Dear Bhante,

> I think there's a slip-up here. The Vajjiputtakas (so-called in the
> Vinaya Culavagga, though not a recognized school as such) have
> nothing to do with the Vatsiputrika Pudgalavadins.

Ha ! This just goes to show confusing the situation is ! You are, of
course right. In the heat of the moment, I mistakenly converted
Vajjiputtaka (= V.rjiputrika) into Vatsiputrika while
forgetting that it was the Vajjiputtakas who were involved in the Vaisali
incident. But still there is no evidence that the Vajjiputakasa had anything
to do with the Mahasanghikas -- if they did, we would expect to find the ten
points of disciplinary dispute accepted into the Mahasanghika Vinaya, which
we do not, except for the handling of coin. It seems to me that the problem
here is that Buddhaghosa (?) conflated the Vaisali incident with the true
second council at Pataliputra, convened almost fifty years later, which
involved the doctrinal Five Points of Mahadeva, when the so-called Sthaviras
split off from the Mahasanghikas who must have won the day as their name
implies. Linking the Mahasanghikas with the Vajjiputtakas seems to have been
a bit of black propaganda to denigrate them. Cousins imlies, through his
studies on the Kathavatthu, that this probably ocurred because the
Mahasanghikas in SE India impinged on Theravadin "territory" at a later
date.

> Thanks for your references. I've been trying to find Frauwallner's
> book on the Earliest Vinaya for ages, and there don't seem to be any
> available. Do you know where they can be obtained?

It's long been out of print, so, unless you can access a copy from a
University library, I doubt that you would find a copy easily. I don't own
a copy myself either. You might be able to get somebody to photocopy it for
you -- it's not a huge book -- I could even do this for you if you have no
joy elsewhere. It will some be out of copyright, I think, so perhaps
somebody could digitize it and post it on the internet.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge