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The Meanings of the Term Gotra and the Textual History of the Ratnagotravibhāga

1976; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0041977x00050047

1474-0699

D. Seyfort Ruegg,

Indian History and Philosophy

The word gotra is frequently used in the literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism to denote categories of persons classified according to their psychological, intellectual, and spiritual types. The chief types usually mentioned in this kind of classification are the Auditors making up the śrāvaka-gotra , the Individual Buddhas making up the pratyehabuddha-gotra , and the Bodhisattvas making up the bodhisattva-gotra . In the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra these three types constitute altogether different gotras , which thus coincide with the three separate Vehicles ( yāna ) as recognized by the Yogācārin/Vijñaptimātratā, school. To these three some sources add the further category of the undetermined ( aniyatagotra ), which is made up of persons not yet definitively attached to one of the three preceding classes; and the non- gotra ( agotra ), that is the category made up of persons who cannot be assigned to any spiritual class. Each of the first three categories is thus comprised of persons capable of achieving a particular kind of maturity and spiritual perfection in accordance with their specific type or class, the Auditor then attaining the Awakening ( bodhi ) characteristic of the Śrāvaka and so on. Especially remarkable in this connexion, and somewhat anomalous as a gotra , is the non- gotra , i.e. that category of persons who seem to have been considered, at least by certain Yogācārin authorities, as spiritual ‘outcastes’ lacking the capacity for attaining spiritual perfection or Awakening of any kind; since they therefore achieve neither bodhi nor nirvāṇa , they represent the same type as the icchantikas to the extent that the latter also are considered to lack this capacity.