ABHIDHARMAKOSA


Meaning of ABHIDHARMAKOSA in English

also called Abhidharmakosa-sastra (Sanskrit: "Treasury of Higher Law"), Chinese A-p'i-ta-mo Ch-she Lun, Japanese Abidatsuma-kusha-ron, encyclopaedic compendium of Abhidharma (scholasticism), the position of which within Buddhism has been likened to that of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologiae for Roman Catholicism. Its author, Vasubandhu, who lived in the 4th or 5th century in the northwestern part of India, wrote the work while he was still a monk of the Sarvastivada (Doctrine That All Is Real) order, before he embraced Mahayana, on whose texts he was later to write a number of commentaries. As a Sarvastivada work the Abhidharmakosa is one of few surviving treatments of scholasticism not written in Pali and not produced by Theravadins, who follow the Pali canon. The product of both great erudition and considerable independence of thought, the Abhidharmakosa authoritatively completed the systematization of Sarvastivada doctrine and at the same time incorporated Mahayanist tendencies. Translated into Chinese within a century or two, the Abhidharmakosa has been used in China, Japan, and Tibet both as a standard introduction to the Hinayana Buddhism of the southern countries and as a great authority in matters of doctrine. In China it provided the basis for the Abhidharma (Chinese Ch-she; Japanese Kusha) sect. The work has inspired numerous commentaries. It also provides scholars with a unique amount of information on the doctrinal differences between ancient Buddhist schools. The text is composed of 600 stanzas of poetry plus the equivalent of 8,000 stanzas of prose commentary supplied by the author himself. As an introduction to the seven Abhidharma treatises in the Sarvastivada canon and a systematic digest of their contents, the Abhidharmakosa deals with a wide range of philosophical, cosmological, ethical, and salvational doctrine.

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