Buddhist Monastic Discipline: The Sanskrit Pratimoksa Sutras of the Mahasamghikas and Mulasarvastivadins

Charles Prebish's Buddhist Monastic Discipline is a scholarly comparative study and translation of the Pratimoksha Sutras, the codes of monastic rules, from two early Buddhist schools, the Mahasamghika and Mulasarvastivada, written by a specialist in early Buddhist monasticism working directly from Sanskrit sources. Its authority is that of a careful philological comparison letting readers see precisely where these two early schools' monastic codes agreed and diverged, valuable primary evidence for the diversity of early Buddhist institutional practice before later standardization within specific traditions. As a text-comparative study, it treats the codes' actual wording and structure in depth and says comparatively less about how these particular rules were practiced or enforced in actual monastic communities, a question requiring separate historical and ethnographic sources.