mikenz66 wrote:Dear Venerable,
Paññāsikhara wrote:mikenz66 wrote:Hi Geoff,
So this is a summary the Sarvāstivādin Abhidarma that was used by the Mahayana schools?
Not really. Some did, some didn't. The Yogacara is closest, but even then, didn't really "use" it as such.
And a large amount of Mahayana texts were already composed before it even appeared.
Thank you very much for the input.
Hi Mike!
Just to be clear, I do understand that the Abhidharmakosa was a late work.
However, there are two issues here:
1. The influence of the Abhidharmakosa.
2. The influence of the Sarvāstivādin Abhidarma.
Noted.
I understood that the latter was quite influential in most Mahayana schools. Am I correct in that?
It's particularly influential in Yogacara, because Yogacara is a kind of Mahayana spin off from the Sautrantika, which was a development (or reversion if you like) from the Sarvastivada Vaibhasika movement. But the early Mahayana sutras really don't seem to have been influenced by it. And later stuff is just a merger of a large number of tendencies in Buddhism in India at that time. Influential including contra-influential, right?
I was also under the (probably mistaken it seems) impression that the Abhidharmakosa was a summary of Sarvāstivādin Abhidarma doctrine in the sense that the Abhidhammatthasangaha is a summary of the Theravada Abhidhamma (as interpreted by the Commentators). But perhaps the Abhidharmakosa is a more "original" work than the Abhidhammatthasangaha?
Well, to the Tibetans, they usually consider it as a summary to the Vaibhasika side of things (being those Sarvastivadins who took the Mahavibhasa as their standard). But, this is partly I believe because the Tibetans don't have that much in the way of the older Sarvastivadin material, eg. the seven root sastras, and the Mahavibhasa. So, the Chinese on the other hand, consider the Kosa as a mid-point between the Vaibhasika and Sautrantika approaches. The Chinese have more older material to make this point. Thus, the Kosa was as much a criticism and correction of the Vibhasa as it was a summary.
The Kosa is much closer in time (at least) to the original sastras it is commenting on than the Atthasangaha, which is quite a lot later. And the Kosa is also much longer, four large volumes in English translation may be much smaller than the Vibhasa, but hard to call it a "summary"! haha! The Kosa has debates, discussion, etc., the sort of thing that is absent from the Atthasangaha.
Mike
~~ Huifeng
