Scholars, including Peter Harvey, Robert Florida and David Stott, assume that the authors/redactors of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya—the monastic code of the Mūlasarvāstivāda school—agreed with those from the Theravāda school on the topic of abortion. This assumption appears to be primarily based on one prātimokṣa rule as it is found in two locations in the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. Moreover, a longstanding scholarly preference for sources extant in Pāli, such as the Theravāda Vinaya, and the preconceived notion that all Indian Buddhists were anti-abortion, impact contemporary studies of Buddhist attitudes towards abortion in Vinaya. The primary goal of this thesis is to offer an extensive comparison of passages related to abortion recorded in a number of locations in Buddhist monastic literature. I examine three main pieces of evidence: 1) the third pārājika rule addressing monastic involvement in homicide; 2) word-commentary and cases illustrating this rule; and 3) stories that do not illustrate a pārājika offence but include abortion in the narrative. Although Mūlasarvāstivādin authors/redactors, like their Theravādin counterparts, include anti-abortion attitudes in their monastic literature, I uncover a number of discrepancies in comparable passages related to abortion in the Vinaya of these two schools. To give but one example, Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravādin and Mūlasarvāstivādin authors/redactors appear hesitant to include in their Vinayas narratives that portray monks assisting laywomen in procuring abortions: something the Theravādins record in a number of locations. While the ramifications of such differences are not immediately clear, we can at least conclude, in contrast to what previous studies imply, that Buddhist attitudes toward abortion are not recorded in a simple one-to-one correlation across extant Indian Vinayas. / Thesis / Master of Arts in Religion (MAR)

In this Master’s thesis, I attempt to illuminate the historical relationship between Classical Indian medical practice and Buddhist monastic law codes, vinaya, in India around the turn of the Common Era. Popular scholarly conceptions of this relationship contend that the adoption of the Indian medical tradition into the Buddhist monastic institution is directly traceable to the Pāli canon. The Mūlasarvastivāda-vinaya (MSV) does not appear to take issue with physicians or medical knowledge, yet the condemnation of physicians in ancient Indian literature strongly suggests that the relationship between monks and medicine is more complex than the Pāli canon illustrates. Similar to other vinaya traditions, the MSV includes detailed information about permitted medicaments, as well as allowances for monastics to provide medical care to other monastics and even, in particular cases, the laity. I argue that the incentives for monastics to maintain a positive relationship with the medical world were driven by the economic benefits of monastic medical knowledge, as well as associations with wealthy physicians. Using a variety of extant Sanskrit materials, as well as epigraphic evidence, I aim to present a nuanced picture of the history of the relationship between Indian Buddhist monasticism and medicine around the turn of the Common Era. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)