behaved like those who still enjoy the good things of the world.
The troubles which arose in the Sangha are often ascribed in the Vinaya to the Chabbaggiyas, six brethren who became celebrated in tradition as spirits of mischief and who are evidently made the peg on which these old monkish anecdotes are hung. As a rule the intervention of the Buddha was sufficient to restore peace, but one passage indicates resistance to his authority.
Though the Sarvâstivâdins can hardly have accepted idealist metaphysics, yet the evidence of art and their own version of the Vinaya make it probable that they tolerated a moderate amount of mythology, and the Mahayanists, who like all philosophers were obliged to admit the provisional validity of the external world, may also have admitted their analysis of the same as provisionally valid.
Ye ought, therefore, thus to investigate true principles, to consider well the true law and the Vinaya, even as the goldsmith does who melts and strikes and then selects the true. Not to know the Sûtras and the Sâstras, this is to be devoid of wisdom; not saying properly that which is proper, is like doing that which is not fit to see.
What opposes Dharma, what opposes Vinaya, or what is contrary to my words, this is the result of ignorance: ye must not hold such doctrine, but with haste reject it. Receiving that which has been said aright, this is not subversive of true doctrine, this is what I have said, as the Dharma and Vinaya say. Accepting that which I, the law, and the Vinaya declare, this is to be believed.
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