The Abhidharma 203what previous buddhas had done after performing this miracle.
It came to his mind that they had ascended to the heaven of the
Thirty-Three gods to teach the Dharma to their mothers. And so,
in keeping with this tradition, the Buddha ascended t~ the heaven
of the Thirty-Three gods and there, seated beneath the Coral Tree
on the rock called Pal).qukambala, the throne of the great god
Sakka, for the three months of the rains he taught his mother
and the assembled gods the seven books of the Abhidharma.At that time the Buddha would create a mind-made Buddha
to carry on teaching while he went to gather alms food in the dis-
tant land of Uttarakuru. Then he would sit down on the shores
of Lake Anotatta, eat his meal, and retire to sit in meditation
in a forest of sandal trees. And Sariputta, the disciple chief in wis-
dom, would come and the Buddha would teach him the method
of Abhidharma. Sariputta in turn taught it to five hundred of
his own pupils. They say that many aeons ago in the time of the
Buddha Kassapa they had been born as bats and, hanging in a
cave, they had one day heard the sound of two monks reciting
the Abhidharma. Of course, as bats they were unable to under-
stand the meaning of what they heard, yet even so it seems that
the very sound of the Abhidharma left an impression. So they
were reborn in the world of the gods, where they remained for
the vast interval of time between one Buddha and the next. Fin-
ally they were born as men and became monks and the pupils
of Sariputta, who, teaching them the seven books, made them
masters of Abhidharma.^1
The term abhidharma (Pali abhidhamma) means approximately
'higher' or 'further' Dharma. For Buddhist tradition it refers to
two things: first, a set of books regarded by most ancient schools
as 'the word of the Buddha' and as such forming the contents of
the third basket of scriptures, the Abhidharma Pitaka; secondly,
the particular system of thought and method of exposition set
out in those books and their commentaries. The above legend
of. the genesis of the Abhidharma is drawn from Theravadin
sources, but the sentiment is indicative of a more general tradi-
tional attitude to the Abhidharma.^2 The Abhidharma is thought