小乘
Từ Điển Thuật Ngữ Phật Học Hán Ngữ
Hīnayāna 希那衍. The small, or inferior wain, or vehicle; the form of Buddhism which developed after Śākyamuni’s death to about the beginning of the Christian era, when Mahāyāna doctrines were introduced. It is the orthodox school and more in direct line with the Buddhist succession than Mahāyānism which developed on lines fundamentally different. The Buddha was a spiritual doctor, less interested in philosophy than in the remedy for human misery and perpetual transmigration. He “turned aside from idle metaphysical speculations; if he held views on such topics, he deemed them valueless for the purposes of salvation, which was his goal” (Keith). Metaphysical speculations arose after his death, and naturally developed into a variety of Hīnayāna schools before and after the separation of a distinct school of Mahāyāna. Hīnayāna remains the form in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, hence is known as Southern Buddhism in contrast with Northern Buddhism or Mahāyāna, the form chiefly prevalent from Nepal to Japan. Another rough division is that of Pali and Sanskrit, Pali being the general literary language of the surviving form of Hīnayāna, Sanskrit of Mahāyāna. The term Hīnayāna is of Mahāyānist origination to emphasize the universalism and altruism of Mahāyāna over the narrower personal salvation of its rival. According to Mahāyāna teaching its own aim is universal Buddhahood, which means the utmost development of wisdom and the perfect transformation of all the living in the future state; it declares that Hīnayāna, aiming at arhatship and pratyekabuddhahood, seeks the destruction of body and mind and extinction in nirvāṇa. For arhatship the 四諦Four Noble Truths are the foundation teaching, for pratyekabuddhahood the 十二因緣 twelve-nidānas, and these two are therefore sometimes styled the two vehicles 二乘. Tiantai sometimes calls them the (Hīnayāna) Tripiṭaka school. Three of the eighteen Hīnayāna schools were transported to China: 倶舍 (Abhidharma) Kośa; 成實 Satya-siddhi; and the school of Harivarman, the律 Vinaya school. These are described by Mahāyānists as the Buddha’s adaptable way of meeting the questions and capacity of his hearers, though his own mind is spoken of as always being in the absolute Mahāyāna all-embracing realm. Such is the Mahāyāna view of Hīnayāna, and if the Vaipulya sūtras and special scriptures of their school, which are repudiated by Hīnayāna, are apocryphal, of which there seems no doubt, then Mahāyāna in condemning Hīnayāna must find other support for its claim to orthodoxy. The sūtras on which it chiefly relies, as regards the Buddha, have no authenticity; while those of Hīnayāna cannot be accepted as his veritable teaching in the absence of fundamental research. Hīnayāna is said to have first been divided into minority and majority sections immediately after the death of Śākyamuni, when the sthāvira, or older disciples, remained in what is spoken of as “the cave”, some place at Rājagṛha, to settle the future of the order, and the general body of disciples remained outside; these two are the first 上坐部 and 大衆部 q. v. The first doctrinal division is reported to have taken place under the leadership of the monk 大天 Mahādeva (q.v.) a hundred years after the Buddha’s nirvāṇa and during the reign of Aśoka; his reign, however, has been placed later than this by historians. Mahādeva’s sect became the Mahāsāṅghikā, the other the Sthāvira. In time the two are said to have divided into eighteen, which with the two originals are the so-called “twenty sects” of Hīnayāna. Another division of four sects, referred to by Yijing, is that of the 大衆部 (Arya) Mahāsaṅghanikāya, 上座部 Āryasthavirāḥ, 根本說一切有部 Mūlasarvāstivādaḥ, and 正量部 Saṃmatīyāḥ. There is still another division of five sects, 五部律. For the eighteen Hīnayāna sects see 小乘十八部.