초기 대승불교 교단의 성립과 조직에 대한 一考 -諸異說을 중심으로-

Abstract

There are not many objections that the start of Mahayana Buddhism, which can be called a new movement of Buddhism, was to criticize Hinayana as the major stream of the existing Buddhism as well as a movement to overcome Hinayana, but there is not yet an established theory on the establishment and the background of Mahayana Buddhism. There are about two possible ways to explore history of a religion. One is an investigation method based on the facts as a historical transition and the other is the historical aspect as the force behind of changes in the religion. Therefore, likewise to the development process of the history of Buddhism, the study on the establishment and the organization of the history of Buddhist divisions is seen as very important as it investigates the past history as well as meaningful in groping for the directions of future Buddhism. Especially, studying the Mahayana Buddhist Scriptures as the current subject of the author or the exploration on the early Mahayana Buddhism for its origin will be very meaningful. As widely shared, it is not possible to find a definite evidence as to the time and the place of the origin of Mahayana Buddhism, but to trace back from the time of scripture translation. In this sense, the study on the establishment of Mahayana Buddhism was started based on the theory of ‘Mahayana Buddhism as Heterodoxy’, which argues that the scriptures that we firmly believe in as Mahayana are not the words of Buddha. As active researches are carried out on this topic, there have been various theories published on the establishment of Mahayana, where the currently most influential theory is narrowed down to the views presented by Hiragawa Akira. However recently, with regards to such opinion of Hiragawa, Uedawa Sasaki as well as Chopen and Paul Harrison from the West have raised critiques and objections to the theory of Hiragawa by brining up new theories. In Mahayana Buddhism, the establishment process and the issue of whether Mahayana is the ‘original words’ of Budda or not is still in dispute, and they still remain as objects to be studied continuously in the future. This paper explored the establishment and the organization of earlier Mahayana Buddhism, covering the findings of Hiragawa and other various theories.