Paṭisambhidāmagga

History

Tradition ascribes the Patisambhidamagga to the Buddha's great disciple, Sariputta. It bears some similarities to the Dasuttara Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, which is also attributed to Sariputta.

According to German tradition of Indology this text was likely composed around the 2nd century CE. Indications of the relative lateness of the text include numerous quotations from the Sutta and Vinaya Pitaka, as well as an assumed familiarity with a variety of Buddhist legends and stories- for example, the names of various arahants are given without any discussion of their identities. The term patisambhida does not occur in the older sutra and vinaya texts, but does appear in both the Abhidhamma and several other Khuddaka Nikaya texts regarded as relatively late. A variant form, pratisamvid, occurs in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and suggests that the concept itself was shared with other, non-Theravada sects. The Patisambhidamagga is also included in the Dipavamsa in a list of texts rejected by the Mahasanghikas. On the basis of this reference and certain thematic elements, AK Warder suggested that some form of the text may date to the 3rd Century BCE, the traditional date ascribed to the schism with the Mahasanghikas. L. S. Cousins associated it with the doctrinal divisions of the Second Buddhist Council and dated it to the first century BCE.

The Patisambhidamagga has been described as an "attempt to systematize the Abhidhamma" and thus as a possible precursor to the Visuddhimagga. The text's systematic approach and the presence of a matika summarizing the contents of the first section are both features suggestive of the Abhidhamma, but it also includes some features of the Sutta Pitaka, including repeated invocation of the standard sutta opening evaṃ me suttaṃ ('thus have I heard'). Its content and aspects of its composition overlap significantly with the Vibhanga, and A.K. Warder suggested that at some stage in its development it may have been classified as an Abhidhamma text.

Noa Ronkin suggests that the Patisambhidamagga likely dates from the era of the Abhidhamma's formation, and represents a parallel development of the interpretive traditions reflected by the Vibhanga and Dhammasangani.

The text left traces in the Buddhist epigraphy of mainland Southeast Asia. Eng Jin Ooi and Peter Skilling read the spokes of a Dvaravati-period wheel of the law from Chai Nat in Thailand as carrying keywords of the soḷasa ākāra, the sixteen aspects of the four realities. Among them are pīlana, santāpa, ādhipateyya, magga, katañāṇa and saccañāṇa. Because the same passage stands in the Visuddhimagga, they say they cannot determine which work the spokes draw on. They conclude that the inscriptions show familiarity with the Patisambhidamagga system, while cautioning that they can hardly prove or even suggest that the work itself circulated in the region in its present form.