Abstract
Abhidharma, the genre of knowledge concerned with putting into systematic shape what the Buddha taught, can seem a forbidding subject. In this essay, taking Skandhila’s Introduction to Abhidharma and Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya as touchstones, I will try to shed a little philosophical light on Abhidharma as a variety of epistemic culture in the long fifth century C.E. in South Asia. To think of Abhidharma as an epistemic culture is not only to think of what goes into the making of knowledge and its justification. It is also a way to counter-point presentations of domains of inquiry which stress the retroactive organization and unity of knowledge at the expense of the heterogeneity that goes into its making. More particularly, what is at stake is a feel for the diversity of epistemic machinery Abhidharma can involve and why such diversity can matter. The essay concludes with a consideration of Vasubandhu’s closing remarks, which suggest the importance of temporal contexts of intellectual practice in which certain styles of knowledge and virtues associated with knowledge may acquire (quasi-historically) variable salience.
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23 June 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-023-00147-8
Notes
Though the author’s name might also be restored from the Chinese as “Sugandhara.” See Willemen, Dessein and Cox 1998, 283.
See commentary to XI.3 in Jamspal et al. 2004, 114. In addition to being oriented to the ultimate dharma, nirvana, other texts typically also add that abhidharma should be understood in terms of being oriented towards the characteristics of dharmas, as in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam. See comment to 1.2b in Hall 1983, 46.
Further illustrated by specifications such as a factor’s “possessing form, as not possessing form, as being ostensible, and so on” (ekaikasya dharmasya rūpy-arūpi-sanidarśanādi-prabhedena bahula-nirdeśāt(Lévi 1907, 54)). Some of these appear to be exclusive categorizations. In the commentary to the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, the idea seems to be that each dharma can be comprehensively described using multiple categories (which are not exclusive), one at a time. See Brunnhölzl 2018, 257.
An early Buddhist work on epistemology of arguments (maybe as early as third century C.E.), in fact, encodes a concern that this might be the case: “One should not engage in debate? Why? All those who engage in debate, by and large, promote hatred, arrogance and pride. Their thoughts are confused and their minds are rarely gentle or peaceful” (Gillon 2008, 22–23); see also the Abhidharmasamuccaya, where reasons not to debate others as a whole show that the quality of mind fostered by debate are inconsistent with the epistemic, cognitive , affective virtues necessary for edification and felicity (Rahula 2001, 251–252).
Perhaps Skandhila is thinking of the runaway success of the Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam (late fourth century C.E.) and it’s central use of argumentation; perhaps he is also the massive work of closely reasoned argument and critique—the Nyāyānusāra—which Vasubandhu’s work elicited from his contemporary, Saṁghabhadra, and about which the latter was honest: “Due to its prolixity of the style and the subtlety of its investigations, it cannot be understood without effort” (Cox 1995, 56). Taking up subtleties of interpretation and arguments with those who stake different claims, these massive works are indeed far more complicated that what Skandhila espouses. And in their relentless philosophical complexities of argument, counter-argument and vortices of explication, they are not entirely unprecedented; see Willemen, Dessein and Cox 1998, 187.
In censoring others for having “indulged in compiling the numerous theoretical views” or “fabricating objections” (Dhammajoti 2008, 128) Skandhila puts one in mind of the practice of Saṁghabhadra, who explicitly said that he had devoted words to scrutinize and purge what, in his predecessor Vasubandhu’s work, was incorrect (Cox 1995, 56). The author of the Vibhāṣāprabhāvṛtti(see Jaini 1958, 50)—a commentary to the Abhidharmadīpa closely allied to Saṁghabhadra (Jaini 1958, 72)—was similarly exercised, going so far as to call Vasubandhu an apostate to the Sarvastivāda (Sarvastivāda-vibhraṣṭir; Jaini 1958, n6, 52); some of his positions un-Buddhist (abauddhīya; Jaini 1958, 50); and saying of him that he had arrived at the door through which, horror of horrors, the Mahāyāna system beckoned (Vaitulika-śāstra-praveśa-dvāram ārabdhaṃ; Jaini 1958, 51). For Skandhila, such relentless gatekeeping may be what he had in mind by speaking of “slandering one another,” the upshot of relentless debate he believed incompatible with the aim of Abhidharma. In fact, pursuing the knowledge provided by Abhidharma this way, he believed, was as good as “slandering the Buddha’s teaching” (Dhammajoti 2008, 128).
