Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam, Volume I

The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya is one of the most influential philosophical texts in the history of Buddhism. Vasubandhu systematises the doctrinal categories of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma while simultaneously subjecting them to rigorous analysis and criticism. The work became authoritative across Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean and Japanese Buddhist traditions and remains central to the academic study of Buddhist metaphysics, psychology, epistemology and soteriology. Volume I is especially significant because it defines the principal technical categories used throughout the entire treatise. Its discussions of dharmas, skandhas, āyatanas, dhātus and indriyas provide the analytical foundation for subsequent treatments of cosmology, karma, latent defilements, the path and meditative knowledge. Chapter One, The Dhātus, establishes the basic ontology and classificatory framework of Abhidharma. It examines conditioned and unconditioned dharmas, the five skandhas, twelve āyatanas and eighteen dhātus. It further analyses material phenomena, consciousness, sense faculties, sense objects and the relationships among these categories. Chapter Two, The Indriyas, treats the faculties governing sensory experience, mental life, vitality, moral development and liberation. It also provides extensive discussions of mental factors, dharmas dissociated from mind, causal relations, results and conditions. Together, these chapters establish the conceptual architecture required for the later volumes of the work.