Chapter 2. The Mahāvibhāṣā and the Sarvāstivāda system¶

The previous chapter discussed Sarvāstivāda's main claim, that all three times are real and dharmas' intrinsic being exists permanently, and promised to return to the system itself. The present chapter examines its foundational work, the Mahāvibhāṣā, its exhaustive inventory of dharmas, and several central explanatory mechanisms. Following Chapter 2.5, Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma takes the turn toward a "theory of dharmas" to its limit and presents one of the fullest forms of dharma realism.

1. The Mahāvibhāṣā and the Vaibhāṣikas¶

The central text of the Sarvāstivāda system is the Abhidharma Mahāvibhāṣā. An enormous commentary on Kātyāyanīputra's Jñānaprasthāna, it was compiled in Kashmir around the second century CE. It records and adjudicates the differing views of successive Sarvāstivāda teachers, including the four accounts of temporal difference in the previous chapter, and establishes the correct doctrine.¹ The tradition that takes it as its standard is called Vaibhāṣika, the Kashmiri orthodoxy.

The Jñānaprasthāna, the work being explained, should be introduced first. Written by Kātyāyanīputra, it is recognized within Sarvāstivāda as the school's programmatic work and traditionally honored as the "body treatise," with the other six treatises arranged around it like six legs. Its eight divisions concern miscellaneous topics, fetters, knowledge, karma, the great elements, faculties, concentration, and views. They contain forty-four subsections that establish positions through questions and answers, topic by topic. From decisive stages of practice such as "the highest worldly dharma" to defilements or fetters, knowledge, karma, matter or the great elements, faculties, meditation, and views, the work sets rules for almost every subject Sarvāstivāda addresses. The Mahāvibhāṣā is the great commentary produced by explaining it sentence by sentence and judging the competing views. Its divisions correspond to the eight divisions of the Jñānaprasthāna.

Tradition gives the great work an imposing origin. The Kushan king Kaniṣka is said to have assembled five hundred arhats in Kashmir for a council presided over by Vasumitra, which produced the text. The northern tradition calls it the "Fourth Council." The account needs to be discounted in keeping with the book's method. It belongs only to the northern, Sarvāstivāda tradition. Theravāda recognizes only three councils and does not accept it. The spectacle of "a king assembling five hundred arhats" also follows the idealized council template discussed in Chapter 2.2, as in the First Council. Once that presentation is removed, what can be established is that the Mahāvibhāṣā was a comprehensive work gradually compiled by Kashmiri Sarvāstivāda around the second century.

How the system reached us also needs to be explained. Later readers encountered the enormous system chiefly through Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa, which is a critical summary, as discussed in Section 5. Saṅghabhadra also wrote the Nyāyānusāra to defend orthodoxy. Our view of Sarvāstivāda today therefore usually comes through a critic's account. The relations among the participants can be outlined as follows.

The Jñānaprasthāna is the "body treatise," with the other six treatises as its "legs." The reply shown here is Saṅghabhadra's defense of the Vaibhāṣikas against Vasubandhu's criticisms in the Abhidharmakośa.

2. Seventy-five dharmas in five categories: an inventory of existence¶

Sarvāstivāda classifies everything that exists, all "dharmas," exhaustively into five major groups. The items total seventy-five, commonly called "the seventy-five dharmas in five categories" in Chinese Buddhism. It is the complete inventory of "what ultimately exists."

The name needs a brief explanation. It occurs in neither of the two primary texts. The number "seventy-five" (七十五) never appears in the thirty fascicles of the Abhidharmakośa, and the count is likewise zero in the two hundred fascicles of the Mahāvibhāṣā. The Abhidharmakośa uses "five classes" (五品) for its classification. "Five categories" (五位) appears only once, referring to the state of intermediate existence. The five groups and their individual items are present in the treatises, but adding them to a total and naming it was the work of later commentaries, as explained in the note to Chapter 3.1. The book follows common usage, asking readers to remember that the label was added later.

The forty-six mental factors are further divided into six groups.

