Chapter 0: Guide to This Part¶

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

The Abhidharmakośa, thirty fascicles, composed by Vasubandhu. The Chinese tradition long treated it as the masterwork of the Sarvāstivāda, and it was written by a critic. The mismatch is no small point of philology; it is the topic of this part: why a man left this system after arranging it.

Why this part must exist. Three reasons. First, the tension between the verses and the commentary is a philosophical event inside one book: Vasubandhu arranges the whole on the school's frame and replies at the joints with Sautrāntika positions, and the weight of his own declaration that the stronger argument governs must be weighed on its own. Second, the most complete statement of the no-self argument in this literature stands in the Refutation of the Self: a chapter outside the eight-chapter format, entirely without verses, engaging the Vātsīputrīya person head-on, with the Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya selves alongside. Third, this part is the hinge to the two great systems that follow: the seed theory leads straight into Yogācāra, and the intrinsic nature and real connection that Madhyamaka sets out to take down show their true hardness only after the tests run here. One engagement, besides, cannot be passed over: Saṅghabhadra replies point by point and concedes little; the school's last systematic self-defense is in the Nyāyānusāra, not in the Vibhāṣā.

One book, two identities. The Kośa is at once the school's digest and its critique, and the two identities interleave through every chapter. Before reading any sentence of it, ask which identity the sentence serves: a report of Vaibhāṣika doctrine, or Vasubandhu in his own voice. That discrimination is the basic skill of the part; Chapter 1 lays down the rules, and the rest of the part uses them.

The structure of the book. Eight chapters plus the Refutation; fascicle spans and shares of the vernacular translation:

Three notes on this table. Action is the largest block, and this part takes from it only what bears on the seed theory, returning the rest to Part 15 by topic. The Refutation is the smallest, under a twentieth of the book, yet holds a chapter of its own here: weight is measured by position, not by bulk. And the Refutation is formally another kind of thing: its title does not stand at the head of a fascicle, and it runs entirely without verses, where the eight chapters alternate verse and commentary throughout.

The two Chinese translations. The base text is Xuanzang's thirty fascicles; the vernacular translation and the classical text are both in the library, and citations are claimed against the original. Paramārtha's older translation is cited only where the doctrine differs, not as a second base text; divergences are handled in place, without a separate section. The question of one Vasubandhu or two is treated the same way: conclusion and reasons only.

The division of labor with Parts 15 and 16. Part 15 asks whether this metaphysics holds; Part 16 asks how it was ruled into orthodoxy; this part watches the system arranged into a book and then abandoned at the joints by the same hand. Shared materials, different faces. On existence in the three times: Part 15 weighs the thesis itself, Part 16 watches the adjudicator choose Vasumitra, this part erects Vasubandhu's refutation and the Sautrāntika replacement in full. On possession and unmanifest matter: Part 15 the introduction of the formal entities and the regress, Part 16 the Vibhāṣā-side grounds for legislating them, this part their denial one by one. On Saṅghabhadra: Part 15 took a single passage, Chapter 7 here takes the whole defense. On the five-layer table in the guide to Part 15, this part handles the last two layers.

To Chapter 1. First, the rules for telling the two identities apart.