are perfectly in accordance with the noble doctrine.  Can we say which of the two is right?  Both equally conform to truth and lead us to Nirvana” and so on.  But he does not say that the other two systems are also aspects of the truth.  This is the more remarkable because he himself followed the Mula-sarvastivadins.  Apparently Sarvastivadin and Vaibhashika were different names for the same school, the latter being applied to them because they identified themselves with the commentary (Vibhasha) already mentioned whereas the former and older designation came to be used chiefly with reference to their disciplinary rules.  Also there were two groups of Sarvastivadins, those of Gandhara and those of Kashmir.  The name of Vaibhashika was applied chiefly to the latter who, if we may find a kernel of truth in legends which are certainly exaggerated, endeavoured to make Kashmir a holy land with a monopoly of the pure doctrine.  Vasubandhu and Asanga appear to have broken up this isolation for they first preached the Vaibhashika doctrines in a liberal and eclectic form outside Kashmir and then by a natural transition and development went over to the Mahayana.  But the Vaibhashikas did not disappear and were in existence even in the fourteenth century.[232] Their chief tenet was the real existence of external objects.  In matters of doctrine they regarded their own Abhidharma as the highest authority.[233] They also held that Gotama had an ordinary human body and passed first into a preliminary form of Nirvana when he attained Buddhahood and secondly into complete Nirvana at his death.  He was superhuman only in the sense that he had intuitive knowledge and no need to learn.  Their contempt for sutras may have been due to the fact that many of them discountenance the Vaibhashika views and also to a knowledge that new ones were continually being composed.

I-Ching, who ends his work by asserting that all his statements are according to the Arya-mula-sarvastivada-nikaya and no other, gives an interesting summary of doctrine.

“Again I say:  the most important are only one or two out of eighty thousand doctrines of the Buddha:  one should conform to the worldly path but inwardly strive to secure true wisdom.  Now what is the worldly path?  It is obeying prohibitive laws and avoiding any crime.  What is the true wisdom? It is to obliterate the distinction between subject and object, to follow the excellent truth and to free oneself from worldly attachments:  to do away with the trammels of the chain of causality:  further to obtain merit by accumulating good works and finally to realize the excellent meaning of perfect reality.”