Previous Year Question
With reference to the religious history of India, consider the following statements:
Sautrantika and Sammitiya were the sects of Jainism.
Sarvastivadin held that the constituents of phenomena were not wholly momentary, but existed forever in a latent form.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Correct Answer: B
Detailed Solution
Statement 1 is incorrect. Sautrantika and Sammitiya were not Jaina sects but traditions belonging to Buddhism. Sautrantika was an early Buddhist philosophical tradition that attached particular importance to the Sutras.
Sammitiya (Saṃmitīya) was also a Buddhist school. It belonged to a Buddhist tradition in which the philosophical status of the pudgala (person) became an important subject of discussion. An original Buddhist philosophical text preserved in the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon explicitly uses the expression “saṃmitīyā vadanti” — “the Sammitiyas say” while discussing their position concerning the pudgala. Thus, describing both schools as Jaina is incorrect.
Statement 2 is correct. The name Sarvastivada itself is associated with its characteristic doctrine “sarvam asti” — “all exists.” In the Sarvastivada-Vaibhashika tradition, the existence of dharmas was not restricted merely to the present moment; dharmas were regarded as possessing real existence in some sense across the past, present and future. The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya explicitly discusses past, future and present dharmas within this three-times framework.
The phrase “existed forever in a latent form” is a simplified way of expressing the Sarvastivada position. It does not mean that empirical objects remain eternally unchanged. Buddhist philosophy accepts impermanence. What distinguished Sarvastivada was its acceptance of the ontological existence of dharmas across the three times, while their present causal activity and temporal mode were understood differently.