SAUTRĀNTIKA. Most available sources agree that the Sautrāntika school separated from the Sarvāstivāda perhaps some four centuries after the death of Śākyamuni Buddha. Its followers were called Sautrāntika, meaning those who take the sūtras as the last word, because although they accepted the two main parts of the Buddhist canon (the Tripitaka), namely, the Vinaya and the Sūtras, as the true word of the Buddha, they rejected the third part, the Abhidharma of the Sarvāstivāda tradition, considering it later philosophical disquisition, which for them had no binding authority. However, the Sautrāntikas must have remained effectively a branch of the Sarvāstivāda, as they continued to follow the same Vinaya, or monastic discipline, and their differences remained not so much practical as philosophical. They are sometimes referred to by such variant names as S...