Two categories call for particular attention. Unconditioned dharmas number only three and include nirvāṇa as cessation through discernment. As Chapter 1.5 explained, no-self extends to the unconditioned. Here the account goes further and gives the unconditioned a place among what "really exists." Formations dissociated from mind contain "forces" that are neither material nor mental but are nevertheless considered real. Examples include possession, the life faculty that maintains a life, the four characteristics of arising, duration, change, and cessation, and groups of words, sentences, and syllables, the minimal units of language. Listing "possessing," "being alive," and "words" as independently real dharmas turns each function into an entity. It is a distinctive feature of the Sarvāstivāda system and a principal target of criticism.

The Mahāvibhāṣā itself explains why the category is established. Fascicle 14 asks why the discussion of groups of words, sentences, and syllables was composed. The first answer is the customary "because the author of the treatise wished it so." The second gives the actual reason, "to refute other schools and establish our own meaning." Some, such as the Dārṣṭāntikas, hold that groups of words, sentences, and syllables are not real dharmas. Others, such as the theorists of sound, hold that their own-nature is sound. The discussion was composed to refute those two positions and establish the school's own view, that groups of words and the rest are real dharmas included in the part of the formations aggregate dissociated from mind.² The motive for positing the dharma is explicit. The item is established as real in order to defeat two opponents. Statements identifying the refutation of other schools and the establishment of correct reasoning as the motive for argument occur 119 times across the two hundred fascicles.

Correspondence with the five aggregates.

How do the seventy-five dharmas relate to the earlier classification into five aggregates (also called 五阴 in Chinese)? The correspondence is roughly as follows. Material dharmas correspond to the form aggregate, and mind or principal consciousness to the consciousness aggregate. Feeling and perception, as mental factors, correspond separately to the feeling and perception aggregates. The remaining mental factors and formations dissociated from mind correspond to the formations aggregate, while unconditioned dharmas fall outside the five-aggregate framework. Sarvāstivāda makes the broad classification into five aggregates more than ten times finer and gives every member a precise definition and boundary. The five aggregates provide a descriptive framework at the level of the discourses, while the seventy-five dharmas provide an analytical framework at the level of the treatises. Both address the same world of experience at different degrees of detail.

The four characteristics and infinite regress.

Formations dissociated from mind include the "four characteristics" of arising, duration, change, and cessation (jāti, sthiti, jarā, anityatā). They are the four stages through which conditioned dharmas arise and cease, and each is itself established as a real dharma. A problem of self-reference follows. Since the four characteristics are also conditioned dharmas, each should have its own arising, duration, change, and cessation. What are the arising, duration, change, and cessation of "arising"? Continuing in that way produces an infinite regress.

Outsiders did not devise the question on the school's behalf. Fascicle 39 of the Mahāvibhāṣā puts it in the textbook itself. Does the characteristic of arising have another characteristic of arising? If arising has another arising, continuing the sequence should lead to infinity. The treatise first records an answer accepting the regress. "Allowing this infinity involves no fault. The three times are vast. How could there be no place for it?" The reason is that the reality of all three times provides enough room. The accepted answer, however, is that nine dharmas arise together. When a conditioned formation arises, the dharma, arising, arising-of-arising, duration, duration-of-duration, change, change-of-change, cessation, and cessation-of-cessation arise together. Their functions differ. Arising produces the other eight dharmas, while arising-of-arising produces only one, the primary arising.³ The distinction Vasubandhu restates in the Abhidharmakośa between primary characteristics and secondary characteristics comes from this account. The primary dharma has four primary characteristics. Each has one corresponding secondary characteristic, making four secondary characteristics in all. The secondary characteristics stop there, without further extension.⁴

Both are called arising, yet one produces eight and the other only one. The treatise answers, "Because the nature of dharmas is so, it should not be challenged," and also gives the example of chickens and dogs producing eight offspring or one in a single brood or litter.³ Sarvāstivāda offers a normative ruling, rather than a logical derivation, of why secondary characteristics do not need further secondary characteristics. The system stops inquiry by stipulation at this point.

