Chapter 5: The Roster of Opponents¶

[PLANNED] This chapter has not yet been written; what follows is a skeleton. Items may be added or removed, and the order may change.

What this chapter does. The Vibhāṣā preserves the positions of the Dārṣṭāntikas, the Bhadanta, the Vibhajyavādins, the Vātsīputrīyas, the Mahāsāṃghikas and the Mahīśāsakas — the most important documentary layer of sectarian thought. Two tasks. The roster itself: reconstructing each opponent's outline and the density of preservation. And the mechanism: what it means for a school to establish itself by cataloguing its opponents entry by entry and refuting them entry by entry.

Structure.

First, who is on the roster. The density and the settings of each appearance; whether the Bhadanta is Dharmatrāta, and which school the Vibhajyavādins are (positions to be verified).

Second, the reliability of preservation. Whether the reports show systematic distortion; whether one school's position stays consistent across fascicles.

Third, the manner of refutation. Whether different opponents receive different types of argument; why the Dārṣṭāntikas are treated most severely.

Fourth, an orthodoxy defined by its opponents. The philosophical function of the roster: the boundary is drawn by the other side. The guide to Part 15 said this vocabulary is too familiar; the point here is that its edges were ground in these refutations.

Data and sources. Counts and distribution per opponent await the re-run of the trap table over the full text; on the secondary side, the documentary histories (Willemen, Dessein and Cox) and Cox's monograph on the dissociated factors.

To Chapter 6. From the roster to the doctrine: first mental factors and association, the home ground of Vaibhāṣika classification.