UPSC Prelims 2017 Question:

With reference to the religious history of India, consider the following statements:

1. Sautrantika and Sammitiya were the sects of Jainism. 
2. Sarvastivadin held that the constituents of phenomena were not wholly momentary, but existed forever in a latent form.
    

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Explanation: 

• Sautrantika was an ancient school of Buddhism that emerged in India in the 2nd century BCE as an offshoot of the Sarvastivada (“All-Is-Real Doctrine”) school. The school is so called because of its reliance on the sutras, or words of the Buddha, and its rejection of the authority of the Abhidharma, a part of the canon.
  • The Sautrantikas maintained that though events (dharmas) have only momentary existence, there is a transmigrating substratum of consciousness that contains within it seeds of goodness that are in every person. The Sautrantika sometimes is characterized as a transitional school that led to the development of the Mahayana tradition, and many of its views influenced later Yogacara thought.
    
    
• Sammatiya, an ancient Buddhist school or group of schools in India held a distinctive theory concerning the pudgala, or person. They believed that though an individual does not exist independently from the five skandhas, or components that make up his personality, he is at the same time something greater than the mere sum of his parts. The Sammatiyas were severely criticized by other Buddhists who considered the theory close to the rejected theory of atman—i.e., the supreme universal self. So, statement 1 is not correct.
  
  
• Sarvastivadin sect believed that everything empirical to be impermanent, they maintain that the dharma factors are eternally existing realities. The dharmas are thought to function momentarily, producing the empirical phenomena of the world, which is illusory, but to exist outside the empirical world. They had the view that the constituents of phenomena (dharmas) were not wholly momentary, but existed forever in a latent form. So, statement 2 is correct.
  
  

Therefore, option (2) is the correct answer.

Subject: History | Social and Religious Reform Movements