Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c6.s1.38

Language: English

c6.s1.38.1

The case of the *Abhidhamma Piṭaka* is far worse than that of the *Sutta* and *Vinaya Piṭakas*. These two texts know nothing of such a Piṭaka; the division recognized is that of Dhamma, i. e. Sutta, and Vinaya with Mātikā, ‘lists’ as the third, the germ, doubtless, of the actual Abhidhamma.¹ None the less the most grandiose claims have been advanced for the Abhidhamma books. Mrs. Rhys Davids² claims that the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi* is to be dated about 385 B. c., basing the assertion on the internal evidence of form and content as compared with the *Kathāvatthu* (247 B. c.). Professor Walleser³ denies the validity of the argument, but resorts to the view that the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi* is the *Dharmasaṃgraha* of Ṣāriputra among the northern Abhidhamma texts, and is referred to by Asoka as the Upatisa-pasine, Upatissa being the other name of Sāriputta; the suggestion is impossible of credit, and it is certain that the *Dharmasaṃgraha* is wholly different from the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi*. A useful antidote to these extravagant estimates is afforded by Professor Rhys Davids⁴ who places the four Nikāyas at the period assigned to the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi* and brings that text down later than the late texts of the *Khuddaka Nikāya*. He himself,⁵ however, asserts that in the subjects of which it treats and its style the *Kathāvatthu*, the latest text of the Piṭaka, accords perfectly with all we know or expect of Asokan India, but the assertion is idle and is unsupported by any evidence.

c6.s1.38.2

On the contrary the work shows the clearest signs, as Mrs. Rhys Davids' candidly allows, of much addition, which has deprived it of coherence or order. The admission is necessary in view of the obvious confusion of the work, and it deprives of all point the only serious attack made on Minayeff's criticism of the traditional origin of the Kathāvatthu; the inclusion in the text of a heresy known to have been held by the Vetulyakas in the second century A. D. in Ceylon and later does not prove that the work was only begun then, but it indicates that in all probability it was still open to additions in the second century A. D. and later. Moreover the theory that it is the latest of the Abhidhamma books is without foundation; it ignores three of them, Dhātukathā, Puggalapaññatti, and Yamaka. The scholastic character of these works suggests that they are divided by no small space from the other Piṭakas, and are very possibly younger than the older portion of the Milindapañha,² which refers to the Abhidhamma only in passages certainly late. The lateness of the Abhidhamma is confirmed also by the Ceylonese tradition itself. When it tells of the Great Council held by the heretical Vajjiputtakas, it says that they rejected the Abhidhamma books, along with the Paṭisambhidā and the Niddesa and portions of the Jātaka from the fifth Nikāya, and the Parivāra appendix of the Vinaya.

c6.s1.38.3

Now it is not disputed that the Paṭisambhidā and Niddesa, which are really commentaries or Abhidhamma, are late, that the Jātaka is full of late matter, and that the Parivāra is not original; we are confirmed, therefore, in the view that the Abhidhamma has no claim to the antiquity asserted for it. This is supported by the undeniable fact that, while the Sutta and Vinaya Piṭakas have parallels in other schools, based on a common tradition, the Abhidharma of the Sarvāstivādins, of which we now have information,³ utterly disagrees with the Pali Abhidhamma. As this Abhidhamma existed at the time of the Council of Kaniṣka, it is doubtless to it and not to the Pali Abhidhamma that we have to refer the term Trepiṭaka,⁴ which appears in an inscription of this time, and we are left to conjecture a date for the Pali Abhidhamma. All that can be said is that in the third century A. D. the Abhidhamma Piṭaka seems to have been studied in Ceylon,¹ and that in the commentators of the fifth century we find the Abhidhamma Piṭaka treated as authoritative, as also in the late additions to the Milindapañha. But we are without means of judging precisely at what date the old Mātikās were formed into our present texts, possibly after the Christian era.