The Pudgalav?da or "Personalist" school of Buddhism broke off from the orthodox Sthavirav?da (elders) school around 280 BCE. The Sthavirav?dins interpreted the doctrine of anatta to mean that, since there is no true "self", all that we think of as a self (i.e., the subject of sentences, the being that transmigrates) is merely the aggregated skandhas. The Pudgalav?dins asserted that, while there is no ?tman, there is a pudgala or "person", which is neither the same as nor different from the skandhas. The "person" was their method of accounting for karma, rebirth, and nirvana. Other schools held that the "person" exists only as a label, a nominal reality.
The Pudgalavadins were strongly criticized by the Theravadins (a record of a Theravadin attack on the pudgala is found in the Kathavatthu), Sarvastivadins, and Madhyamakas. Peter Harvey agrees with criticisms levelled against the Pudgalavadins by Moggaliputta-Tissa and Vasubandhu, and finds that there is no support in the suttas for their "person"-concept.[1]
They were labeled heretical, and the sect eventually died out.
Priestley, Leonard (1999). Pudgalav?da Buddhism: The Reality of the Indeterminate Self. Toronto: Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto.
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