Васубандхудың "Абхидхармакошабхашьясы" туралы

Text by Buddhist scholar Vasubandhu

The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (, lit. Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma), Abhidharmakośa for short (or just Kośa or AKB), is a key text on the Abhidharma written in Sanskrit by the Indian Buddhist scholar Vasubandhu in the 4th or 5th century CE. The Kośa summarizes the Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma in eight chapters with a total of around 600 verses and then comments on (and often criticizes) it. This text was widely respected and used by schools of Buddhism in India, Tibet and East Asia. Over time, the Abhidharmakośa became the main source of Abhidharma and Sravakayana Buddhism for later Mahāyāna Buddhists. In the Kośa, Vasubandhu presents various views on the Abhidharma, mainly those of the Sarvāstivāda Vaibhāṣika, which he often criticizes from a Sautrāntika perspective. The Kośa includes an additional chapter in prose refuting the idea of the "person" (pudgala) favoured by some Buddhists of the Pudgalavada school. The Vaibhāṣika master Samghabhadra considered that Vasubandhu had misrepresented numerous key points of Vaibhāṣika Abhidharma in the Kośa, and saw Vasubandhu as a Sautrāntika (upholder of the sutras). However, Vasubandhu often presents and defends the Vaibhāṣika Abhidharma position on certain topics (contra Sautrāntika).

The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (AKB) is a work of Abhidharma, a field of Buddhist philosophy which mainly draws on the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma tradition. This tradition includes various groupings or "schools", the two main ones being Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika. The main source for the Vaibhāṣika tradition (which was based in Kaśmīra) is the Abhidharma Mahāvibhāṣa Śāstra. The other main tradition of Sarvāstivāda philosophy were those masters who were called "westerners" (Pāścāttya) or "outsiders" (Bāhyaka) and they were mainly based in Gandhara. According to K. L. Dhammajoti, in the AKB, Vasubandhu often favors the opinion of the Sautrāntika school against the Sarvāstivāda Vaibhāṣikas (when there is a dispute). For example, he criticizes the doctrine of the existence of the three times (past, present, future), a central Sarvāstivāda doctrine.

The text is divided into the following chapters.

Provides an analysis of the main categories of existence, mainly through the five aggregates, the sense fields, and the "eighteen dhātus". It also analyses which elements are pure or impure.

Explains the five sense faculties (sight, hearing, smell, taste, bodily feeling and mental faculty). Discusses the cittaviprayuktasaṃskāras ("conditionings disjoined from thought" or "factors disassociated from thought"). It also discusses the various types of causes (hetu), results (phala), and conditions (pratyaya). Finally, it explains how conscious events (cittas) succeed one another in causal sequence.

This chapter explains the realms of existence in which rebirth takes place: the realm of desire, the realm of form and the realm of formlessness. It explains the intermediate state (antarabhava) and rebirth. It also explains dependent arising and buddhist cosmology, kalpas (temporal cosmology) and cosmogony.

Chapter four of the Kośa is devoted to a study of karma, and chapters two and five contain formulation as to the mechanism of fruition and retribution.

Vallée Poussin, Louis de la, trad. (1923 1931). L’Abhidharmakosa de Vasubandhu, Paris: Paul Geuthner, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6. Pruden, Leo M. (1991), Abhidharmakosabhasyam, translated from the French translation by Louis de la Vallée Poussin, Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley.