Vijñapti, Avijñapti, and Avijñaptirūpa in the Sphuṭārthābhidharmakośavyākhyā. A text-based Analysis of Yaśomitra's Interpretation of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa(bhāṣya) IV.1–4. A Critical Edition with Annotated Translation Prepared from Sanskrit and Tibetan Sources

Abstract

The research findings for this study can be grouped under the following three Categories:

1. First of all, this study includes a thoroughly annotated translation of the opening sections of the fourth chapter of Yaśomitra’s Abhidharmakośavyākhyā IV.1–4, an early sixth century commentary on of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, wherein Vasubandhu offers a basic exposition of Buddhist causality that has remained a pivotal resource in the traditional dissemination of Buddhist thought on that topical cluster. To date, said section in the Abhidharmakośavyākhyā had only been available in the original Sanskrit, its Tibetan and Chinese Translations, and, more recently, as a modern translation in the Japanese medium. Burnouf (1876, p. 399), amongst other scholars, had already by the mid-to-late nineteenth century understood Yaśomitra’s commentary to be a philosophically significant and historically impactful work, an early Buddhist commentary that is not only deeply embedded in the academic tradition of Nālandā-University, but that is also the only fully extant Sanskrit commentary to the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya known to date. The extract chosen for translation centers on an exposition of early Buddhist causal models that contextualizes and elucidates early conceptions of the relation-ship between cause and effect; Abhidharmakośavyākhyā IV.1–4 has hereby been rendered accessible, for the first time, to the wider academic community, therein allowing for further philosophical, historical, and linguistic analysis by contemporary scholarls.

2. Secondly, this study assesses the philosophical debate between the Sarvāstivāda-school on the one hand, andn the Yogācāras on the other. The former posit that any phenomenon can be broken down into a clearly defined, limited number of ‘basic building blocks’ (dharmā) that in turn, by dint of their causal efficacy, need to be based on a positively established ontology (Dhammajoti 2015b, p. 74); the latter expend effort to refute any inherent link beteween causal efficacy and any such reified, positively established, ontological status. The extract contained in this study has been chosen with a focus on the exposition of the Sarvāstivādin concepts of vijñapti, avijñapti, and avijñaptirūpa—avijñapti in particular being considered by the Sarvāstivādins as indispensable and immutable ‘sustaining link’ between cause and effect. The counterarguments fielded by the Yogācāra-school, are likewise rendered, together with an assessment of the degree and scope of their cogency.

3. The translation of Abhidharmakośavyākhyā IV.1–4 contained in this study is based on a philological study and text-critical edition both of the Sanskrit original and its Tibetan translation. A fully positive apparatus records all variant readings of the seven Sanskrit manuscripts and three Sanskrit Editions, taking into consideration scholarly observations made by Funabashi, Sako, and others. Likewise, the principal transmission lines of the Tibetan commentarial canon (Bstan ’gyur)—inter alia Cone, Derge, Narthang and Peking—have been critically collated and certain readings amended, taking into account novel insights provided in secondary literature.