lvation. Perhaps some
compromise based on geography was arranged, such as that Kashmir
should be left to the Sarvastivadin school which had long flourished
there, but that no opposition should be offered to the Mahayanists
elsewhere.

The relations of the Sarvastivadins to Mahayanism are exceedingly
difficult to define and there are hardly sufficient materials for a
connected account of this once important sect, but I will state some
facts about it which seem certain.

It is ancient, for the Kathavatthu alludes to its doctrines.[200] It
flourished in Gandhara, Kashmir and Central Asia, and Kanishka's
casket shows that he patronized it.[201] But it appears to have been
hardly known in Ceylon or Southern India. It was the principal
northern form of Hinayanism, just as the Theravada was the southern
form. I-Ching however says that it prevailed in the Malay Archipelago.

Its doctrines, so far as known, were Hinayanist but it was
distinguished from cognate schools by holding that the external world
can be said to exist and is not merely a continual process of
becoming. It had its own version of the Abhidharma and of the Vinaya.
In the time of Fa-Hsien the latter was still preserved orally and was
not written. The adherents of this school were also called
Vaibhashikas, and Vibhasha was a name given to their exegetical
literature.

But the association of the Sarvastivadins with Mahayanists is clear
from the council of Kanishka onwards. Many eminent Buddhists began by
being Sarvastivadins and became Mahayanists, their earlier belief
being regarded as preliminary rather than erroneous. Hsuean Chuang
translated the Sarvastivadin scriptures in his old age and I-Ching
belonged to the Mulasarvastivadin school;[202] yet both authors write
as if they were devout Mahayanists. The Tibetan Church is generally
regarded as an extreme form of Mahayanism but its Vinaya is that of
the Sarvastivadins.

Though the Sarvastivadins can hardly have accepted idealist
metaphysics, yet the evidence of art and their own version of the
Vinaya make it probable that they tolerated a moderate amount of
mythology, and the Mahayanists, who like all philosophers were obliged
to admit the provisional validity of the external world, may also have
admitted their analysis of the same as provisionally valid. The
strength of the Hinayanist schools lay in the Vinaya. The Mahayanists
showed a tendency to replace it by legends and vague if noble
aspirations. B