On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c13.s2.19

v1.c13.s2.19

As to the treatise which Sanghabhadra wrote to demolish the Abhidharma-kośa according to Yuan-chuang the original title is given in the text as Kośa-hail-lun. In the name "Abhidharma-kośa-śāstra" the word kośa is used in the sense of a bud, the verses being buds in which were folded the flowers of Buddhist metaphysics awaiting development. So the Kośa-pao-lun, or Bud-hail-treatise, is to be understood as the work which was to spoil all the hope and promise of the Kośa. Vasubandhu, Yuan-chuang tells us, changed the name to "Shun-chêng-li-lun" the "Śāstra which follows Right Principles", and the Life of Vasubandhu gives the title as "Sui-shih-lun" or the "Śāstra which follows the True". These names are probably only different renderings of a name like Nyāyānusāra- or Anusāra-śāstra. But the story about the "Bud-hail" title must be discarded as the work itself shews that the author intended the title to be something like Nyāyānusāra-śāstra. Moreover in his subsequent treatise abridged from this he calls his large work “Shun-chêng-li-lun”.¹ With the wicked title should go the statements about the author writing the book in a spirit of envious hostility against Vasubandhu. Nothing of this appears in the treatise; and on the contrary, as Vasubandhu stated, the work developes the views of Vasubandhu and those whom he followed. In its observations on the verses of the original treatise it sometimes uses the words of Vasubandhu’s own commentary. The work condemns as heterodox certain opinions ascribed to the Sthaviras and the Sūtra-lords (Ching-chu), but Vasubandhu is not mentioned by name. Tāranātha mentions a treatise called “Abhidharmakośabhāṣyaṭīkā-tattva” which he ascribes to Sthiramati. Another name for it is given as the “Thunder-bolt”,² and it is perhaps not impossible that this may be the “Bud-hail” treatise ascribed by Yuanchuang to Sanghabhadra.