Hinayana and Mahayana: Comparison

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The terms Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle or Modest Vehicle) and Mahayana (Greater Vehicle or Vast Vehicle) originated in The Prajnaparamita Sutras (The Sutras on Far-Reaching Discriminating Awareness, The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras). They are a rather derogatory pair of words, aggrandizing Mahayana and putting down Hinayana. Alternative terms for them, however, have many other shortcomings, and so therefore I shall use these more standard terms for them here.

[See: The Terms Hinayana and Mahayana]

Hinayana encompasses eighteen schools. The most important for our purposes are Sarvastivada and Theravada. Theravada is the one extant today in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Sarvastivada was widespread in Northern India when the Tibetans started to travel there and Buddhism began to be transplanted to Tibet.

There were two main divisions of Sarvastivada based on philosophical differences: Vaibhashika and Sautrantika. Hinayana tenet systems studied at the Indian monastic universities such as Nalanda, and later by the Tibetan Mahayanists, are from these two schools. The lineage of monastic vows followed in Tibet is from another Sarvastivada subdivision, Mulasarvastivada.

[See: Buddhism in India before the 13th-Century Invasions]

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