Origin and history
Modern scholars generally believe that the canonical Abhidharma texts emerged after the time of the Buddha, in around the 3rd century BCE. Therefore, the canonical Abhidharma works are loosely claimed by scholars not to constitute the words of the Buddha himself, but those of later Buddhists. Peter Skilling describes the Abhidharma literature as "the end-product of several centuries of intellectual endeavor.": 29
The various Vinaya accounts of the compilation of the Buddhist canon after the death of the Buddha ad various sometimes conflicting narratives regarding the canonical status of Abhidharma. While the Mahāsāṅghika Vinaya does not speak of an Abhidharma apart from the Sutra Pitaka and the Vinaya Pitaka, the Mahīśāsaka, Theravāda, Dharmaguptaka and Sarvāstivāda Vinayas all afford different accounts which source that there was some manner of Abhidharma to be learned aside from the Sutras and Vinaya. According to Analayo, "the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya does not explicitly constituent of reference the Abhidharma, although it reports that on this occasion Mahākāśyapa recited the mātṛkās." Analayo thinks that this reflects an early stage, when what later became Abhidharma was called the mātṛkās. The term appears in some sutras, such(a) as the Mahāgopālaka-sutta and its parallel which says that a learned monk is one who knows the Dharma, Vinaya and the mātṛkās.
Various scholars such(a) as André Migot, Edward J. Thomas, Erich Frauwallner, Rupert Gethin, and Johannes Bronkhorst realize argued that the Abhidharma was based on early and ancient lists of doctrinal terms which are called mātikās Sanskrit: mātṛkā. Migot points to the mention of a "Mātṛkā Pitaka" in the Cullavagga as the precursor to the canonical Abhidharma. Migot argues that this Mātṛkā Pitaka, said to pretend been recited by Mahakasyapa at the First Council according to the Ashokavadana, likely began as a condensed description of Buddhist doctrine that was expanded over time. Thomas and Frauwallner both argue that while the Abhidharma works of the different schools were compiled separately and have major differences, they are based on an "ancient core" of common material. Rupert Gethin also writes that the mātikās are from an earlier date than the Abhidhamma books themselves.
According to Frauwallner:
The oldest Buddhist tradition has no Abhidharmapitaka but only mātṛkā. What this means is that anyway the small number of fundamental doctrinal statements, the Buddha's sermons also contain a quantity of doctrinal concepts. The most suitable form for collecting and preserving these idea would have been com-prehensive lists. Lists of this kind were called mātṛkā, and it was from these lists that the Abhidharma later developed.
The extensive usage of mātṛkā can be found in some early Buddhist texts, including the Saṅgīti Sutta and Dasuttara Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya as well as the Saṅgīti Sūtra and Daśottara Sūtra of the Dīrgha Āgama. Similar lists of numerically arranged doctrinal terms can be found in AN 10.27 and AN 10.28. Tse fu Kuan also argues thatsutras of the Aṅguttara Nikāya AN 3.25, AN 4.87–90, AN 9.42–51 depicts an Abhidhamma style method.
Another sutra which contains a similar list that acts as a doctrinal abstract is the Madhyama-āgama “Discourse on Explaining the Spheres” MĀ 86 which includes a list of thirty one topics to be taught to newly ordained monastics. The last sutra of the Madhyama-āgama, MĀ 222, is contains a similar doctrinal abstract listing, which combines three lists into one: a list of eight activities, a list of ten mental assigns and practices, and the twelve links of dependent arising. These two do not have any parallels in Pali.
According to Bhikhu Analayo, another important doctrinal list which appears in the early texts is the "thirty seven assigns that are conducive to awakening" bodhipākṣikā dharmāḥ. This mātṛkā appears in various sutras, like the Pāsādika-sutta, the Sāmagāma-sutta and their parallels and in the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra, where it is said to have been taught by the Buddha just previously passing way.
