Table of Contents

Vasubandhu.JPG | frame | Vasubandhu The Treasury of Abhidharma (Skt. Abhidharmakośa; Tib. ཆོས་མངོན་པའི་མཛོད་, Ngönpa Dzö, Wyl. chos mngon pa'i mdzod) was composed by Vasubandhu, one of the 'Six Ornaments', the greatest Buddhist authorities of Ancient India. Abhidharmakosha is a complete and systematic account of the Abhidharma, and is the peak of scholarship in the Fundamental Vehicle. If this text presents the different topics from the Vaibhashika point of view, Vasubandhu also wrote an autocommentary, the Auto-Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma (Skt. Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya), which is based on the Sautrantika view.

The Treasury is included among the so-called “Thirteen great texts”, which form the core of the curriculum in most shedras and on which Khenpo Shenga provided commentaries.

Outline

The text is divided into eight topics:

  1. The elements (Skt. eighteen dhatus | dhātu'')
  2. The faculties (Skt. indriya)
  3. The world (Skt. loka)
  4. Actions (Skt. karma)
  5. 'Subtle developers' (Skt. anuśaya) (i.e. negative emotions)
  6. The path and the individual (Skt. mārgaprahāṇa)
  7. Wisdom (Skt. jñāna)
  8. Meditative equipoise (Skt. samāpatti)

Text

The original Sanskrit text was deemed lost, yet was found by Rahul Sankrityayan at Salu Monastery in Tibet in May of 1934, together with the auto-commentary and the commentary by Yashomitra.

The Abhidharmakosha and the auto-commentary were translated into Chinese, both by Paramartha (6th century) and Xuanzang (7th century), and into Tibetan by Kawa Paltsek and the Indian pandita Jinamitra (8th century).

Commentaries

Tibetan

Snippet from Wikipedia: Tibetan

Tibetan may mean:

  • of, from, or related to Tibet
  • Tibetan people, an ethnic group
  • Tibetan language:
    • Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard
    • Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dialect
    • Tibetan pinyin, a method of writing Standard Tibetan in Latin script
    • Tibetan script
    • any other of the Tibetic languages

Tibetan may additionally refer to:

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Indian

Including Vasubandhu's own commentary, there are nine commentaries which have been translated into Tibetan and found their way into the Tengyur. The two most renowned are those by Yashomitra and Purnavardhana, of which Yashomitra's is considered, by Chim Jampé Yang, the best. Sanghabhadra upholds the orthodox Sarvastivadin position and is famously arguing against some of Vasubandhu's Sautrantika assertions.

Tibetan

The following are among the best known Tibetan commentaries on the Abhidharmakosha:

Further Reading

Category of Texts Category of Abhidharma