It is possible to pursue a historical story of the need for tractable presentations of works of encyclopedic scale and immense complexity, such as the compendia of the Vibhāṣā; even condensed reconstructions of these works, such as the Kośa, might well have eventually needed more practically useable presentation (see Willemen, Dessein and Cox 1998, 66; 230). In the case of Vinaya, this has been suggested in Schopen 2000, 96. We can also tell an emic story. Sthiramati recognized the possibility of diverse audiences, with respect to each of which simplicity acquires a different value: some like quick academic students would not need lengthy explanation; for some, such as householders and meditating ascetics, being engaged in certain constitutive tasks rendered lengthy and abstrusely reasoned Abhidharma works a distraction and imprudent; then there were those for whom brief presentations were not exclusive of other kinds of works, merely propadeutic (Engle 2009, 246–247). Skandhila also initially presents simplicity as having an instrumental value for beginners, though I think he also endorses it for others (Dhammajoti 2008, 128). For reasons of space, I’ll focus here only on absolute rather than pragmatic values ascribed to simplicity.
With adequate regard for the difference between fifth-century C.E. Abhidharma and contemporary scientific contexts, I think I follow here Cetina’s investment in tracking not only the “construction of knowledge” but the “construction of the machineries of knowledge construction.” See Cetina 1999, 3. But see my conclusion to “Transparency and Structure” below for a methodological caveat.
Strictly speaking, Vasubandhu can consider the Buddha’s dispensation overall as śāstra, as Buddha’s teaching conjoins the work of disciplining afflictive affective states (śās-) to ameliorative ends (tra / trai), thus liberating beings. On this, from the Vyākhyāyukti, and adopted in later theoretical digests, see Stcherbatsky 1936, 7 [4.14]). Space prohibits discussing this, as well as considering the difference it makes to think of the theoretical units of one’s system consisting in events rather than rules to be enacted, as in classical Brahmanical three-fold theoretical universe of Pleasure, Profit and Virtue (Kāma-, Artha-, and Dharmaśāstra).
The distinction between teaching which provides definitions of identities (svabhāva) as distinct from enumerative characterizations (prabheda) was recognized at least by Vīryaśrīdatta (who flourished in the latter half of the eighth century) in his commentary to the Arthaviniścayasūtra; see Samtani 1971, 112 (in Devanagari numerals). On Vasubandhu's distinction between functional definitions and definitions of essence, see Pruden 1988-1990, Vol. 2., 422.
Though in practice, one finds even more distinctive the subsequent specification of an item through “the application of attribute matrices,” as discussed in Willemen, Dessein and Cox 1998, 220 (and as we saw hinted at in the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra criterion above). I will focus on the simpler definitional model here.
It is significant to note that the term itself, “viśeṣa-dṛś” is older. We find it used of the Buddha in Saundarananda 18.40 (Johnston 1932, 114), employing a pun on viśeṣa as meaning both philosophically defined items and a favored person (seen in his or her distinctness). There is, thus, a long background ideal of seeing differences (associated with a style of knowledge; for which see 16.21, and more commonly expressed as the ability to examine items with their definitions and particular and general characteristics (16.47–48), even as this may be contrasted by poets with more personal genres. This requires further study.
This holds true, I believe, despite there being a role for eliciting the conditions under which utterances are true, more about which below. Abhidharma theoretical resolutions of the world are different in kind from contemporary metaphysical constructionist projects (such as Chalmers 2012, see xiv). The difference, I believe, has to do with conceptions of truth. In early modernity, truth comes to be linked with the particularity of the fact rather than with generality (Daston 1991a, 109; Daston 1991b). Truth for Vasubandhu—as distinct from existence—can occur at the level of generality (sāmānya) and need not concern particular concreta; See Pruden 1988–1990, Vol. 2, 412 (last paragraph)-413; on the minimal linguistic units needed to express something which could be taken to be truth of interest to the theory, see Pruden 1988–1990, Vol. 1, 250. What is capable of being true are not only generalities, but often inferentially structured generalities: “All things, being conditioned, are impermanent,” and so on. And when speaking of truth (as in the truth of utterances) does make reference to particulars, it is not quite a fact that is invoked. To say that “This is a pot” is conventionally true because of making reference to something whose mode of existence is convention, as Vasubandhu says, does not invoke a relationship with facts. It is not the fact that there is a pot but the pot which makes the utterance true, though it is admittedly hard to say what the precise picture here is. What natters to theory, in any event, are not really the classes of utterances but the cognitions which have different types of things with different modes of existence as their contents. See Ganeri 2007, 170–171; Pruden 1988–1990, Vol. 3., 911). I do not know whether Vasubandhu had any conception of particular facts.
