Origination and History
According to scholar Charles Prebish,
There is a great deal of mystery surrounding the rise and early development of the Sarvastivadin school. On the one hand, we have the tradition of Asoka’s council, stating that the schismatic group in the Sangha was expelled from Magadha, migrating to northwestern India and evolving into the Sarvastivadin school. On the other hand, we have the attempts of several scholars to ascribe the rise of the school to one of Asoka’s missions—that sending Majjhantika to Gandhara, an early seat of the school. This episode corresponds well with one Sarvastivadin tradition stating that Madhyantika (the Sanskrit counterpart of the Pali Majjhantika) converted the city of Kasmir, which seems to have close ties with Gandhara. Still another tradition established a community of Sarvastivadin monks at Mathura, founded by the patriarch Upagupta. Be that as it may, until the reign of King Kanishka, around the turn of the Christian era, the history of the school is at best sketchy.
They enjoyed the patronage of Kanishka, during which time they were greatly strengthened, and became one of the dominant sects of Buddhism for the next thousand years.
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“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)