Volume 1
Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars.
- Date:
- 1908-1926
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars. Source: Wellcome Collection.
48/932
![ABHIDHARMA KOSA VYAKHYA—ABHISEKA such it might have almost e(jualled, in value to the world, the contents of the discoui’ses. As a fact it is the reductio ad absurdum of formalism. It is impossible to estimate the extent to which the exaggeration of the Indian temperament and the temperance of the Greek temperament were due to the absence and presence respectively, during the florescence of each, of the written hook. No- where as in India do we find imagination so elastic and exuberant, running riot through time, space, and the infinite; and nowhere else is seen such determined effort to curb and regulate it. Ahhidhamma training was one of the most note- worthy forms of this effort. It was specially cal- culated (according to Buddhaghosa, Atthasalinl, p. 24) to check those excesses over the normal mind (dhammachitta) which, in the Buddha’s words, tended to loss of balance, craziness, and insanity. The chief methods of that training were : first, the definition and determination of all names or terms entering into the Buddhist .scheme of culture; secondly, the enunciation of all doctrines, theo- retical and practical, as formulas, with co-ordina- tion of all such as were logically interrelated ; and finally, practice in reducing all possible heterodox positions to an absurdity—a method which is con- fined to the somewhat later fifth book, the Katha- vatthu. Even in these lofty aims, however, the want of restraint, helped by the cumbrousness of purely mnemonic compilation, tends to defeat the very objects sought. The logic of definition is not the same as we have inherited, and the propositions yield strings of alternatives that have often little or no relation to facts. 0{ the seven books of the Ahhidhamma pitalca, the first five ’ ’ een published by the Pali Text Society, viz. Dhamma- puggala-paflflattiand Eathd- 3 not yet edited; the seventh, , . The first book has been trans- lated by the present writer under the title, A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics, London, 1900. Besides these seven, there stUl survive, in Chinese or Tibetan translations, other seven books, which form the Abhidhamaia literature of the ” 3tivadins—a school which split off from the original nucleus ■ ■ ■ culture. A very full index to the contents of these „ m by Professor Takakusu in JPTS, 1906. But the books themselves have not as yet been edited or translated. Their date also is not yet settled, but they are certainly earlier than the Christian era. These works form the basis of the celebrated, but as yet undiscovered, Abhidharma-koia, or Dictionary of Ahhidhamma, written in Sanskrit, as well as that of its Commentaries, and other cognate works, some of which survive in Sanskrit and others in Chinese or Tibetan versions, and which carried on the development of Ahhidhamma down to the 2nd or 3rd cent. a.d. Professor Bunyiu Nanjio, in his catalogue of Chinese Buddhist literature (Oxford, 1883), gives the titles of no fewer than thirty-seven of these works stUl extant. In the later developments of Buddhism in India, notably in the so-called ‘ Great Vehicle,’ the use of the term Ahhidhamma gradually died out. But in other Buddhist countries, where Pali has remained the literary language, books on Ahhidhamma have continued to be written down to the t day, the best known being the Abhidhammattha- „ - .-i, Vibhang vatthu •, the sixth, or ramai the PaftAdna, is [1907] in the I of Buddhi ABHIDHARMA KOSA VYAKHYA.—One of the most important Buddhist texts preserved in Nepal. It is a commentary, written by a scholar named Yasomitra, on a classical account of Bud- dhist metaphysics: Abhidharma-koia, ‘the treasure of Abhidharma. ’ The Sanskrit original of the Kosa seems to be irrevocably lost; but there still exist Chinese and Tibetan versions, of which the Chinese are the oldest. The earliest of these is the work of a Hindu monk, Paramartha, dated A.D. 563-567; the second, being a revised translation, was made by Hiuen-tsiang, the celebrated pilgrim, A.D. 651- 654. The author of the Kosa is Vasubandhu, one of the most illustrious doctors of the Buddhist Church, who flourished about the end of the 5th cent. A.D. The Ko^a itself consists of two parts : (1) a sum- mary account of the doctrine in 602 verses (kdrikds); (2) an illustrative commentary {vrtti) on these verses. The subject-matter is discussed in eight sections, viz.: the first principles (dhatus), the senses (indriyas), the worlds (lokas), the inclinations (anu&ayas), the saint (arya pudgala), the science (jnana), the trance (samadhi), the individuality {pudgala). Vasubandhu belongs to the school of the Sarvastivadins, who affirm the existence of all things,—a school of the Hinayana, or ‘ Little Vehicle.’ The Kosa has nevertheless been admitted as an authority by all schools of Buddhism; the author of the Vyakhya, Yasomitra, is a Sau- trantika, and Chinese and Japanese Mahayanists have always employed it as a text-book. A huge literature of notes and glosses on the Kosa has grown up. In India, before Yaiomitra, Sthiramati, Gunamati, and Vasumitra wrote commentaries on it, which still exist in Tibetan versions. In China, two pupils of Hiuen-tsiang, Fu-koang and Fa-pao, compiled the lectures and explanations given by their master. It would be easy to-day to fill a whole library with the Kosa literature. That the work achieved so great popularity is due to the rare merits of the author. Familiar -with the pedantic intricacies of each school, Vasubandhu elucidates them by the strength of his genius; he brings order, clearness, precision, and cohesion into the whole, combining in a harmonious syn- thesis the tenets sanctioned by general consent of Buddhists. Sylvain Ltvi. ABHISEKA (literally ‘pouring upon’ [from abhi + sicK]).—A compound which, without definite ceremonial implications, occurs several times in the Atharva Veda, but not in the Rig or the Sama. In the White Yajur Veda, and in the three Saiii- hitas of the Black Yajur Veda, as weU as in several Brahmanas and the Srauta ritual of all the four Vedas, we find abhisechanlya as the name of a rite included in the rdjasiiya, and the last book of the Aitareya Brahmana has abhiseka itself for its main topic. The ceremonial sprinkling, anointing, or bap- tizing of persons and things is a usage of such antiquity and universality, that its origin and sig- nificance could not methodically be made the sub- ject of an inquiry confined to India (see artt. on Anointing). If the earliest anointing was with blood, and the object of it to confer xdgour, the evidence for the former truth must be sought out- side India; and although an invigorating power is in fact ascribed (e.g. Satapatha Brahmana, v. 4. 2. 2) to the rite, the Brahmanical theologians were quite capable of arriving at such a conclusion without the help of an old tradition. We may (A) begin by a statement of the actual employment of such a ceremony, so far as it is knovTi to us from narrative sources, and then (B) append an account of the Brahmanical prescrip- tions in connexion vuth abhiseka, vdjapeya, and rdjasuya ceremonies, and the ritual appertaining to them. A. I. Subjects of the ceremony.—The persons who underwent the rite of abhiseka were in the first place emperors. The Aitareya Brahmana (viii. 15) states as the object of the rite the attain- ment of paramount power, which it names with a great amplitude of synonyms, and it annexes a list of the famous rulers of former times who had been so distinguished (viii. 21-23). In the Maha- bharata we have two abhisekas of Yudhisthira: the first (Sabha Parvan, ce. 33, 45, esp. 45) is pre- ceded by victorious expeditions in all directions and celebrated as part of a rdjasuya in the presence of subordinate kings, while the second (Santi Parvan, c. 40) follows the conclusion of the great war. The Buddhist emperor Aioka was not crowned until four years of conquest had followed his acces- sion (Mahawanso, Tumour, p. 22), and in the case of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29001225_0001_0048.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
