Chapter 3: The Evaluation—Adjudication Alongside Argument¶

The core chapter of this part. The formula "the evaluation says" occurs two hundred eighty-nine times in the classical text of the two hundred fascicles, and what it exercises is the power of ruling: once the several positions have been set out side by side, it is this formula that declares which of them is the orthodoxy of the Vaibhāṣikas. Of the same family is "as it is stated thus," with two hundred seven occurrences, which marks out the position that has been adopted.¹ Chapter 1 observed that the rulings of this book carry the tone of a resolution handed down under the signature of five hundred arhats; this chapter asks what actually lies beneath that tone. On what is a ruling made? When does adjudication coincide with argument, and when does it part from it? And what kind of truth is a doctrine that has been fixed by ruling?

A morphology of the evaluation. The two hundred eighty-nine rulings can be sorted by their grounds into four kinds: those that bring an argument to a close, those that invoke scripture, those that follow the format, and bare rulings that give nothing at all. This book began with a round of sampling over the first thirty-four fascicles of the vernacular translation: eighty-four occurrences of the evaluation, of which roughly two thirds close an argument with reasons given and roughly a third are bare rulings. At first sight that ratio tells against the claim that adjudication and argument are two different things. But the sample brought a further layer to light at the same time. A considerable share of the reasons given are that the position breaches the wording of the root treatise—this account is wrong because it conflicts with the wording of the Jñānaprasthāna. To take wording for a reason is precisely the form of an adjudication and not the form of an argument: what it appeals to is the authority of the root treatise, not the merits of the matter. The fourfold division of this layer across the whole text is the ground on which the present chapter was built, and the item-by-item classification takes as its measure the two hundred eighty-nine occurrences in the classical text.¹

The direction of the rulings. Whom the adjudicator takes and whom he discards: is there a preference in it that can be generalized? Three things can be established. First, positions that make the format more regular win out. In the dispute of the four masters, which Chapter 4 will treat in full, the three eliminated masters are all cut down with one and the same blade: confusion. Second, positions that keep the dharma-substance immobile win out. Fascicle seventy-six carries the evaluation "past and future have no aggregation as present things do; they merely lie scattered severally," a single sentence that assigns aggregation to the present alone and so preserves the picture in which, under the three times, each dharma-substance abides in its own intrinsic nature.¹ Third, positions that add fewer entities do not necessarily win. The adjudication of the nine dharmas arising together in fascicle thirty-nine, and the adjudication of the possession of possession in fascicle one hundred fifty-eight, both took the side that adds more. The first two findings are a pull toward regularity; the third shows that regularity comes before economy. Better to legislate more dharmas than to let the scheme fall into disorder.

The brake, and who presses it. The last section of Chapter 2 said that this method cannot of itself supply a place to stop; this chapter adds that the stopping is done by the evaluation. What needs to be seen clearly is what it brings to a halt. Possession generates non-possession; the four characteristics generate the four secondary characteristics; the secondary characteristics are visibly about to generate a third tier—and at that point the evaluation and "as it is stated thus" step forward and declare that this is as far as it goes. In a single moment there are three dharmas only, and since they possess one another in turn there is no infinite regress; arising-of-arising produces one dharma only, and so there is no fault of infinite regress.¹ What is braked here is not an opponent's thesis. It is an accretion the treatise itself has stepped out onto. The evaluation is not an ornament of this book; it is its brake. And a work of philosophy that has to fit itself with a brake shows by that very fact that its engine carries no stopping condition of its own. That half-sentence is the second beam of the verdict in Chapter 9.

Standing as truth. An orthodoxy fixed by adjudication and a conclusion that has prevailed by argument are not the same kind of thing: the force of the first hangs on the authority of the one who adjudicates, the force of the second on premises and inference. The Vaibhāṣika masters were not without a sense of the difference. Fascicle one quotes the Buddha's words to Ānanda: I have a profound Abhidharma, hard to see and hard to awaken to, beyond discursive thought, not the province of discursive thought; only the subtle and acute in wisdom are able to know it.¹ To class Abhidharma as not the province of discursive thought is to give notice in advance that the final warrant of this body of doctrine does not lie within reasoning. The last chapter of Part 15 recorded Vasubandhu's own closing move, the nature of dharmas is profound and is not the province of discursive thought, and it is this same sentence. Both sides raise it at the point where argument has run out; the difference is that the Vibhāṣā uses it as the foundation of the system while Vasubandhu uses it to stop a loss. A system fixed by adjudication and warranted in the last resort by scripture makes a truth-claim of a declarative kind: the word "orthodoxy" says not that this position has been proved, but that this position has been chosen.

To Chapter 4. The grounds of the rulings have been sorted and their direction generalized; what is wanted now is one complete scene. The dispute of the four masters is the most famous adjudication in the whole book, and the reason the adjudicator gives for taking Vasumitra runs to eight words.

References¶