俱舍論 器世間·身量·壽量Abhidharmakośabhāṣya · The Receptacle World · Bodily Measure · Lifespan

Before reading this fascicle

This fascicle opens with fourteen graphs only — “Thus has the world of sentient beings been stated; the receptacle world is now to be stated.” The three fascicles above have finished the world of sentient beings (the three realms and five destinies, intermediate existence and entry into the womb, the twelvefold dependent origination), and with one sentence the author turns and begins to speak of the “receptacle” that holds those lives. All three ancient masters let the knife of their outlines fall at this same place: Puguang’s Record marks “from here the second major part explains the receptacle world”; Fabao’s Commentary marks “from here the second major part of the present chapter explains the receptacle world”; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary marks “from here the second major part explains the receptacle world” — three masters dividing their fascicles independently and yet with boundaries exactly alike, from which one may see that this cut was not forced upon the text by later hands but is an opening the text made for itself.

Beneath the receptacle world there are three further parts: first the “receptacle dwelt in” (the place where one lives), second the “measure of those who can dwell” (how large those who live there are and how long they live), third the “divisions of the least measures” (the smallest of measures). This fascicle occupies the first two, and the third is in the next fascicle. The receptacle dwelt in divides further into eight headings, and all three masters mark them alike — the three circles, the nine mountains, the eight seas, the four continents, the black mountains and the rest, the hells, the sun and moon, and the receptacles of the gods. These eight headings are the skeleton of the first half of the fascicle, and in reading one may take them as a cross-section drawn from the bottom upward: first the base is laid, then the mountains and seas are set up, then one probes downward to the hells, then follows upward along the sun and moon and the palaces of the gods.

One thing should be said before anything else. This fascicle reads like a geographical treatise, and the numbers in it are startlingly dense; but what really bears the weight is not the numbers but that one sentence that recurs again and again, “the dominant force of the actions of sentient beings.” The wind circle arises out of space: it is that. Gold congeals upon the water: it is that. The several jewels come into being: it is that. The sun and moon do not fall: that too. In this whole map of the world there is no architect — this is the most essential thread in the fascicle, and every passage below will run up against it.

I. The Base of the Receptacle World: Wind Circle, Water Circle, Golden Circle

〔1.1〕What is lowest of all in the world. First ask: since a world is to be established, there must be some lowest tier of all — what is that tier? The treatise answers without hesitation — lowest of all is wind, not earth and not water. “That is, by the dominant force of the actions of sentient beings, lowest of all and resting upon space a wind circle arises”: the wind circle arises resting upon space, its breadth “beyond numbering,” its thickness sixteen hundred thousand yojanas. Next comes the water circle, eleven hundred thousand and twenty thousand deep; the upper layer of the water is beaten by the wind of action and congeals into gold, whereupon the water is reduced to eight lakṣa and the gold is three hundred thousand and twenty thousand thick. Of the three tiers, only the lowest, the wind circle, rests directly upon space; the other two rest each upon the tier below.

The easy error is to take this for the description of some physical process of cosmic origination. It is not. The first cause the treatise gives is not wind but “the dominant force of action” — the wind circle is a result and not a cause. So each time below that something new is to be produced (the jewels, the sun and moon), the treatise says “the dominant force of the actions of sentient beings” once again; this is not idle repetition but the handing back, time after time, of responsibility to sentient beings themselves.

In practice: in reading the Abhidharma map of the world, the first step is to change one habit — do not ask “who made it,” ask “whose action called it forth.” Once that is changed, the numbers of the whole fascicle fall onto the ledger of practice.

〔1.2〕Why the wind circle has to be described as so hard. The treatise adduces a strange simile: suppose a “great Mahānagna” were to take a vajra wheel and strike down with all his might, and the outcome would be that “the vajra shatters and the wind circle is unharmed.” Puguang’s Record explains this: “a great Mahānagna is the name of a god among men; it means here the Naked One” — a god of great strength. First ask: to speak of a layer of wind, why bring in the vajra for comparison? Because the moment a reader hears “wind circle” his instinct is that it must be light, empty, and not to be relied upon; and the treatise means first to strike that instinct down. A world can be established precisely because that seemingly emptiest of layers has an entity that is “firm and dense.”

