The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2147 page)

(P
li, Sabbatthiv
da, from
sabbam atthi
, ‘everything exists’). One of three systematic schools of early Buddhism which derived from the
Sthavirav
da
of the first schism, the others being
Pudgalav
dins
and
Vibhajjav
dins
. They became the most prominent non-Mah
y
na school in N. India, whence they moved into China. Their main works on
Abhidharma
survive in Chinese and Tibetan. They are distinguished, in their teaching, by their view that
dharmas
have real existence, not only in the present but in the past, since they must exist as causes of
karma
. Thus they made dharmas into reified entities, indivisible constituents of reality. Each has its own nature (
svadharma
), and they are bound together in forms of appearance without constituting a self. Conflicts among Sarvastiv
dins led to a Council,
c.
100 CE, under Kani
ka I, which produced a commentary of agreed teaching,
Mah
vibh
. Mainstream Sarv