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This extraordinary book is the only authentic document of its kind.
Beginning with a detailed and lucid exposition of the political background of
India from Ajatasatru to Mahapadma nanda, it goes on to trace the sources of the
Second Buddhist Council, to locate with unerring exactitude the disruptive
forces in the Sangha and, in the fourth chapter, to classify the Sects. In the
chapters that follow, the learned author deals with the Mahasanghikas, doctrines
of Group II-V Schools. In every chapter, if not on every page, current but
ill-founded assumptions are rejected and their illogicalities exposed to the
reader's view. The eager student is given a panoramic view of the doctrinal
developments that took place during the period concerned by this book. With
irrefutable arguments and considerable ratiocinative skill does the writer
conclude that the Mahasanghikas were evidently the earliest school of the
Hinayanists to show a tendency towards conceiving Buddha docetically.
An authentic study of the origin and development of
various Buddhist sects in ancient India on the basis of the treatises of
Vasumitra, Bhavya, and Vinitadeva as well as Kathavatthu, Pali canonical text
with Buddhaghosa's commentary there-upon, Sammithiyanikaya-sastra and
Mulasar-vastivada Vinaya. It shows how Mahayanism developed as a natural
consequence of the views of Mahasanghikas and as a development of the neblous
conception of Bodhisattva and Buddahakayas in the Divyavadana and
Avadanasataka.
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