David Graeber, “Remarks on Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer,” available online: https://davidgraeber.industries/paper/2019/9/24/remarks-on-wittgensteins-remarks-on-frazer
And whether or not a statement referring to something counts as an ultimate truth (which it does if it features a concrete particular as its content) or a conventional truth (which it does if it refers to an abstraction). For a philosophically trenchant discussion of Vasubandhu’s criterion, see Ganeri 2007, 170. The test is to see whether something X which comes into view for us continues to do so under physical or intellectual division. If it does, then X is (a type of) concrete particular. A part of a blue patch still presents as blue. A piece of a pot does not. And so on.
Quine distinguished between a theory’s ontology—its enumerated commitments to what there is—and its ideology, the ideas which the theory gives us with which to think, which is another way of getting at what one might mean by “structure.” In what follows I’ll use the term “structure” (inspired by Sider 2011, which uses a generalization of Quine’s notion of “ideology”).
I take this to be continuous with what art historian Heinrich Wölfflin had in mind when he spoke of organized sets of formal possibilities associated with a discipline in a given time and place (see Davidson 2001, 131–134).
Lists may be open or closed. On Buddhaghosa’s open lists, see Heim 2018, 167; and for the difference this can make to the kind of theory on offer, see Yigal Bronner’s comments on this feature in Daṇḍin (Kāvyādaśa 2.1; 2.4; 2.96), at minute thirty-four in Yigal Bronner, “Dandin’s Open Mirror,” available here: https://www.csds.in/yigal_bronner_dandin_s_open_mirror
A question which, as readers of Abhidharma works will know, is not infrequently raised within Abhidharma. For example, adapting Vasubandhu’s discussion of this issue in connection with the order of the four truths / realities which ennoble, we may see that a list (X, Y) can be ordered by cause: X is listed before Y because X causes Y. Or it might be for epistemic reasons: to know Y one must know X; or perhaps for pragmatic reasons: It is easier to teach when X is mentioned before Y (Pruden 1988–1990, Vol. 3, 896–897).
A major exception to our general lack of institutional history for this time may be found in the Pāli commentarial tradition, with particular reference to the fifth century C.E. and the undertaking in Sri Lanka of the Mahāvihāra project of consolidating its interpretations through a systematic survey of interpretations of scripture. See von Hinüber 2015.
Such a list is a context-dependent one, as the list of the senses may change its sense and salience given the different lists in which it is included (say the six modalities of awareness or the eleven types of physical phenomena) and given different contexts in which it is invoked. I thank a reviewer for stressing this.
For the Aristotelian schema see de Anima Book II. 7–11; McHugh 2012, 48. One might also note that this list forms the mirror-image of the Neo-platonic enumeration of the senses. I am indebted to Vaught 2004, 54. As for the latter, Augustine says that it can reflect the order of relative distance between knower and known, with modifications made for taste and touch. Seeing, on this view, comes out highest. Or it can also be used in terms of how public the object is, which reflects a few of the concerns in Buddhist scholasticism as well.
Background ideological commitments may enter into such structures in more or less covert ways: the lists of Brahmāṇical (Vedic) theory, for example, encode conceptions of social hierarchy (Smith 1994); the lists of Sāṃkhya, on one reading, embody the cosmogonic commitments of the school (cf. Halbfass 1992, 48–49; but cf. Burley 2007, 110). Even thesauri may betray their ideological origins and contexts of use as Sanskrit thesauri find ways to incorporate differences in listing based on differences in ideological commitments. Thus, a Jaina ordering will not be the same as a Buddhist one, and so on. See Tubb 2007.
As enshrined in Sanskrit literature for example, it may be thought that it is only mortals who may be brought into view head-to-foot; for immortals, gods and goddesses, the description should proceed foot-to-head, embodying the humility which would have the gaze lowered to begin with and slowly ascend (cf. Kumārasaṃbhava, verses 1.33–1.49; see also Hueckstedt 1985, 157–159).
The use of the mind as a tool in analysis is mentioned by Vasubandhu (AK 6.4) when resolving which types are fundamental and which are not, through excluding (apohya) from a putative type of thing its constituent parts. See Ganeri 2007, 170. But such analysis does not commit one to thinking of the intellect as an introspective organ.
His example is a description of momentariness and the question of the measure of moments.
