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Mula Sarvästhivādin vinaya and a number of texts of the Vinaya of other Hinayana schools were translated into Chinese, while all the chief works of the abhidharma of Sarvāstivādins were reproduced in Chinese and Tibetan. After Itsing returned to China he is said to have spent 12 years in translating Buddhist texts. In them there were 13 works representing Mula Sarvāstivādin Vinaya. (Farquhar in Outline of Rel. lit. of India p. 207.)
It is said that Sarvāstivādins were probably the most vigorous of the Hinayana school. Two of their chief works of Vinaya were translated into Chinese in 404 A.D. and parts of them were also rendered into Kuchean (Hoernle “Manuscript Remains of Bud. Lit.").
Winternitz observes on page 4, Vol. II (A History of Indian Literature) that the Vinaya of the Mula Sarvāstivādin harks back to an early age.
As observed above, the literature of Mula Sarvāstivāda is in Sanskrit which also testifies to the antiquity and the fidelity of the Pali version. Fragments of the canon of Mula Sarvāstivāda have been discovered recently in Central India.
Though not translated from Pali there is ample evidence to show that there is fidelity with the Pali version. Winternitz observes that there are many literal agreements and that there is a uniformity behind both these collections. Some of these works are known only from the Tibetan and Chinese translations. Quoting Oldenberg, Winternitz says “the Pali copy though actually not of infaliable accuracy, must still be judged as eminently good”.
Itsing mentions Arya-Mula-Sarvāstivāda and states that the schools of Mula Sarvāstivāda, Dharmaguptas and Mahisāsaka and Kāsyapiyas are its subdivisions. Winternitz observes that the relation between Sarvāstivāda and Mula Sarvāstivāda, is however, by no means clear. He says that the Sarvāstivāda school of the Hinayana which had its adherrents more especially established in Kashmir and Gandhara had spread to Central India, Tibet and China and had Sanskrit canon of its own. We know it from many fragments which have been discovered among the manuscripts and block prints brought from Eastern Turkestan. Probably texts of Mula Sarvāstivāda were translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by the Chinese pilgrim Itsing in the year 700 to 712. There are, however, Chinese translations of single texts dating from the middle of the Second Century onwards and there were adherents of the Sarvästivāda in India as early as the second century B.C. In wording and arrangement of texts, the Sanskrit canon evinces great similarity to the Pali canon. There are many points of differences also. A feasible explana
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