Chapter 0: Guide to this essay¶

The two hundred fascicles of the Mahāvibhāṣā form the Sarvāstivāda school's extensive commentary. They examine the Jñānaprasthāna item by item, set differing views beside one another, and then issue a verdict under the formula "The evaluation states." This is how Vaibhāṣika orthodoxy is established. The guide to Essay 15 set out a table of five textual layers. This is the book at the layer of extensive commentary. The present essay takes that layer out for a separate reading because it lets us watch an orthodoxy being decided. Its size is incidental to that purpose. Once the various positions have been set out, a judgment follows. Only here can we see what supports that judgment, where it stops, and who decides.

Why this essay needs to exist. Essay 15 was organized by doctrine and asked whether this metaphysics could stand. This essay is organized by text and asks how it came to be settled in the first place. The second question has philosophical content of its own. There are four reasons, which are four aspects of the same difficulty. First comes the relation between adjudication and argument. The two Chinese characters 評曰, "The evaluation states," exercise a kind of power. The verdict rests on more than argument. It also rests on sacred teaching, transmission, and consistency of form. What kind of claim to truth does a doctrinal system make when adjudication has fixed its contents? That deserves a question of its own. Second, orthodoxy defines itself through its opponents. The positions of the Dārṣṭāntikas, the Bhadanta, the Vibhajyavādins, the Vātsīputrīyas, and the Mahāsāṃghikas are catalogued and refuted one by one. Such cataloguing and refutation form the most important layer of historical evidence for the thought of the Buddhist schools. They are also a way of establishing an identity that deserves direct analysis. Third comes commentary as a philosophical form. Exposition piles up in layers around a root treatise, and the form itself carries a claim. The root treatise has already stated the whole truth; later writers only clarify it. Fourth comes the doctrine for which Essay 15 had no room. Mental factors and association, underlying tendencies and the abandonment of defilements, and the two rounds of cause and effect across three lives all have sufficient weight to belong here.

Together, these four aspects supply the thread of this essay. The Sarvāstivāda method requires every distinction to rest on a distinct intrinsic nature. Classification therefore becomes ever finer, and entities ever more numerous. Once symmetry becomes a requirement of reality, even a lack must be made into something that exists. The method cannot supply its own stopping point. Only adjudication can bring it to a halt. The difficulty in the final chapter of Essay 15 concerned doctrine. These claims cannot stand by their own criteria. The difficulty here concerns method. It compels the system to keep adding entities but cannot decide where to stop. These two statements describe the same procedure, measuring different parts of it.

Length and scope. This essay and the next are both much shorter than Essay 15. The difference is deliberate. The full exposition of doctrine has already been organized by topic there. These two essays follow the books, examining the texts' own form, origins, and habits of argument. Doctrine already discussed in Essay 15 is identified without being expounded again. Chapters 6 to 8 take up what could not fit there. The title uses "in brief" rather than "analysis" to mark this limit. If a discussion here feels too quick, the corresponding chapter of Essay 15 will usually supply the full treatment.

How to read this essay. Chapters 1 and 2 establish the approach. They first ask what accounts for the bulk of two hundred fascicles, then examine the arguments as they actually work. Chapter 3 is the core. What supports the verdicts introduced by "The evaluation states"? When do adjudication and argument coincide, and when do they part? Chapters 4 and 5 examine two sites of adjudication, the dispute among the four great masters within the system and the roster of opponents at its edges. Chapters 6 to 8 gather the doctrine for which Essay 15 had no room. Chapter 9 delivers the verdict, draws the essay together, and hands over to the next. Every chapter uses the approach established in the first two, so reading in order is advisable. Readers eager to reach the doctrine can begin at Chapter 6 and return to the first two chapters afterward.

A quick view of the two hundred fascicles' format. First, consider the scale. The classical Chinese text has 1.54 million characters; the modern Chinese translation has more than 2.3 million. A few recurring formats account for this bulk. Their counts across the whole work appear below. Every count in this essay follows the classical Chinese text. The renderings of these markers in the modern Chinese translation are still being standardized.

This table is the skeleton of Chapter 1. The book is long because it carries out every multiplication its method calls for. It is not complex because there are only a few multipliers.

Treatment of terminology. As in the preceding two essays, Chinese technical terms serve as the primary terms, with Sanskrit in parentheses at their first occurrence. This essay adds another layer. Expressions such as "The evaluation states," "Some say," "Furthermore," and "One should not demand an account" are both terms and evidence. Wherever they serve as evidence, their counts and sources are given in context.

Connection with Essay 3 in Part I. The course of the schools' divisions, accounts of the councils, and legends of King Kaniṣka belong to Essay 3 in Part I. This essay does not retell that history. Where it touches on these matters, it takes up one question only. How does the structure of authority enter the format of a treatise?

On to Chapter 1. We begin with the most basic question. What kind of book are these two hundred fascicles?