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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR
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bring together the varying interpretations of the different sects. Yuan Chwang adds that in this Council several expository commentaries on the Sūtra, Vinaya and Abhidharma were written and called the Upadeśa-śāstras and Vibhāsā-śāstras, in which the original texts and their different interpretations were discussed. King Kanishka, records Yuan Chwang, had all the treatises written on copper plates and had them enclosed in stone-boxes and deposited in a stūpa made specially for the purpose.
Paramārtha in his Life of Vasubandhu' refers to this Council though not expressly. He writes that Katyāyaniputra went to Kipin (Kashmir) and there with the co-operation of 500 Arhats and 500 Bodhisattvas arranged the Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma texts in eight sections (granthas), such as prajñā, dhyāna, etc., and called it Jñāna-prasthāna-sūtra. A commentary was written on the same and was called Vibhāṣā. He then sent for Aśvaghoșa who was then residing at Srāvasti and requested him to give the Vibhāṣās a proper literary shape. After the completion of the commentary, Katyāyaniputra ordained by a stone-inscription that no portion of the Abhidharma text and its Vibhāsā must go out of the country, but he could not anticipate that a prodigy like Vasubandhu would commit to memory all the works and take them out. The Vibhāṣāśāstra is so closely associated with Kashmir that it is called Kashmirshi in Chinese.
The Vibhāsā-śāstras By the expression Vibhāṣā-śāstra, Paramārtha has in view only the disquisitions on Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma text while Yuan Chwang means, by the expression, expository commentaries not only on Abhidharma but also on Sūtra and Vinaya, the commen
I
T’oung Pao, vol. V, pp. 276-281.
2 Watters, I, p. 277.
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