Pañcappakaraṇa-aṭṭhakathā

It gives names to the nameless opponents of the Abhidhamma's book of debates, school by school, view by view.

Pali, the original language

Original language: Pali

Overview

The Kathāvatthu, the Abhidhamma's book of "points for discussion", refutes view after view held inside the Buddhist community without saying who held them. Its commentary, part of the Pañcappakaraṇa-aṭṭhakathā, the Pāli commentary on the five remaining books of the Abhidhamma, names them. Those who hold that a person exists as a real and ultimate fact, it explains, are Vajjiputtakas and Sammitiyas, along with many teachers outside the order, and further views are laid at the door of the Andhakas, the Pubbaseliyas, the Uttarāpathakas and others. The Abhidhamma is the scriptures' systematic analysis of mind and matter; the five books explained here are the Dhātukathā, on how the elements of experience include and exclude one another; the Puggalapaññatti, a catalogue of human types; the Kathāvatthu; the Yamaka, which tests every term by paired questions; and the Paṭṭhāna, the account of twenty-four kinds of conditional relation. Bimala Churn Law translated the Kathāvatthu commentary into English as The Debates Commentary for the Pali Text Society, and C. M. M. Shaw and L. S. Cousins translated the Yamaka with its commentary as The Book of Pairs, in three volumes between 2018 and 2021. The tradition ascribes the whole to Buddhaghosa, in the fifth century; modern scholarship doubts the ascription, and no one is named in it as having asked for the work. For the Kathāvatthu it tells the book's origin as the Theravāda remembers it. The Buddha foresaw that a future disciple, Moggaliputta Tissa, would one day purge the order, and so laid down the book's outline for him. More than two centuries after the Buddha's death, the emperor Aśoka sat behind a screen at the Asokārāma monastery, questioned the monks group by group on what the Buddha had taught and expelled those who answered wrongly. Moggaliputta Tissa then held the third council and filled out the outline with a thousand arguments, half for his own side and half for the other.

Key concepts

What does it mean that a person is only a designation?

It means "person" is a name used for a collection, not a thing found over and above it. A house is named by relying on its parts, a span of time by relying on recurring events, and a person by relying on the aggregates of body and mind. Look for the person among them or apart from them and nothing is found that is identical with them or different from them, yet the name remains useful.

What is a conditional relation?

A conditional relation is one specific way in which one thing helps another arise or persist. The Paṭṭhāna counts twenty-four, among them object, root, support and decisive support. In the object relation, for example, a visible form conditions eye-consciousness simply by being what it sees. Naming the relation says how two things depend on each other, not just that they do.

What is the Kathāvatthu?

The Kathāvatthu, "points for discussion", is the Abhidhamma book of debates. For each disputed view it sets an opponent's claim against the orthodox side in a fixed pattern of questions and answers, pressing the opponent until his position contradicts itself. It names no one. Its commentary supplies the schools behind each view and the history the Theravāda tells of the book's origin at the third council.

What are the paired questions of the Yamaka?

The Yamaka, the "book of pairs", tests the Abhidhamma's terms by asking every question twice, in both directions: is all material form the aggregate of material form, and is the aggregate of material form all material form? The answers show where a definition is wider or narrower than it looks. The commentary explains how the pairs are counted, and why some are left out when their answers would only repeat.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Debates and Their Schools

The book of points for discussion refutes view after view without saying whose views they were. Putting names and a history to those views turns a list of errors into a quarrel inside the community.

The commentary names the parties: those who hold that a person exists as a real and ultimate fact are Vajjiputtakas and Sammitiyas, other views belong to the Andhakas or the Uttarāpathakas. It tells how Aśoka questioned the monks from behind a screen and expelled those who answered wrongly, and how Moggaliputta Tissa filled out an outline the Buddha had left. Then it follows each argument closely: whether an arahant can fall back, whether gods can be said to keep moral restraint, whether gifts to the Buddha bear fruit.

scriptural interpretation
personal identity
arahantship
spiritual attainment
liberation
knowledge
textual structure

Enter a dialogue

Twenty-Four Ways of Depending

Saying that one thing depends on another hides many different relations. The last books of the Abhidhamma try to name every one, and to test every term until it can be used without confusion.

The Paṭṭhāna counts twenty-four kinds of conditional relation, and the commentary works through them with cases: a sight conditions seeing as its object; bodily pleasure and pain become strong supports for action, prompting one person to give and another to harm. The Yamaka tests every term in pairs, asking whether each definition holds in both directions, and the commentary explains which pairs it leaves out because their answers would repeat. The aim throughout is precision about how things depend on each other, with no self in the middle.

conditionality
conditional relations
causation
causality
abhidhamma
classification
enumeration
time
latent tendencies
elements
sense bases

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 1,138
distinct concepts: 671
by passages held, corpus-wide: #53

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “abhidhamma” and “conditionality”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
abhidhamma	conditionality	216
abhidhamma	classification	108
causation	conditionality	77
abhidhamma	causation	67
classification	conditionality	66
abhidhamma	consciousness	46
aggregates	classification	36
abhidhamma	aggregates	29
conditionality	consciousness	23
abhidhamma	rebirth	19
causation	classification	19
consciousness	rebirth	19
liberation	rebirth	17
classification	rebirth	10
causation	rebirth	9
aggregates	rebirth	8
classification	consciousness	7
classification	liberation	7
aggregates	consciousness	6
causation	consciousness	6
conditionality	rebirth	6
aggregates	conditionality	3
causation	liberation	3
consciousness	liberation	2
abhidhamma	liberation	1
aggregates	causation	1
conditionality	liberation	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Manorathapūraṇī
The last of his four commentaries on the collections of discourses: its closing verses name it the Manorathapūraṇī, "fulfiller of the wish", because it completed his wish to explain them all.
PI
Pañcappakaraṇa-aṭṭhakathā you are here PI
Papañcasūdanī
Written for a monk Buddhaghosa had once lived with in a port town, probably in South India, and the home of his reading of the mindfulness discourse.
PI
Paramatthajotikā II
Ascribed to Buddhaghosa by tradition and doubted by modern scholars, a commentary that explains each discourse of the Suttanipāta by first asking what occasioned it.
PI
Sāratthappakāsinī
Made for the elder Jotipāla, and home of the "dry insight" gloss on the Susīma discourse that is still argued over.
PI
Sumaṅgalavilāsinī
Begins with history, the council that first recited the texts, before explaining the long discourses, the first collection in the canon's order.
PI
The Dispeller of Delusion (Sammohavinodanī)
Explains the Vibhaṅga, the Abhidhamma's second book: the middle of the three commentaries ascribed to Buddhaghosa, between the Aṭṭhasālinī and the one on the five remaining books.
PI
The Expositor (Aṭṭhasālinī)
The first of the three Abhidhamma commentaries ascribed to Buddhaghosa, said by a Sri Lankan chronicle to have been written in India, before he crossed to the island.
PI
The Illustrator of Ultimate Meaning (Paramatthajotikā I)
The smaller of two commentaries sharing one name, both ascribed to Buddhaghosa: this one explains the nine recitations that open the Minor Collection.
PI
The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga)
His one treatise rather than a commentary: the book his commentaries on the long and middle-length discourses send the reader to whenever meditation comes up.
PI

— or open another of their works