The easy error is to read this sentence as mythological ornament. It is a sentence that fixes a nature — the firmness and density of the wind circle is the precondition of all the tiers piled above it. In practice: the degree of solidity in a thing called forth by action is not determined by its “material” but by the force of action; and this item will be needed again below, in speaking of the iron ground of the hells and of the palaces of the gods that dwell resting upon space.

〔1.3〕Why the water does not flow away — an answer with two schools standing side by side. The treatise inserts a very good question here: the water circle hangs above the wind circle, so “how is it that the water circle does not flow away sideways?” The answer comes from two schools. One says that it is held by the force of the actions of sentient beings, and adduces as a simile that food and drink, while not yet digested, “never in the end flow away and fall into the receptacle of the digested”; the other says that it is held by the force of wind, and adduces as a simile “as a chuan holds the grain” — a chuan being a round granary woven of bamboo that pens the grain in.

First ask: where do the two schools differ? The former gathers the cause into action; the latter puts the cause upon a concrete outer condition (wind). The two accounts stand side by side and the treatise passes no verdict. The easy error is to think that because there are two accounts the author is being vague. He is not — the standing practice of this treatise is that wherever there are divergent accounts and the scriptures have no express text, both parties are recorded together. In practice: hereafter, whenever one reads “some other masters say” or “some other school says,” do not hurry to find which is the “right answer”; first see clearly where each of the two schools puts the weight.

〔1 appended〕A third measure of the water circle and the golden circle: diameter and circumference. Besides thickness, the treatise gives a third way of measuring — breadth: “the breadths of the two circles are equal in number, namely a diameter of twelve hundred thousand three thousand four hundred and a half. The number of the circumference is three times its edge, namely a circumference amounting to thirty-six hundred thousand ten thousand three hundred and fifty yojanas.” First ask: what is this sentence reckoning? It is reckoning the diameter and the circumference of the disc formed by the water circle and the golden circle: the breadths of the two circles are the same, the diameter being twelve hundred thousand three thousand four hundred and fifty yojanas (the “half” means half of a hundred, that is, fifty), and the circumference taken as three times the diameter — twelve hundred thousand three thousand four hundred and fifty multiplied by three gives thirty-six hundred thousand ten thousand three hundred and fifty. The easy error is to confuse “breadth” with the “thickness” spoken of above. Thickness is a measure up and down (the water eight lakṣa thick, the gold three hundred thousand and twenty thousand), breadth a measure across (diameter and circumference); the one measures depth and the other width, each has its own figures, and neither may be inferred from the other. In practice: the method of verification lies in the text itself — circumference equals diameter times three; take this and multiply once more, and the two ends lock together of themselves. Of every figure in this fascicle ask first, “is this a thickness, a diameter, or a circumference?” and the numbers will not fall into confusion.

II. The Nine Great Mountains upon the Golden Circle

〔2.1〕How the nine mountains are arranged. First ask: are the nine mountains nine ranges side by side, or arranged in some other way? The treatise gives the answer the moment it opens its mouth — “upon the golden circle there are nine great mountains, the Sublime and Lofty Mountain King standing at the center, and the remaining eight encircling the Sublime and Lofty round about.” Of the nine, the first seven are called “the inner mountains”; only outside the seventh mountain are the four great continents, and outside them the Iron Circle Mountain, “encircling one world-sphere round about as the rim encircles a wheel.” Their substances are distinguished too: the seven mountains beginning with Upholding the Pair are “constituted of gold alone,” while the Sublime and Lofty Mountain King has one jewel on each of its four sides — gold on the north, silver on the east, vaiḍūrya on the south, sphaṭika on the west. The treatise even explains in passing a thing that can be seen in ordinary life: because the south side is vaiḍūrya, “therefore the sky above Jambudvīpa looks like the color of vaiḍūrya” — why the sky over our heads is blue is answered by the south face of the mountain.

