Manual of Indian Buddhism c3.s2.28

c3.s2.28

The literary activity of the Northern schools of Buddhists was not inferior to that of the Theravādins, but the ancient texts have only survived in translations or have come to us much altered, if they have not wholly perished. The oldest of the surviving commentaries and treatises are posterior to the Council under Kaniṣka, and all that Huen Thsang tells us² concerning commentaries on Vinaya, Sūtra and Abhidharma being composed at that occasion is nothing else but an echo of the universal Buddhist tradition about the legendary first Council. From nearly that period may date the Vibhāṣā, a commentary on the Abhidharma; it is at any rate anterior to the Abhidharma-kośa by Vasubandhu, who flourished in the 6th century of our era and wrote many other exegetical works on Mahāyāna texts³. The Abhidharma-kośa was again commented by more than one author. To Asaṅga is ascribed a Yogaśāstra or Yogācāryabhūmi-śāstra along with other works of a philosophical character⁴. Diṅnāga wrote a work on logic, the Pramāṇa-samuccaya. Similar works of a more or less polemical character are numerous, but as long as we cannot examine the contents their enumeration is of little use, the more so as the absurd legends about their authors must deter us from entering deeper into the subject. Some celebrities and their works we shall have occasion to notice in Part V, hereafter⁵.