Vasubandhu · Xuánzàng · 俱舍論

The treasury of Abhidharma.

The Abhidharmakośa — "Treasury of Abhidharma" — is Vasubandhu's systematic account of Sarvāstivāda scholastic Buddhism, six hundred root verses with his own prose commentary, sharpened throughout by Sautrāntika objections. Preserved in full in Xuánzàng's Chinese translation, it remains the standard entry point into Abhidharma study across every East Asian Buddhist school. This page is the entrance for reading it chapter by chapter, fascicle by fascicle.

How to read this collection

The structure below is complete: all nine chapters and all thirty fascicles of Xuánzàng's translation, mapped out using the traditional mnemonic verse that generations of students have memorized to keep the chapters and fascicle counts straight.

Ru-Yi's own plain-English translation and study notes are now complete across all thirty fascicles, from the opening chapter on the elements through the closing verses of Chapter 9's Refutation of the Self — see below for the full table of contents.

What each essay will include

  • A plain-English translation, made fresh from Xuánzàng's Chinese.
  • Key Sanskrit and Chinese technical terms, explained once and used consistently.
  • Where a passage is disputed, a note on the Sarvāstivāda position and Vasubandhu's own Sautrāntika reply.
  • Questions for reflection or class discussion.
30 fascicles in Xuánzàng's translation (T1558)
9 chapters, 600 root verses plus prose commentary

A note on sources. This translation is made directly from the Chinese text in the Taishō canon (大正藏 T1558, vol. 29), which is in the public domain. The only complete modern English version — Leo Pruden's translation of Louis de La Vallée Poussin's French Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam (Asian Humanities Press, 1988–91) — is still under copyright and is not reproduced here; readers who want a full English edition today should seek that book out directly. Likewise, Chinese commentaries such as Yen-pei's (演培) 俱舍論頌講記 are consulted for context but not quoted at length.

The Nine Chapters

Traditionally remembered by the verse 界二根五世間五,業六隨三賢聖四,智二定二破我一 — "Elements two, Faculties five, World five; Karma six, Latencies three, Noble Persons four; Knowledge two, Attainments two, Refuting the Self one" — which gives the fascicle count for each chapter.

Chapter 1
Dhātu-nirdeśa
分別界品
The elements: the five aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements that make up all experience.
Fascicles 1–2
Chapter 2
Indriya-nirdeśa
分別根品
The faculties: the twenty-two governing faculties, and the causes and conditions by which dharmas arise.
Fascicles 3–7
Chapter 3
Loka-nirdeśa
分別世品
The world: the three realms of existence, the six destinies, and the twelve links of dependent origination.
Fascicles 8–12
Chapter 4
Karma-nirdeśa
分別業品
Karma: the varieties of action, how it is accumulated, and how it ripens — including the precepts as a form of karma.
Fascicles 13–18
Chapter 5
Anuśaya-nirdeśa
分別隨眠品
The latent afflictions: the underlying tendencies — desire, aversion, and views — that keep beings bound to rebirth.
Fascicles 19–21
Chapter 6
Mārga-pudgala-nirdeśa
分別賢聖品
The path and the noble persons: how the path is cultivated, and the four stages of realization it leads to.
Fascicles 22–25
Chapter 7
Jñāna-nirdeśa
分別智品
Knowledge: the ten kinds of knowledge, and the qualities unique to a Buddha or an arhat.
Fascicles 26–27
Chapter 8
Samāpatti-nirdeśa
分別定品
Meditative attainments: the four dhyānas, the formless attainments, and the varieties of samādhi.
Fascicles 28–29
Chapter 9
Pudgala-viniścaya
破執我品
An appendix outside the 600 verses: a direct refutation of the Pudgalavādin claim that a real "person" underlies the aggregates.
Fascicle 30

Read by Fascicle

The table of contents for the full translation, thirty fascicles long. Every fascicle now links to Ru-Yi's own plain-English essay and translation.

