Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Nāgārjuna – 118
from Magadha to China the works of Asaṅga and Vasubandhu in the
year 539. With an astonishing erudition Vasubandhu combined a
great independence of thought. His magnum opus, the
Abhidharmakoṣa, is unfortunately not preserved in the original
Sanskrit. We only know the Abhidharmakoṣavyākhyā, which is a
commentary on the work by Yaśomitra and the Chinese and Tibetan
versions of the text. The oldest Chinese translation is that by
Paramārtha, made between 563 and 567. A second rendering
prepared between 651 and 654 originated with the celebrated Hiuen-
Tsing himself. The Abhidharmakoṣa was a work treating of ethics,
psychology, metaphysics composed in sūtras and kārikās after the
fashion of Brahmanic philosophical manuals. The book presupposes
the Vibhāṣas or the texts of the school of the Vaibhāṣikas. The
Vibhāṣas are reputed to have been compiled by Katyāyaniputra and
cast into a literary mould by Aśvaghoṣa. Despite the fact that the
Koāa is a work of the Sarvāstivāda School, which appertains to the
Hīnayāna, it is considered as an authority by other sects. The treatise
has been used by the Chinese and Japanese Mahāyānists as a textbook
and it has given rise to a voluminous commentary literature.
[98]
For other authorities, consult Raj. Mitra, Nepalese Buddhist
Literature, P. 3 ff., Bendall Catalogue, p. 25 ff.; Burnouf,
Introduction, p. 502 ff.; Sylvain Lévi EBE. 1, p. 20 and La Vallée-
Poussin in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics IV, p. 129 ff.
Standing entirely on the soil of the Hīnayāna is the Gāthāsaṁgraha
of Vasubandhu with which we are acquainted in its Tibetan. It is a
collection of maxims with an intelligent commentary, excerpts from
which have been cited by A. Schiefner. These 24 gāthās are
apophthegms conceived wholly in the spirit of the Dhammapada.