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The point of view of the Abhidhamma is certainly later than that of the Sutta Pitaka and in some ways marks an advance, for instead of professing to report the discourses of Gotama it takes the various topics on which he touched, especially psychological ethics, and treats them in a connected and systematic manner.
The Hinayanists are like those Protestant sects which still profess not to go beyond the Bible. The monks read the Abhidhamma and the laity the Suttas, though perhaps both are disposed to use extracts and compendiums rather than the full ancient texts. Among the Mahayanists the ancient Vinaya and Nikayas exist only as literary curiosities.
The canon is often known by the name of Tripiṭaka or Three Baskets. When an excavation was made in ancient India it was the custom to pass up the earth in baskets along a line of workmen and the metaphorical use of the word seems to be taken from this practice and to signify transmission by tradition. The three Pitakas are known as Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma.
We must not compare them with Plato and find them wanting, for often, especially in the Abhidhamma, there is no intention of producing a work of art, but merely of subdividing a subject and supplying explanations. Frequently the exposition is thrown into the form of a catechism with questions and answers arranged so as to correspond to numbered categories.
This was approved and the Dhamma and Vinaya as chanted by the assembled Bhikkhus were accepted. The Abhidhamma is not mentioned. The name usually given to these councils is Sangîti, which means singing or chanting together. An elder is said to have recited the text sentence by sentence and each phrase was intoned after him by the assembly as a sign of acceptance.
We are not however told that they revised the Sutta or Abhidhamma. Here ends the account of the Cullavagga but the Dîpavaṃsa adds that the wicked Vajjian monks, to whom it ascribes wrong doctrines as well as errors in discipline, collected a strong faction and held a schismatic council called the Mahâsangîti.
Thus we know something of the Sarvâstivâdin recension of the Abhidhamma. Like the Pali version it consists of seven books of which one, the Jñâna-prasthâna by Kâtyâyanîputra, is regarded as the principal, the rest being supplementary.
The third Pitaka is known by the name of Abhidhamma. Dhamma is the usual designation for the doctrine of the Buddha and Buddhaghosa explains the prefix abhi as signifying excess and distinction, so that this Pitaka is considered pre-eminent because it surpasses the others. This pre-eminence consists solely in method and scope, not in novelty of matter or charm of diction.
Thus a topic may be divided into twenty heads and six propositions may be applied to each with positive or negative results. The strong point of these Abhidhamma works -and of Buddhist philosophy generally—lies in careful division and acute analysis but the power of definition is weak.
The Sarvâstivâdins compiled an Abhidhamma Pitaka of their own, apparently in the time of Kanishka, and the Dharmagupta school also seems to have had its own version of this Pitaka . The date of the Pali Abhidhamma is very doubtful and I do not reject the hypothesis that it was composed in Ceylon, for the Sinhalese seem to have a special taste for such literature.
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