From my understanding, the various Āgama collections preserved in Chinese most likely come from the following schools:
DĀ: Dharmaguptaka
MĀ: Sarvāstivāda
SĀ: Sarvāstivāda
SĀ-2: Kāśyapīya or Mūlasarvāstivāda? (seems like Msv might be a more recent attribution?)
SĀ-3: ?
EĀ: Mahāsāṁghika or possibly Dharmaguptaka
EĀ-2: ?
Has anyone put forward theories about which school(s) SĀ-3 or EĀ-2 come from?
Also, what about the attribution of SĀ-2?
You might get some answers from @cdpatton and @Dogen.
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It seems that SA is probably Mulasarvastivada - it agrees better with their Vinaya, if I remember correctly. Analayo summarized the arguments for that in an article (this one, I believe). Whereas, MA is probably from another canonical lineage of Sarvastivadins.
SA-2 I personally am not sure about. The Kasyapiya theory was panned by Bingenheimer for good reason, and he floated the theory that it was from a Mulasarvastivada canon. But it’s parallels with SA are sometimes quite different. I really don’t know what to make of it. I think it could be from another school, like EA, that’s obscure today and difficult to identify. There’s a remarkable correspondence between the arrangement of sutras of SA and SA-2, though. So, that argues for a close relationship of some kind between them.
EA is a mystery to me. Mahasamghika is a common attribution. It could be true. There are several other obscure schools of Indian Buddhism it could belong to. Whatever its provenance, It’s a very old version of EA before the big expansion that we see in AN and the Sarvastivada EA (which we only know about from fragments and descriptions of it).
SA-3 and EA-2 are smaller excerpt collections. I’ve not really looked into either of them very closely.
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