Since several sects were established around some Mahayana sutras, the Buddhist movements in China has been developed mainly focused upon the Mahayana Buddhism, relatively neglecting the early Chinese Buddhist scholars' recognitions or positions upon t...
Since several sects were established around some Mahayana sutras, the Buddhist movements in China has been developed mainly focused upon the Mahayana Buddhism, relatively neglecting the early Chinese Buddhist scholars' recognitions or positions upon the "Hinayana Buddhism." In the earlier history of Chinese Buddhism, however, the sutras, shastras, and vinaya belonging to the "Hinayana Buddhism" had been being actively translated into Chinese. What had been, then, the early Chinese response to the "Hinayana Buddhism" in those texts? Through what routes, around what sects, and with what influence upon the later Buddhism in China had those texts been spreading there? Those texts was mainly related to the particular region of Kashmir(罽賓), whose "Hinayanist" influence upon Chinese Buddhism in its textual context can be seen in the characteristics of the transmitted Hinayana Buddhist sects and the encounter between the Chinese monk scholars Daoan(道安,312-385) and Lushan Huiyuan(廬山慧遠,334-416) and the monks from that region. This paper, with a specific interest on such a process, purports to investigate what had been those early Chinese Buddhist scholars' understandings and attitudes upon those sutras, shastras, and vinaya texts of the Hinayana Buddhism. It also has some interest in investigating the causational background of the spontaneous transition of the term "Hinayana Buddhism"(小乘佛敎) into the "Tripitaka [Teachings]"(三藏[敎]). We can surmise that those teachings had not held a despicable position in the early history of Chinese Buddhism, for we can observe in the introduction of the Chusanzangjiji(出三藏記集) that there had been, as a rule, no sharp distinction between the Mahayana and "Hinayana" Buddhism in that period.