Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 1532

INTRODUCTION.
XV
do to gain an undying fame; and being told he must either patronise religion as his predecessor or persecute it, he will adopt the latter course, overthrow the pagodas (dagobas), destroy the Scriptures, murder the people. Five hundred Arhats, however, will escape the persecution. Meantime the Scriptures being taken up to Maitreya, he will preserve them. At last the king and his army being destroyed (by a mountain cast on them), this line of kings will perish. Afterwards a righteous king will succeed, and Maitreya will send down 300 youths, born apparitionally among men, who will recover the law from the 500 Arhats, and go amongst men instructing them, so that once more the Scriptures, which had been taken to heaven by Maitreya, will be disseminated in the world. At this time the king of the country will divide the Dharmavinaya into many parts, and will build a stronghold in which to preserve them, and so make it difficult for those wishing to consult them, to do so. Then an old Bhikshu of good repute will write a remonstrance, and selecting such passages of the Vinaya as are in accordance with Kåsyapa's council, and known as the Vinaya of the 'Great Congregation' (will make them known); the other party will, on their part, include with these the false additions that have been since made. Thus will begin the contention and wrangling. At length the king will order the two schools to assemble, and the matter to be put to the vote, in this way,--taking a number of slips of wood, some black, the others white, he will say, 'let the adherents of the old school take the black slips, and the new school the white slips.' Then those taking the black slips will be myriads in number, those taking the white only hundreds. Thus there will be a separation. The old school will be called 'the Mahasanghikas,' the new 'the school of the elders,' and hence also named 'the Ta-pi-lo' (Sthåvira (school)).
This obscure account tends at any rate to show that the original separation of the church, from which resulted the later schisms, began at the time of the Great Assembly at Vaisalî. Whether we are to gather that a second and final separation took place afterwards when the good king was
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