It is more likely that hinayana acquired shades of meanings over time. It basically started out its life as a sectarian, supersessionist, triumphalist polemical term of derision directed at those who did not buy into the Mahayana vision.Bankei wrote:I think the term Hinayana is used differently by different people.
The Theravada is only a “hinayana” school only if one uses the Mahayana system of classification, but there is absolutely no objective basis or need for using such a sectarian, polemical basis of classification.To some Hinayana means any non-mahayana school such as Sarvastivada, Dharmaguptaka, Theravada etc. Theravada is only one of the Hinayana schools. Some say it is the only surviving Hinayana school, but the Mula-sarvastivada and Dharmaguptaka lineages survive to this day as all Mahayana Bhikkhu belong to one of these schools - although they may not hold the philosophical ideas of the school.
Also, one needs to distinguish between ordination lineages and doctrinal schools. While the Mula-sarvastivada and Dharmaguptaka ordination lineages still exist, the Mainstream doctrinal lineages associated with the ordination lineages are quite dead.
Keep in mind, no school of Buddhism ever called it self hinayana: the scorned, the discarded, the vile school.
Out side of the questionable issue that the word hinayana ”may not actually refer to any specific schools in existent then or now,” what does that tell you about those who would coin such a term and put it into the mouth of the Buddha?Another use of Hinayana is a generic term used in some Mahayana works to despise a certain group of Buddhists. This may not actually refer to any specific schools in existent then or now.
The early bodhisattva sutras did not use the term hinayana. Mahayana was not contrasted in those texts with hinayana, nor did the authors of those texts see that being a bodhisttva was necessary of everyone; rather, being a bodhisattva was a select practice for the few. The use of the term hinayana and the idea that being a bodhisattva was the only real way of practice for everyone go hand-in-hand.
"... even after its initial appearance in the public domain in the 2nd century [Mahayana] appears to have remained an extremely limited minority movement - if it remained at all - that attracted absolutely no documented public or popular support for at least two more centuries. It is again a demonstrable fact that anything even approaching popular support for the Mahayana cannot be documented until 4th/5th century AD, and even then the support is overwhelmingly monastic, not lay, donors ... although there was - as we know from Chinese translations - a large and early Mahayana literature there was no early, organized, independent, publicly supported movement that it could have belonged to." -- G. Schopen "The Inscription on the Ku.san image of Amitabha and the character of the early Mahayana in India." JIABS 10, 2 pgs 124-5.A for Cooran's statement by Dr Rahula Walpoha, this can't be correct. Some early Chinese translations of Mahayana works occurred around the year 150AD. Therefore Mahayana must have been in existence well before then. There were also several non-Theravada schools in Sri-Lanka as well as Mahayana schools. The Chinese Bhikkhuni lineage was said to have started from the Mahisasaka school of Sri Lanka.