The Saṃmitīya sect was an offshoot of the Vātsīputrīya sect, and was one of the eighteen or twenty early Buddhist schools

Early Buddhist schools

The early Buddhist schools are those schools into which, according to most scholars, the Buddhist monastic saṅgha initially split, due originally to differences in vinaya, and later also due to doctrinal differences and geographical separation of groups of monks.The original saṅgha split into the...

 in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Like its predecessor, it claims the person (Sanskrit: pudgala) as a carrier of skandhas endures, and as such was a representative (perhaps the most prominent one) of the Pudgalavāda

Pudgalavada

The Pudgalavāda or "Personalist" school of Buddhism broke off from the orthodox Sthaviravāda school around 280 BCE. The Sthaviravādins interpreted the doctrine of anatta to mean that, since there is no true "self", all that we think of as a self is merely the aggregated skandhas...

 schools.

Doctrines

The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang

Xuanzang

Xuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...

 reported that the Saṃmitīya of Sindh

Sindh

Sindh historically referred to as Ba'ab-ul-Islam , is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran". Though Muslims form the largest religious group in Sindh, a good number of Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus can...

 "have narrow views and attack the Mahāyāna

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

," while the Tibetan historian Tāranātha

Taranatha

Tāranātha was a Lama of the Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is widely considered its most remarkable scholar and exponent....

 reported that the Saṃmitīya were staunchly anti-Mahāyāna and anti-Vajrayāna

Vajrayana

Vajrayāna Buddhism is also known as Tantric Buddhism, Tantrayāna, Mantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Esoteric Buddhism and the Diamond Vehicle...

, with Saṃmitīya monks from the Sindh burning tantric scriptures and destroying a silver image of Hevajra

Hevajra

Hevajra is one of the main yidams in Tantric, or Vajrayana Buddhism. Hevajra's consort is Nairātmyā .-India:...

 at Vajrāsana monastery in Bodh Gaya.

In the biography of Xuanzang, it is recounted that an elderly brahmin

Brahmin

Brahmin Brahman, Brahma and Brahmin.Brahman, Brahmin and Brahma have different meanings. Brahman refers to the Supreme Self...

 and follower of the Saṃmitīya sect named Prajñāgupta had composed a treatise in 700 verses which opposed the Mahāyāna teachings. In response, while living at Nālandā

Nalanda

Nālandā is the name of an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India.The site of Nalanda is located in the Indian state of Bihar, about 55 miles south east of Patna, and was a Buddhist center of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE. It has been called "one of the...

, Xuanzang wrote a Sanskrit work in 1600 verses to refute this text, called The Destruction of Heresy. In this context, the Saṃmitīya sect was regarded as heretical.

History

The distinguished Buddhologist Étienne Lamotte

Étienne Lamotte

Étienne Paul Marie Lamotte was a Belgian priest and Professor of Greek at the Catholic University of Louvain, but was better known as an Indologist and the greatest authority on Buddhism in the West in his time...

, using the writings of the Chinese traveler Xuanzang, asserted that the Saṃmitīya were in all likelihood the most populous non-Mahayanist sect in India, comprising double the number of the next largest sect, although scholar L. S. Cousins

L. S. Cousins

Lance Selwyn Cousins is a scholar in the field of Buddhist Studies. Born in Hertfordshire, he studied history and oriental studies at Cambridge University, and took up a post in the Department of Comparative Religion at Manchester University...

 revised his estimate down to a quarter of all non-Mahayana monks, still the largest overall. The Saṃmitīya sect seems to have been particularly strong in the Sindh, where one scholar estimates 350 Buddhist monasteries were Saṃmitīya of a total of 450. This area was rapidly Islamized in the wake of the Arab conquest.

The end of the Saṃmitīya sect appears to coincide with the overall decline of Buddhism in India

Decline of Buddhism in India

The decline of Buddhism in India, the land of its birth, occurred for a variety of reasons, and happened even as it continued to flourish beyond the frontiers of India. Buddhism was established in the area of ancient Magadha and Kosala by Gautama Buddha in the 6th century BCE, in what is now modern...

.