Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c11.s3.t3.10

c11.s3.t3.10

It is interesting to observe how the later generation of dogmatists, whose systematizing and harmonizing labours lie before us in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, endeavoured to introduce some order and arrangement into this confusion. One of the Abhidhamma texts, the Puggalapaññatti,* deals exclusively with the different grades of beings in relation to the goal of holiness. Thus the four classes (by the side of which stand the corresponding subdivisions of the “phalasacchikiriyāya paṭipannā,” already, by-the-bye, frequently mentioned in the older Piṭakas, e.g., “Cullavagga,” ix, 1, 4) are defined as follows: