On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c14.s5.3

v1.c14.s5.3

The Life, which as we have seen makes Viśoka to be 500 *li* to the east of Kosambi, places the large monastery of this passage on "the left side (east) of the south-east road", but *tung*, "east" is possibly a clerical error for *ch'êng*, "city". The Life also gives the name of Devaśarman's treatise as "Shih-shên-tsu-lun (識身足論)", "the śāstra of the Foot of the Perception Body". We have the work in Yuan-chuang's translation, the title being as in the Life with the word Abhidharma prefixed.¹ Its Sanskrit title has been restored as "Abhidharma Vijñānakāyapāda śāstra”, but its short title, is “Vijñānakāya śāstra” as in our pilgrim’s translation here. The treatise is one of the Six Pāda (Tsu) called Abhidharma sūtra of the Sarvāstivādin School, and it was considered by the Vaibhāshikas as canonical, but by the Sautrāntikas as only the work of a bhikshu. Yuan-chuang, it will be noticed, calls the author an arhat, but in other places he is merely a bhikshu or sthavira. The work is a tedious argumentative treatise combating the views of a Moginlin who denied the reality of the Past and the Future, and arguing against other tenets apparently held by other early Buddhists. Our pilgrim’s statement that it denied the Ego and the non-Ego, or “I and men”, is a very unsatisfactory one.