Fables in the Vinaya‑Piṭaka of the Sarvāstivādin School

Summary

The article investigates the occurrence and role of fables and anecdotes in the Vinaya‑Piṭaka of the Sarvāstivādin school of Buddhism. The Vinaya is primarily a collection of monastic disciplinary rules, but the Sarvāstivādin recensions contain numerous stories that explain the origin of specific rules or illustrate ethical conduct. The author compares the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya with parallel texts from other schools to identify which stories are original and which were borrowed from the Jātaka and Avadāna literature. He reviews Chinese and Tibetan translations of the Vinaya to trace textual transmission and notes that many tales found in the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya are also present in the Divyāvadāna, suggesting a common narrative source. Unlike the Jātakas, where the Buddha appears as a past bodhisattva, the Vinaya stories often emphasise monastic discipline and illustrate how infractions arose. The article analyses specific examples, such as the story of a monk who lied about an alms bowl, showing how fables were used to admonish novices. It also discusses differences between the Mathurā and Kaśmīra recensions of the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya and the historical reasons for including narrative material in a legal text. The presence of fables reflects a pedagogical strategy whereby teachers used familiar stories to convey abstract ethical principles. The author argues that these stories were not later interpolations but integral to the formation of the Vinaya and thus offer important evidence for the history of Buddhist narrative literature. The article concludes that the fables in the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya illustrate the cross‑fertilisation between didactic stories and monastic law, shedding light on the circulation of folklore across Buddhist schools.