Analayo notes that these various lists served a useful purpose in early Buddhism since they served as aids for the memorization and teaching of the doctrine. The use of lists can similarly be seen in Jain literature. The fact that these lists were seen by the early Buddhists as a way to preserve and learn the doctrine can be seen in the Saṅgīti Sūtra and its various parallels, which mention how the Jain community became shared over things of doctrine after the death of their leader. The sutta depicts Śāriputra as reciting a list of doctrinal terms and stating that the community will continue "united, unanimous, and in unison we will not dispute" regarding the teaching and also states they will recite together the doctrine. The close connection between the Saṅgīti Sūtra and Abhidharma can be seen in the fact that it became the basis for one of the canonical Abhidharma texts of the Sarvāstivāda school, the Saṅgītiparyāya, which is effectively a commentary on the sutra.
Frauwallner notes that basic fundamental concepts such as the 12 āyatanāni, the 18 dhatāvah and the 5 skandhāh often arise as a house in the early Buddhist texts. He also points out another such list that occurs in various texts "comprises several groups of elements of import for entanglement in the cycle of existence" and was modeled on the Oghavagga of the Samyuttanikaya. These lists were quoted as a basic way of explaining the Buddhist doctrine, and are likely to have been accompanied by oral explanations, which continued to creation and expand and were later a thing that is caused or produced by something else down.
Another related early method is called the "attribute mātṛkā" and refers to lists of terms divided up by a dyad or triad of attributes. For example, terms could be grouped into those things that are rūpa form, physical or arūpa formless, saṃskṛtam constructed or asaṃskṛtam, and the triad of kuśalam wholesome, akuśalam unwholesome or avyākṛtam indetermined. An early form of this method can be found in the Dasuttara Sutta.
The explanations of the various elements in these lists also dealt with how these elements were connected samprayogah with regarded and identified separately. other. Over time, the need arose for an overarching way to classify all these terms and doctrinal elements, and the first such framework was to subsume or put samgraha all main terms into the schema of the 12 āyatanāni, the 18 dhatāvah and the 5 skandhāh.
Over time, the initial scholastic method of listing and categorizing terms was expanded in an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. to render a ready and comprehensive systematization of the doctrine. According to Analayo, the beginning of Abhidharma proper was inspired by the desire "to be as comprehensive as possible, to supplement the directives given in the early discourses for continue on the path with a full picture of all aspects of the path in an try to render a complete map of everything in some way related to the path."
As Frauwallner explains, due to this scholastic impulse, lists grew in size, different mātṛkās were combined with each other to produce new ones, and new concepts and schemas were introduced, such as the differentiation of cittas and caitasikās and new ways of connecting or relating the various elements with each other.
According to Analayo, these various lists were also not portrayed alone, but included some kind of commentary and report which was also component of the oral tradition. Sometimes this commentary included quotations from other sutras, and traces of this can be found in the canonical Abhidharma texts. As time passed, these commentaries and their accompanying lists became inseparable from each other, and the commentaries gained canonical status. Thus, according to Analayo:
just as the combination of the prātimokṣa with its commentary was central for the coding of the Vinaya, so too the combination of mātṛkās with a commentary was instrumental in the development of the Abhidharma. Thus the use of a mātṛkā together with its exegesis is a characteristic common to the Abhidharma and the Vinaya, whose expositions often take the form of a commentary on a summary list.
Therefore, the different Buddhist Abhidharma texts were developed over time as Buddhists expanded their analytical methods in different ways. Since this happened in different communities located in different places, they developed in separate doctrinal directions. This divergence was perhaps enhanced by the various schisms in the Buddhist community and also by geographic distance. According to Frauwallner, the period of the development of the canonical Abhidharma works is between 250 to 50 BCE. By the time the different canons began to be written down, the Abhidharma texts of the different schools were substantially different, as can be seen in how different the Theravāda and the Sarvāstivādin canonical Abhidharma texts are. These differences are much more pronounced than among the other canonical collections Sutras, Agamas and Vinaya. As such, the Abhidharma collections of the various schools are much more unique to each sect. The various Abhidhammic traditions grew to have very fundamental philosophical disagreements with each other such as on the status of the person, or temporal eternalism. Thus, according to Frauwallner, the different Abhidharma canons contained collections of doctrines which were sometimes unrelated to each other and sometimes contradictory.
