Kieffer-Pülz, Petra
Die Sīmā: Vorschriften zur Regelung der buddhistischen Gemeindegrenze in älteren buddhistischen Texten
The present study is the extended version of my dissertation accepted by the Department of Historical-Philological Sciences in Göttingen in 1989. It is composed of three parts, each self-contained and with a separate introduction. The first part of this work (A) is devoted to the term sīmā in the Vinaya of the Theravādin. The first section (I) examines the rules governing the sīmā in the second chapter of the Mahāvagga, while the second section (II) deals with the application of the sīmā term in all other parts of the Vinaya. Part A thus aims to give an overview of which Sīmā rules were already in force in this early period and how they were applied. The second part (B) then deals with the commentary on the Sīmā rules in the Vinaya, i.e. on the text dealt with in A I, from Buddhaghosa's Samantapāsādikā. The three major Vinayaṭīkās - Vajirabuddhiṭīkā, Sāratthadīpānī and Vimativinodanīṭīkā - are also consulted for a number of passages. In Part C, the Sanskrit manuscript of the Vinayavastvāgama from Gilgit and the Tibetan translation preserved in the Kanjur are used to examine the Sīmā rules of the Mūlasarvāstivādin preserved in the chapter on Buddhist confession and compare them with the Theravādin rules.
