Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c14.s3.6

c14.s3.6

To the Vaibhāṣikas and the Sarvāstivādins there developed opposition in the school of the Sautrāntikas, who insisted that the Abhidharma texts and a fortiori the Vibhāṣā had no authority, and that such Abhidharma as the Buddha taught was contained in the Suttas, a doctrine obviously fairly in accord with the essential facts. Therefore they adhered determinedly to the Sūtras alone, although they accepted the Sarvāstivādin and the Vaibhāṣika views save where they conflicted with their own. Of their views we have some account in the great work of Vasubandhu, the Abhidharmakoṣa, with his own commentary. The Koṣa itself in six hundred stanzas sets forth the views of the Vaibhāṣika school of Kashmir, but Vasubandhu was not a Vaibhāṣika or a Sarvāstivadin; on the contrary he had strong Sautrāntika sympathies, and later himself adopted the Yogācāra attitude, with which in his comment he shows himself familiar. His Bhāṣya therefore criticizes freely the views of the Vaibhāṣika, a fact which brought upon him replies from orthodox Vaibhāṣikas. The date of Vasubandhu, therefore, becomes of special interest to us; the period A.D. 420–500 suggested by Takakusu² on the strength of Chinese evidence may probably be taken to be superseded by the proposal of Péri which brings his death not later than A.D. 350; a date substantially earlier is impossible, if we accept the strong tradition which brings him into contact with a son of Candragupta. This is, of course, on the assumption that the Vasubandhu of the *Abhidharmakoça* is the brother of Asaṅga, of the Yogācāra school; it is just possible to read observations of Yaçomitra in his comment on the Koça to mean that the author refers to this Vasubandhu, and he was therefore later, but this suggestion is on the whole implausible. The merits of the work are obvious, and the fact of its only partial preservation in Sanskrit has hampered greatly Buddhist studies. It covers the whole field of ontology, pyschology, cosmology, the doctrine of salvation and of the saints, and a vast proportion of its matter is common to all Buddhist belief. Hence it formed the text-book of Buddhists generally after Vasubandhu’s death, whether they followed the Hīnayāna or the Mahāyāna, while it contains incidentally much evidence on the early Sanskrit Canon. It formed itself the subject of comment by Vasumitra and Guṇamati, and later by Yaçomitra whose comment is preserved to us in Sanskrit.¹