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Sabbatthivadins
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conventional names (for a set of independent elements) for some colour, smell (taste and touch) taken together, so is the designation 'individual' but a common name for the different elements of which it is composed."
The reason why the Buddha declined to decide the question whether the "living being is identical with the body or not" is just because there did not exist any living being as "individual," as is generally supposed. He did not declare that the living being did not exist, because in that case the questioner would have thought that the continuity of the elements of a life was also denied. In truth the "living being" is only a conventional name for a set of constantly changing elements1.
The only book of the Sammitīyas known to us and that by name only is the Sammitīyaśāstra translated into Chinese between 350 A.D. to 431 A.D.; the original Sanskrit works are however probably lost.
The Vaibhāṣikas are identified with the Sarvāstivādins who according to Dipavamsa V. 47, as pointed out by Takakusu, branched off from the Mahiśāsakas, who in their turn had separated from the Theravada school.
From the Kathavatthu we know (1) that the Sabbatthivadins believed that everything existed, (2) that the dawn of right attainment was not a momentary flash of insight but by a gradual process, (3) that consciousness or even samadhi was nothing but
1 This account is based on the translation of Astamakosasthananibaddhaḥ pudgalaviniscayaḥ, a special appendix to the eighth chapter of Abhidharmakosa, by Prof. Th. Stcherbatsky, Bulletin de l'Académie des Sciences de Russie, 1919.
2 Professor De la Vallée Poussin has collected some of the points of this doctrine in an article on the Sammitiyas in the E. R. E. He there says that in the Abhidharmakośavyākhyā the Sammitiyas have been identified with the Vatsiputtriyas and that many of its texts were admitted by the Vaibhāṣikas of a later age. Some of their views are as follows: (1) An arhat in possession of nirvana can fall away; (2) there is an intermediate state between death and rebirth called antarabhava; (3) merit accrues not only by gift (tyaganvaya) but also by the fact of the actual use and advantage reaped by the man to whom the thing was given (paribhoganvaya punya); (4) not only abstention from evil deeds but a declaration of intention to that end produces merit by itself alone; (5) they believe in a pudgala (soul) as distinct from the skandhas from which it can be said to be either different or non-different. "The pudgala cannot be said to be transitory (anitya) like the skandhas since it transmigrates laying down the burden (skandhas) shouldering a new burden; it cannot be said to be permanent, since it is made of transitory constituents." This pudgala doctrine of the Sammitiyas as sketched by Professor De la Vallée Poussin is not in full agreement with the pudgala doctrine of the Sammitiyas as sketched by Gunaratna which we have noticed above.
