小乘

Readings

Pinyin: xiǎoshèng

Wade-Giles: hsiao-sheng

Hangul: 소승

Korean MC: soseung

Korean MR: sosŭng

Katakana: ショウジョウ

Hepburn: shōjō

tiểu thừa

small vehicle

• (Skt. hīnayāna, hīna-yāna, anya-yāna, hīna; Tib. theg pa dman pa) As opposed to the term 大乘 (mahāyāna), hīnayāna refers in general to Buddhist practices which are centered on self-salvation, or which are not based upon the true experience of emptiness. When used in a historical interpretive sense, the term is applied to the early Indian groups typified by Theravādins 上座部 and Sarvâstivādins 有部, who held to a monastically centered approach to Buddhist practice. In the Mahāyāna texts, the hīnayāna practices of the śrāvakas 聲聞 (direct disciples) and pratyekabuddhas (辟支佛, 緣覺self-enlightened ones) are held to be flawed, in that they lack the dimensions of a penetrating view of emptiness as well as a universally functioning compassion, both of which are considered to be the possession of bodhisattvas. The relationship between the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna is a central topic in the Lotus Sutra 法華經. Also translated as 下劣乘. [resp. Charles Muller; source(s): Nakamura, Hirakawa, Yokoi, JEBD,Iwanami]
• 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 Mainstream 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 of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand, 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 Pāli and Sanskrit, Pāli being the general literary language of the surviving form of Hīnayāna, Sanskrit of Mahāyāna. The term Hīnayāna is of Mahayanist 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 Four Noble Truths 四諦 are the foundational teaching, for pratyekaBuddhahood the twelve-nidānas 十二因緣, and these two are categorized together as the two vehicles 二乘. Tiantai sometimes calls them the "Tripiṭaka school."

  Three of the eighteen Hīnayāna schools were transported to China: 倶舍 (Abhidharma) Kośa; 成實 Satyasiddhi; and the school of Harivarman, the 律 Vinaya school. These are described by Mahayanists 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 sutras 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 The first doctrinal division is reported to have taken place under the leadership of the monk 大天 Mahādeva 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 school became the Mahāsāṃghika, the other the Sthavira.

  In time the two are said to have divided into eighteen, which with the two originals are the so-called "twenty schools" of Hīnayāna. Another division of four schools, referred to by Yijing 義淨, is that of the 大衆部 (Arya) Mahāsaṃghanikāya, 上座部 Āryasthavirāḥ, 根本說一切有部 MūlaSarvâstivādaḥ, and 正量部 Saṃmatīyāḥ. There is still another division of five schools, 五部律. For the eighteen Hīnayāna schools see 小乘十八部 . Transliterated as Hīnayāna 希那衍.

  [resp. Charles Muller; source(s): Soothill]
• 〔瑜伽論 T 1579.30.521a21, 成唯識論 T 1585.31.7c20 〕 [resp. Charles Muller]
• les petit Véhicule [resp. Paul Swanson]

Dictionary References:

Bukkyō jiten (Ui), 536

Bulgyo sajeon, 476a

Zengaku daijiten (Komazawa U.), 557d

Iwanami bukkyō jiten, 428

A Glossary of Zen Terms (Inagaki), 335, 364

Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary (Daitō shuppansha), 295a/327

Japanese-English Zen Buddhist Dictionary (Yokoi), 687

Bukkyōgo daijiten (Nakamura), 694c

Fo Guang Dictionary, 925

Ding Fubao

Buddhist Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary (Hirakawa), 0397

Bukkyō daijiten (Mochizuki), (v.1-6)2647a,1586a,4045a

Bukkyō daijiten (Oda), 542-1-7*1020-3

(Soothill's) Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, 98

Copyright © 2010 -- Charles Muller

generated: 2014-02-10