The Ābhidhārmika distinction between contextual and non-contextual meaning can be drawn in contemporary philosophy as well. Charles Travis in The Uses of Sense presents two philosophical pictures of semantics. The first considers utterances to possess meanings in advance of contexts. The second, what he calls “speaking-sensitive semantics,” is based on the premise that the content of an utterance depends on the particular context in which it is spoken. See Putnam 1999, 87–88.
Compare, for wider background, the discussion of prajñāpārāmitā as book and as path in Eckel 1992, 100.
I am paraphrasing Vallée Poussin’s translation of the discussion of the authorship of the Jñānaprasthāna (credited to Kātyāyanīputra) in Pruden 1988–1990, Vol. 1, section 5, 18–19.
So might some works. In the case of Abhidharmakośa and its complicated commentary (bhāṣya) one might frame the difference between scientizing and humanist approaches to knowledge by noting the difference between the text in verse and the commentary. The former presented in verse and consisting almost entirely of definitions—as presenting one ideal of knowledge (emphasizing the products of knowledge); while the commentary, the bhāṣya, presents another, leaving the question: which should contextualize and guide our reading of the other? The narratives tell us that it is not obvious (see Ganeri 2010, 199–201).
The author of the commentary to the Arthaviniścayasūtra, for example, holds that “Without instruction in scripture a student cannot investigate [and familiarize oneself with] the dharmas (na hi vinā sūtropadeśena śiṣyaḥ ṡakto dharmaṃ pravicetuṃ).” Samtani 1971, 67; and 72 (in Devanagari numerals).
Refreshingly, a number of recent studies have taken what, given my characterization above, one might call a hermeneutic turn with respect to Abhidharma, or Abhidharma-adjacent literature, emphasizing what I would call humanist attitudes: See Cox 1992; Nance 2012; Gold 2015; Tzohar 2018; Heim 2018. Gold 2015 on behalf of Vasubandhu, and Heim 2018 on behalf of Buddhaghosa, independently of one another and independently of the Vibhāṣā, offer, in effect, contemporary versions of the Vibhāṣā’s claim to endless interpretation with the following consequence: characterizations of omniscience need not be in tension with humanist and hermeneutic characterizations but can entail them: to appeal to omniscience just is to appeal to the endlessness of interpretation. This requires, naturally, a non-scientizing conception of omniscience.
See n31, Nance 2015, 229, for the various Sanskrit terms these might be intended to gloss.
A wonderful discussion of Vasubandhu’s thoughts (from the Vyākhyāyukti) on the virtues necessary for serious study may be found in Obermiller 1931, 76–80. It’s as if the vices of bad students now form the moral climate of the age.
Though note that Abhidharma is not, for Vasubandhu, as alleged by the Mahāvibhāṣa tradition, the word of the Buddha. In the Kośa, Vasubandhu does not present his reason for denying this (see Cox 1995, 6; n17, 17).
My thanks to Jane Mikkelson for this reference.
Again, recall Steven Goodman, who says that the knowledge at issue in Abhidharma functions like a beam smashing into realities, or particles, producing the multiplicity of fundamental features of the world. See Goodman 2020, 25; 105–107. See also the presentation of Abhidharma as Buddhist science in Jinpa 2017.
I take Heim 2018 to be an excellent example of this. We shall need many more studies of individuals and texts in this vein.
Hermann Jacobi once noted in the first footnote to his translation of the Kalpasūtra that Buddhaghosa in this time explained his efforts as an effort to ensure “the stability of the faith” and thought that one might see Jaina efforts with respect to canon-formation might belong to a similar time. (On Jacobi’s thoughts here, see Wiles 2006, n5, 76; see also Bronkhorst 2011, 135–136; I am indebted to Andrew Ollett for the reference to Jacobi.) See von Hinüber 2015 and Gornall 2020 for the kind of institutional context for Buddhist intellectual history which historians of ideas may hope to provide, noting however the distinctiveness of Pāli materials in providing us with the tools of such history.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the editors, Thomas Calobrisi and Devin Zuckerman, for inviting this piece, and to the anonymous reviewers for advice and constructive criticism. My thanks to Bryce Huebner and Jane Mikkelson for long and patient conversation on some of the issues raised herein.
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The original version of this article has been updated: the word ‘pravicaya’ in Sanskrit was incorrectly given as ‘paricaya’.
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Kachru, S. Seeing in the Dark: of Epistemic Culture and Abhidharma in the Long Fifth Century C.E.. DHARM 3, 291–317 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00088-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-020-00088-6