208 The Abhidharma
point of these distinctions is to draw attention to the fact that,
as we have seen in Chapter 6, if we come across a Buddhist text
that talks in terms of persons and selves, we should not imme-
diately assume that the teaching of no self is being undermined;
it is rather that that particular text is talking in conventional terms
whose ultimate meaning needs drawing out. The later tradition
would regard the Nikaya/ Agama collections of siitras as in fact
containing teachings of both kinds.
What is distinctive about the Abhidharma is that it is an at-
tempt to give a comprehensive statement of the Buddha's teach-
ings exclusively in ultimate terms. A useful analogy, I think, for
the relationship between the Abhidharma and the Sfitranta is that
of the relationship between a grammar book of a language and
the language as spoken and used. In the same way as a grammar
book aims at giving a bare account of how a particular language
works, its structure and forms of expression, based on observa-
tion of the actual use of that language, so the Abhidharma is an
attempt to lay bare and describe accurately and precisely, allow-
ing for all circumstances and eventualities, the underlying struc-
ture of the Dharma as found in the discourses of the Buddha.
Indeed, the. pages of certain Abhidharma texts, with their lists
of terms and definitions, might be mistaken for the pages of a
grammar book, and in the same way that reading a grammar book
may not seem the most inspiring of pastimes, so .too may the study
of Abhidharma. Yet a good grammar book may impress one with
its clear and intelligent account of a language; it may bring one
to a better understanding of that language and equip one to
recognize unexpected forms of words and modes of expression.
In a similar way the sheer cleverness and intricacy of aspects
of the Abhidharma is impressive in itself. Indeed, one scholar
has described the seventh book of the Theravadin Abhidharma,
the Patthiina ('Causal Relations'), as 'one of the most amazing
productions of the human mind'.^5 Moreover it is the study of
Abhidharma that allows the practitioner to extrapolate from the
peculiarities of his own experience to the peculiarities of another's.
These days the study of grammar may not be very fashionable
and some may point out that grammarians and lexicographers
