It has been generally maintained that monks who in principle abandon their belongings instruct the laity while lay people support the monks' daily life by giving their personal property to monks. The former is called dharmadāna performed by monks, and the latter āmi?adāna, done by lay people. In fact, however, the subject of dāna in the history of Indian Buddhism has some complicated aspects which are not covered by the above-mentioned common understanding. For example, the saving and giving of property by monks are actually confirmed in Vinaya literature, as has already been shown by Schopen [1997] [2000] and Hirakawa [1963]. This paper, using material ranging from the ?gamas and Nikāyas to some important Mahāyāna sūtras, gives a more thorough consideration of different aspects of the act of transmitting dāna and clarifies the significance of the idea of dāna in the history of Indian Buddhism. In the Samyuttanikāya and A?guttaranikāya, it is usually explained that dharmadāna is superior to āmi?adāna, while the Dīghanikāya and A?guttaranikāya refer affirmatively to the concept of āmi?adāna performed by the laity. In the latter case, āmi?adāna is often similar to the four pūjās, that is, clothes, food and drink, beds, and medicines. On the other hand, dāna done by a bodhisattva is mentioned in the Ekottarāgama, vol.19, and in some texts of the Jataka literature, and there the offering of a part of the body of the bodhisattva himself is included in the contents of āmi?adāna. This act of offering his body by a bodhisattva is clearly different from āmi?adāna performed by the laity. In the case of Mahāyāna sūtras, dana is usually incorporated under the category of one of the ?a?-pāramitās. Dāna-pāramitā is differentiated into lower (loka) and higher (lokottara). In the Maitreyamahsipmhanāda, one of the early Mahāyāna sūtras, however, āmi?adāna is rejected for the reason that it is impossible to save people by the act of āmi?adāna. But in the Vinayavini?caya-upāliparip?cchā, in which bodhisattvas are classified into both monks and lay people, āmi?adāna is sanctioned in that it is to be allotted to the lay bodhisattvas. The difference between the Maitreyamahāsimhanāda and the Vinayavini?caya-upāliparip?cchāproves to lie in two different versions of the expression "recommending asceticism," and these two descriptions are common in reconsiderations of the value of āmi?adāna. The former expressly rejects āmi?adāna as a symbol for greedy monasticism, while the latter accepts āmi?adāna on the condition of classifying bodhisattvas as agents of dāna into monks and lay people. The superiority of dharmadāna maintained in the ?gamas and Nikāyas can be consistently ascertained in Mahāyāna sūtras, and the only peculiarity of the Mahāyāna lies in the attitude of dealing with āmi?adāna from the viewpoint of a sort of monkish asceticism. Mahāyāna sūtras interpret the act of āmi?adāna done by lay people in traditional Nikāya Buddhism as an act done by monks called bodhisattvas. They unify both dharmadāna and āmi?adāna into one and the same dāna in the sense of dānaparamitā performed by bodhisattvas.
