Individual wrote:These views seem to simplify Buddhist history as an interaction between the two sects of Theravada and Mahayana, but it seems likely to me to have been more complicated than that.
Of course it much more complicated than the simplistic outline given above.
The past importance (that is, the relevance or coherence to early Buddhism) of views held by now dead sects cannot be underestimated. Some sects now dead may have actually held views closer to early Buddhism than any living Buddhist sect today.
To determine that depends upon what literature is available to us.
Conversely, all living Buddhist sects today may hold views not held by early Buddhists.
It does not take much to see that. If we take the suttas as normative of one level of “early Buddhism,” it is not difficult to see that that is the case.
It seems at least historically significant that Pudgalavada (the idea of personhood, with personhood being notself) was a mainstream view at one point,
One needs to distinguish, however, between the ordination lineages and the doctrinal lineages. When this distinction is made, that is not at all clear. Also, most of what is known about the so-called Pudgalavada is known via their opponent apologetic/polemical literature. There is very little of their actual literature extant, and it does present a view that is a bit different from the polemical presentation of it by its opponents.
What I mean is, that's a very big change to happen -- it's impossible to suggest that Theravada is early Buddhism unchanged.
Mahayana, for instance, may have had more than one origin -- perhaps some early Mahayanists were in fact forest monks
“The Mahayana” was not in its origins, as it is not now, a singular movement.
one theory of their origin, not necessarily being known as Mahayana at that time and possibly composed of various "schools" (among the early 18) and Theravadins or whatever they may have been called at that time, or whatever number, name, or sectarian division they might have been, may have been composed of scholastic monks. It seems reasonable to me that the context in which the dhamma was practiced -- the division between monks focusing on memorizing, maintaining, and teaching scripture vs. monks focusing on solitary meditation could lead to a division and social bigotry, by which you have one side of over-analytic dogmatists, while on the other side, you have blathering pseudo-nihilistic poets (see the list of the ten defilements of insight in the Theravadin commentaries and the 10 bhumis of Mahayana for examples of both).
The problem with this that the Mahayanists, as is evidence even by their earliest writings, were as equally versed in the texts, including the Abhidharma stuff and commentaries. The bhumis and
the 10 defilements both represent rather late stuff.
Actually, there is no point in commenting on following paragraphs other than to ask where are getting this stuff? There are very good histories out there you might care to study.