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Early Buddhism

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First Sangha ├ Mahāsāṃghika └ Sthaviravāda     ├ Sarvāstivāda     └ Vibhajjavāda         ├ Theravāda         └ Dharma-              guptaka

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The Dharmaguptaka are one of the eighteen or twenty schools of Early Buddhism, depending on one's source. It originated from another sect, Mahisasaka. It had a prominent role in early Central Asian and Chinese Buddhism, and its monastic rules are still in effect in some East Asian countries to this day.

The Dharmaguptaka doctrine appears to have been characterized by an understanding of the Buddha as separate from Sangha so that his teaching is superior to the one given by Arahants. They also emphasise the merit of devotion to the religious monument (stupa), which often had pictorial representation of the stories Buddha's previous life as bodhisattva (Jatakas). Consequently, they regarded the path of bodhisasttva and the path of Buddhist discipline (sravaka-hearer) to be separate. Dharmaguptakas's tripitaka contain two new addition, Bodhisattvapitaka and Dharanipitaka.

The Gandharan Buddhist texts, the earliest Buddhist texts ever discovered, are apparently dedicated to the teachers of the Dharmaguptaka school. They tend to confirm a flourishing of the Dharmaguptaka school in northwestern India around the 1st century CE, and this would explain the subsequent influence of the Dharmaguptakas in Central Asia and then northeastern Asia.

The Dharmaguptaka vinaya was translated into Chinese by Buddhayasas in the early fifth-century, and thereafter became the predominant vinaya in Chinese Buddhist monasticism. When Hsuan-Tsang travelled in Asia during the 7th century however, he reported that the Dharmaguptakas had almost completely disappeared from India and Central Asia.

The Dharmaguptaka vinaya (四分律), or "monastic rules", are still followed today in Taiwan, China and Vietnam as well as some of sects in Japan and Korea and its lineage for the ordination of nuns (bhikkhuni) has survived uninterrupted to this day.

Ordination under the Dharmaguptaka vinaya only relates to monastic vows and lineage, and does not conflict with the actual Buddhist tradition one follows.

• Early Buddhist Schools
• Schools of Buddhism

• Foltz, Richard C. (1999). Religions of the Silk Road. New York. ISBN 0-312-21408-1. 

• Heirmann. Rules for Nuns According to the Dharmaguptakavinaya. ISBN 81-208-1800-8. 
• Ven. Bhikshuni Wu Yin (2001). Choosing Simplicity. Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 1-55939-155-3. 

• The Gandharan texts and the Dharmaguptaka
• The Dharmaguptakas and the Bhikkhuni ordination lineage
• Sects & Sectarianism - The origins of Buddhist Schools