The same difficulty occurs with possession, discussed in Section 4, but the regress is stopped differently. If possession is a real dharma, it must itself be possessed, so possession requires a further possession. Fascicle 158 of the Mahāvibhāṣā first records the answer, "Infinity also involves no fault. That is why birth-and-death is difficult to cut off and cross beyond." It accepts a different answer. In one moment there are only three dharmas, the dharma itself, possession, and possession-of-possession. Possession secures the dharma and possession-of-possession, while possession-of-possession secures possession. "Because they mutually possess one another, there is no infinity."⁵ The chain folds back into a loop, with the second level turning around to govern the first. In the case of the four characteristics, the rules change at the second level instead. Sautrāntika and Madhyamaka both regard such rulings as a forced halt. Once a system accepts the legitimacy of a question but can end it only by stipulation, an unresolved internal tension has been exposed.

3. Six causes and four conditions: the structure of causation¶

The seventy-five dharmas in five categories list "what exists." Explaining how the dharmas cause one another requires a theory of causation as well. Sarvāstivāda develops an account of six causes, four conditions, and five results for that purpose.⁶

The six causes (hetu, direct causes) are as follows.

The four conditions (pratyaya, conditions in the broad sense) are as follows. Causal condition comprises the five causes other than the efficient cause. The efficient cause is divided among the other three conditions.⁷ Immediately preceding condition means that the previous mind-moment makes way for the next. Object condition means that the object of cognition supports consciousness. Dominant condition includes all other contributing conditions.

The five results (phala) are the dominant result, the broadest category; the result of human activity, produced with the help of instruments; the homogeneous result, which continues in the same kind as its cause; the maturation result, the moral result of karma, of a different kind from its cause; and the result of disconnection, namely nirvāṇa, obtained by cutting off defilements.

The significance of the theory lies in its change of approach rather than its details. It turns the "narrative" of twelvefold dependent origination in the discourses into a "typology." Dependent origination tells a story of the course of birth-and-death. The six causes and four conditions describe the logically possible kinds of causal relation between dharmas, turning a description of process into an analysis of structure. The account applies to causation the broader Abhidharma turn from "provisional teaching" to "ultimate teaching" discussed in Chapter 1.5. The pair of "maturation cause and maturation result" specifically addresses karma bearing fruit across lives. Together with unmanifest matter and possession in the previous section, it supplies Sarvāstivāda's complete mechanism for explaining causal continuity.

4. Explanatory mechanisms: unmanifest matter, possession, and the reality of all three times¶

The inventory needs supporting mechanisms in order to explain the world. They focus on the central problem of Chapter 1.5, how karma and continuity can be established without a self.

Unmanifest matter (avijñapti-rūpa, one of the material dharmas). When wholesome or unwholesome karma is performed through body or speech, the immediate act, manifest matter, disappears in a moment. Sarvāstivāda holds that the act simultaneously produces "unmanifest matter," a subtle material phenomenon not visible externally. It remains in the body in uninterrupted continuity as the act's continuing moral potential, producing consequences when conditions mature.

Unmanifest matter arises together with the bodily or verbal act. Its placement after the box for the cessation of manifest matter does not mean that it first arises only after that cessation.

Possession (prāpti, a formation dissociated from mind). How does a dharma count as "belonging" to a particular sentient being? Sarvāstivāda posits a real dharma called possession that attaches a dharma to a person's continuum. If you "possess" greed, the greed counts as yours. Abandoning defilements means replacing "possession" with "non-possession." Defilements, wholesome dharmas, and even actions already performed are attached to a person through possession and are not lost across time.

The reality of all three times, discussed in detail in the previous chapter. The permanent existence of dharmas' intrinsic being throughout the three times is the general premise of the preceding explanations of continuity. Unmanifest matter can preserve, possession can attach, and karma can bear fruit across lives because the intrinsic being of past and future dharmas does not cease.