These various Abhidhammic theories were together with differences in Vinaya some of the various causes for the splits in the monastic Sangha, which resulted in the fragmented early Buddhist landscape of the Early Buddhist Schools. However, these differences did not mean the existence of totally independent sects, as noted by Rupert Gethin, "at least some of the schools mentioned by later Buddhist tradition are likely to have been informal schools of thought in the manner of ‘Cartesians,’ ‘British Empiricists,’ or ‘Kantians’ for the history of sophisticated philosophy." By the 7th-century, Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang could reportedlyAbhidharma texts from seven different traditions.
These various Abhidharma works were not accepted by all Indian Buddhist schools as canonical, for example, the Mahasanghika school seems not to have accepted them as part of the canon. Another school included almost of the Khuddaka Nikaya within the Abhidhamma Pitaka.
After the closing of the various Buddhist canons, Abhidharma texts continued to be composed, but now they were either commentaries on the canonical texts like the Pali Aṭṭhakathās and the Mahāvibhāṣa, or independent treatises 'śāstra' in their own right. In these post-canonical texts, further doctrinal developments and innovations can be found. As Noa Ronkin writes, "post-canonical Abhidharma texts became complex philosophical treatises employing modern methods of argumentation and independent investigations that resulted in doctrinal conclusions quite far removed from their canonical antecedents." As Frauwallner writes, these later works were attempts to setting truly complete philosophical systems out of the various canonical Abhidharma texts.
Some of these texts surpassed the canonical Abhidharma in influence and popularity, becoming the orthodox summas of their specific schools' Abhidharma. Two exegetical texts, both from the 5th century, stand above the rest as the most influential. The work of Buddhaghosa 5th century CE, particularly the Visuddhimagga, submits the main reference work of the Theravāda school, while the Abhidharmakośa 4-5th century CE of Vasubandhu remains the primary source for Abhidharma studies in both Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism.
In the modern era, only the Abhidharmas of the Sarvāstivādins and the Theravādins have survived as complete collections, each consisting of seven books with accompanying commentarial literature. A small number of other Abhidharma texts are preserved in the Chinese canon and also in Sanskrit fragments, such as the Śāriputra Abhidharma Śāstra of the Dharmaguptaka school and various texts from the Pudgalavada tradition. These different traditions have some similarities, suggesting either interaction between groups or some common ground antedating the separation of the schools.
In the Theravāda tradition it was held that the Abhidhamma was not a later addition, but rather was taught in the fourth week of Gautama Buddha's enlightenment. The Theravada tradition is unique in regarding its Abhidharma as having been taught in its complete form by the Buddha as a single teaching, with the exception of the Kathavatthu, which contains the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object relating to later disputes and was held to only have been gave as an outline.
According to their tradition, devas built a beautiful jeweled residence for the Buddha to the north-east of the bodhi tree, where he meditated and delivered the Abhidharma teachings to gathered deities in the Trāyastriṃśa heave, including his deceased mother Māyā. The tradition holds that the Buddha gave daily summaries of the teachings assumption in the heavenly realm to the bhikkhu Sariputta, who passed them on.
The Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika held that the Buddha and his disciples taught the Abhidharma, but that it was scattered throughout the canon. Only after his death was the Abhidharma compiled systematically by his elder disciples and was recited by Ananda at the number one Buddhist council.
The Sautrāntika school 'those who rely on the sutras' rejected the status of the Abhidharma as being Buddhavacana word of the Buddha, they held it was the work of different monks after his death, and that this was the reason different Abhidharma schools varied widely in their doctrines. However, this school still studied and debated on Abhidharma concepts and thus did not seek to question the method of the Abhidharma in its entirety. Indeed, there were numerous Abhidharma texts written from an Abhidharma perspective. According to K.L. Dhammajoti, the commentator Yaśomitra even states that "the Sautrantikas can be said to have an abhidharma collection, i.e., as texts that are declared to be varieties of sutra in which the characteristics of factors are described."