Mahīśāsaka

Mahīśāsaka (Sanskrit: महीशासक; traditional Chinese: 化地部; ; pinyin: Huàdì Bù; Vietnamese: Hóa địa bộ) is one of the early Buddhist schools according to some records.

[1] Buswell and Lopez also state that the Mahīśāsaka was an offshoot of the Sarvāstivādins,[2] but group the school under the Vibhajyavāda, "a broad designation for non-Sarvastivada strands of the Sthaviranikaya", which also included the Kasyapiya.

[citation needed] Their founder was a monk named Purāṇa, who is venerated at length in the Mahīśāsaka vinaya, which is preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon.

Xuanzang records that Asaṅga, an important Yogācāra master and the elder brother of Vasubandhu, received ordination into the Mahīśāsaka sect.

[4] André Bareau writes: [It is] sufficiently obvious that Asaṅga had been a Mahīśāsaka when he was a young monk, and that he incorporated a large part of the doctrinal opinions proper to this school within his own work after he became a great master of the Mahāyāna, when he made up what can be considered as a new and Mahāyānist Abhidharma-piṭaka.

[8] Between 148 and 170 CE, the Parthian monk An Shigao came to China and translated a work which describes the color of monastic robes (Skt.

kāṣāya) utilized in five major Indian Buddhist sects, called Da Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi (Chinese: 大比丘三千威儀).

[15] It is believed that the Mahāyāna Infinite Life Sutra was compiled in the age of the Kushan Empire, in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, by an order of Mahīśāsaka bhikkhus that flourished in the Gandhara region.

"In her reply, Nāgadatta rejects arhatship as a lower path, saying, A Buddha's wisdom is like empty space of the ten quarters, which can enlighten innumerable people.

For I have heard that those Noble Ones, by the practice of bodhisattvacarya for a hundred thousand nayutas of kotis of kalpas diligently attain Buddhahood.

"The Mahīśāsakas believed that women essentially could not change the nature of their minds or physical bodies, and would cause the teachings of Buddhism to decline.