Taken together, the three mechanisms make Sarvāstivāda's strategy for "continuity without a self" clear. Whenever a function appears to require a bearer, whether preserving karma, possessing, or connecting the three times, the school posits a separate real dharma to perform it. The book regards the strategy as the full development of the "ontologization" described in Chapter 2.5. Instead of accepting continuity as a process without an owner, it assigns an entity to every function. The arrangement is stable, but its theoretical cost is high.

5. Internal criticism: Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra¶

The system's best-known critic came from within it. In the verses of his Abhidharmakośa, Vasubandhu presents orthodox Vaibhāṣika doctrine, while his own prose commentary repeatedly argues against it from a Sautrāntika position. He questions possession as an unnecessary entity, since continuity itself can explain "belonging" without another possession. He cuts back on the positing of unmanifest matter and undermines the reality of all three times.⁴ The orthodox Saṅghabhadra responds with the eighty-fascicle Nyāyānusāra. Following the root verses of the Abhidharmakośa, he rewrites and refutes the prose passages one by one in defense of Vaibhāṣika doctrine.

Saṅghabhadra goes beyond answering individual objections. His most substantial defensive move replaces the criterion for real existence altogether. Sarvāstivāda's original criterion asks whether something falls apart under analysis. What falls apart exists nominally, while what does not is real. Saṅghabhadra proposes another mark of judgment. "Being an object that produces cognition is the mark of true existence." He then distinguishes two cases. "If cognition arises of it without depending on anything else, that is the mark of substantial existence, as with matter and feeling. If cognition arises of it depending on something else, that is the mark of nominal existence, as with a pot or an army."⁸ What can produce cognition on its own is substantially real, while what requires something else alongside it is nominally existent. Replacing analysis with apprehension as an object preserves past and future dharmas, possession, and the unconditioned, all of which are judged nominal by Vasubandhu's criterion. They can all serve as objects. Nothing is lost from the inventory, but the cost is the criterion's independence. Changing the criterion amounts to conceding that the old one cannot be maintained and adopting one that preserves the complete list. The defense thus proceeds by making the criterion serve the conclusion.

The internal conflict identifies several principal targets of later criticism of Sarvāstivāda. Its mechanisms for turning functions into entities, possession, unmanifest matter, and existence in all three times, are repeatedly questioned. Sautrāntika, discussed in the next chapter, cuts them back sharply and uses "seeds" to explain karma and continuity instead. Later, Mahāyāna Madhyamaka criticizes "own-nature" itself and argues that the own-nature of dharmas cannot be established, as discussed in Essay 5, Chapter 1. Yogācāra transfers the entire inventory of dharmas into a reconstruction in terms of "consciousness-only." Its hundred dharmas developed from the seventy-five.

6. The significance of the system¶

Sarvāstivāda represents dharma realism in its fullest Abhidharma form. It offers the most complete "inventory of existence" and adds real dharmas without regard to theoretical cost in order to preserve causation and continuity. Precisely because it develops the project so fully, it becomes the principal target of later opponents. Anyone seeking to refute "dharmas have own-nature" must first address it.

Fairness requires an addition. Even its critics and opponents continue to use its vocabulary. The categories of principal consciousness and mental factors, material dharmas, association and dissociation, and the conditioned and unconditioned become the common language of all later Buddhist philosophy. The same is true of its detailed analysis of mental phenomena, including among the Mahāyāna schools that oppose it. Yogācāra's hundred dharmas are its direct descendants. Even Madhyamaka, which teaches "emptiness," must first use the characteristics of dharmas defined by Sarvāstivāda in order to have an object of criticism. Its influence can be summarized in a diagram.

The next chapter turns to Sautrāntika. It examines how the school retains only the present, uses "seeds" to explain the problems that unmanifest matter and possession were meant to address, and gives a more economical account than Sarvāstivāda's cumbersome mechanisms.

Further reading¶

• Collett Cox. Disputed Dharmas: Early Buddhist Theories on Existence. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1995. On the ontological disputes over possession and other formations dissociated from mind.

References¶