Fascicle 1 · Ch. 1 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the opening frame, Abhidharma's definition, and the aggregates, sense fields, and eighteen elements fully explained and cross-referenced. Fascicle 2 · Ch. 1 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the eighteen elements fully classified, including the debate over whether the eye or the eye-consciousness sees. Fascicle 3 · Ch. 2 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: what "faculty" means, each of the twenty-two faculties explained, and an arhat's power over life and death. Fascicle 4 · Ch. 2 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: which dharmas always arise together, the mind and its mental factors, and the full debate over whether "possession" (得) is a real, distinct dharma. Fascicle 5 · Ch. 2 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: every formation dissociated from mind — class-commonality, the two mindless attainments, the life faculty, the four marks of the conditioned, and name, phrase, and letter. Fascicle 6 · Ch. 2 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the six causes (六因), the historic debate over whether nirvana is real or mere non-existence, and the five results (五果) that pair with the six causes. Fascicle 7 · Ch. 2 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 2's final part, the four conditions (四緣), the refutation of a single divine cause such as Īśvara, and the full combinatorial analysis of the twelve and twenty basic types of mind. Fascicle 8 · Ch. 3 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the cosmology of the three realms, the five destinies, the abodes of consciousness, the four kinds of birth, and the great debate over whether intermediate existence between death and rebirth is real. Fascicle 9 · Ch. 3 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the intermediate-existence being's full characteristics, the no-self argument, gestation and birth, and the twelve links of dependent origination in comprehensive detail. Fascicle 10 · Ch. 3 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: precise definitions of the twelve links' key terms, contact and feeling in full technical detail, the four nutriments, and the psychology of death and rebirth. Fascicle 11 · Ch. 3 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the container world's physical architecture, from the wind, water, and gold wheels through Mount Sumeru, the four continents, the hells, the heavens, and body sizes and lifespans across every realm. Fascicle 12 · Ch. 3 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: measurement units from atom to yojana, the four kalpas of cosmic destruction and formation, why bodhisattvas practice for others, buddhas and wheel-kings, humanity's origin, and the three small and great calamities. Fascicle 13 · Ch. 4 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: opening Chapter 4 on karma — why the world's differences come from karma, not a creator, the momentariness proof, the long Vaibhāṣika–Sautrāntika debate over whether unmanifested karma is real matter, and karma's material basis and moral classification. Fascicle 14 · Ch. 4 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: unmanifested karma as restraint, non-restraint, or neither, the full structure of the vow of individual liberation from upāsaka to bhikṣu, what taking refuge in the Three Jewels means, and the reasoning behind each lay precept. Fascicle 15 · Ch. 4 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the precise scope of restraint and non-restraint, how each is gained and lost, which beings can hold precepts at all, and the sūtras' many classifications of karma. Fascicle 16 · Ch. 4 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the black/white classification of karma, the three sages and three purities, and the treatise's full technical treatment of all ten karma-paths, from preparatory action through root act and follow-up, ending with greed, hatred, and wrong view. Fascicle 17 · Ch. 4 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 4's fifth part — the technical meaning of "karma-path," how the wholesome roots are cut off and restored, an extensive combinatorial treatment of karma's fruits, and the three grave obstructions. Fascicle 18 · Ch. 4 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 4's sixth part — the substance of the five ānantarya offenses, an extended digression on the bodhisattva path, and the three grounds for meritorious deeds: giving, precepts, and cultivation. Fascicle 19 · Ch. 5 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 5's opening (分別隨眠品) — the six root latent tendencies and their expansion to ninety-eight, the seed-theory debate, the five views and four inversions, conceit's varieties, and the four ways any question can be answered. Fascicle 20 · Ch. 5 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: which latent tendencies bind a matter across the three times, the school's defining "all exists" debate presented in full, and the sūtras' four names for affliction — outflow, flood, yoke, and clinging. Fascicle 21 · Ch. 5 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the nine bonds, three bondages, entanglements, and the five hindrances, followed by the full technical account of severance and "full understanding" — closing the treatise's entire discussion of the anuśayas begun in fascicle 19. Fascicle 22 · Ch. 6 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: opening Chapter 6, Distinguishing the Noble Ones — the four truths, the classical Two Truths distinction, the debate over whether pleasure genuinely exists, and the two meditation gates of impurity-contemplation and mindfulness of breathing. Fascicle 23 · Ch. 6 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the four foundations of mindfulness, the four wholesome roots, the celebrated sixteen-moment path of seeing, and the classical noble-persons framework, closing with a full account of the stream-enterer. Fascicle 24 · Ch. 6 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the once-returner and non-returner in full, arhatship and the diamond-like concentration, the eighty-nine fruits of asceticism, and the "wheel of Dharma" describing the Buddha's first sermon. Fascicle 25 · Ch. 6 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the six kinds of arhat, the Sautrāntika-Vaibhāṣika debate over whether arhatship itself can retrogress, faculty-refining, the sevenfold noble person, and the thirty-seven limbs of awakening reduced to ten real substances. Fascicle 26 · Ch. 7 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 7 opens with forbearance, knowledge, and view; the ten kinds of knowledge and their sixteen aspects; and a detailed account of how much knowledge is cultivated at every stage of the path. Fascicle 27 · Ch. 7 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the eighteen dharmas unique to a Buddha, the three perfect virtues, qualities shared with other noble ones, and the six supernormal powers in full technical and narrative detail. Fascicle 28 · Ch. 8 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 8 opens with the four dhyānas and four formless attainments, their branch-factors and the debate over dhyāna's "bliss," the tainted, pure, and uncontaminated attainments and how they generate one another, and samādhi classified by the three gates of liberation. Fascicle 29 · Ch. 8 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: Chapter 8 closes with the four immeasurables, the eight liberations, mastery-bases, and totality-bases, and Vasubandhu's own colophon — then Chapter 9 opens, the celebrated Refutation of the Self dismantling the Vātsīputrīya doctrine of a real "person." Fascicle 30 · Ch. 9 Read Ru-Yi's translation Complete: the treatise's final fascicle — the burden-bearer sūtra, the Buddha's refusal to answer ill-formed questions about the self, the tigress-and-cub verses, memory, cognition, and karma explained without a persisting self, and the closing verses of the entire Abhidharmakośa.