The Foundations of Buddhism

48 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

it is the Abhidharma par excellence that represents the earliest

attempt to give a full and systematic statement of the Buddha's

teaching on the basis of what is contained in his discourses.

The traditional understanding is thus that while the sfltras rep-

resent the Buddha's teaching applied in particular circumstances

at a particular time and place, the Abhidharma is the Buddha's

teaching stated in bare and general terms without reference to

any particular circumstances.

Something of the Abhidharma method must go back to the

lifetime of the Buddha himself. Certainly much of its outlook

and many of its principles must be regarded as still forming part

of the common heritage of Buddhism, alongside the Nikaya/

Agama sfltra collections and the monastic rule of the Vinaya.

Yet in addition to what is common, we begin to find in the

Abhidharma literature interpretations and understandings of the

Sutra material that are specific to particular schools of Buddhism.

We must be careful, however, to understand this situation in

the light of our knowledge of just what constituted a Buddhist

'school' in ancient India, and avoid the trap of thinking that

Buddhist 'schools' evolved and defined themselves in the same

way as, say, Christian 'sects' or 'denominations'.

We have substantial knowledge of the Abhidharma liter-

ature and systems of only two ancient Buddhist schools: the

Sarvastivadins and the Theravadins. The only obvious similarity

between their respective Abhidharma Pitaka collections, how-

ever, is that they both contain just seven works (see Chapter 7).

Despite the great status and authority attributed to the Abhid-

harma and the claim that it is 'the word of the Buddha', both

these schools explicitly acknowledge the work of the Buddha's
chief disciples in arranging and transmitting the Abhidharma.
From this point of view, the Abhidharma has for the tradition

the status of a sfltra or set of headings expanded by one of the

Buddha's disciples and then subsequently endorsed by the Bud-
dha.22 Even so, some ancient Buddhists, such as the Sautrantikas

or 'those who follow the Sutra', came to resist the notion that the

Abhidharma had the full status of 'the word of the Buddha'. Yet
while such a group may have wished to deny the Abhidharma