The easy error is to take the nine mountains for nine parallel ranges. They are concentric circles: one center and eight surrounding rings, the outermost being the Iron Circle. In practice: hold on to this figure of concentric circles, for the eight seas, the four continents, and even the reckoning of the three-thousandfold great thousand that follow all hang upon this one diagram.

〔2.2〕The names of the mountains were not chosen at random. The names of the nine mountains are all transcriptions, awkward to read; but behind every one of them there is an image. Puguang’s Record explains the sense of each mountain in turn: “Yugandhara means here Upholding the Pair. Upon the summit of this mountain there are two tracks like the ruts of a chariot, and because the mountain upholds the two tracks it is named Upholding the Pair” · “Mount Īṣādhara means here Upholding the Axle; the peak of the mountain towers up like the axle of a chariot” · “Khadiraka is the name of an Indian tree; in the southern parts of this land too there is this tree, called yanmu” · “Sudarśana means here Fair to Behold” · “Aśvakarṇa means here Horse’s Ear, the peak of the mountain being like a horse’s ear” · “Vinataka means here Elephant’s Trunk” · “Nimindhara is the name of a fish; the snout of that fish is pointed, and the peak of the mountain is like that fish’s snout.” The one at the center is the same — Puguang’s Record says, “Sumeru means here the Sublime and Lofty. The old rendering Xumi is a corruption.”

First ask: what use is it to know the senses of these names? Because it tells us that these names were originally words of image and not serial numbers. Upholding the Pair, Upholding the Axle, Horse’s Ear, Elephant’s Trunk, Fish’s Snout — one after another they are all speaking of shapes. The easy error is to take a transcribed name for an unintelligible spell and so skip the whole passage. In practice: whenever one meets a transcribed term of Xuanzang’s, ask first whether the ancient masters left a rendering marked “means here”; with that rendering, a long string of strange words at once becomes a picture that can be seen.

〔2.3〕How the jewels are produced — and a refutation of the Sāṃkhya in passing. The treatise says that the jewels too are called forth by the force of action: great clouds rain upon the golden circle, the gathered water surges into billows, and “this water becomes the seed and store of the several jewels” — Puguang’s Record takes these two words apart and explains, “that the water can produce jewels is what ‘seed’ means; that jewels come out of the water is what ‘store’ means.” Then violent winds drill and beat, and water is transformed and produces jewels. Just here the treatise adds a sentence that goes to the heart of the matter: “the cause ceases and the result arises, their entities not existing together; it is not as in what the Sāṃkhya accomplish by transmutation.”

Thereupon comes a short passage of debate and refutation against the non-Buddhists. The Sāṃkhya maintain that there is a permanently abiding “possessor of dharmas” upon which dharmas arise and dharmas cease; the treatise asks back: having granted that the bearer abides permanently, you cannot also say that upon it there is arising and ceasing. The other side changes his words: “the possessor of dharmas is not apart from the dharma; it is just this dharma that, at the time of transmutation, serves as the support of differing characteristics.” The author settles it in one sentence — “that it should be this very thing and yet not be thus: such a statement I have never heard.” Puguang’s Record adduces an example from the science of reasons to help explain it: “sound is impermanent; impermanence is a dharma. Sound is a possessor of dharmas, and because it has the dharma of impermanence it is called a possessor of dharmas.”

First ask: why, in speaking of the establishing of the world, does a passage refuting the non-Buddhists suddenly appear? Because the matter of “water turning into jewels” is exactly the watershed where the two sides understand the words “transmutation” differently — the Sarvāstivādins say the cause ceases and the result arises and their entities do not exist together, the Sāṃkhya say the entity is permanent and its characteristics change. The treatise uses one concrete example to fasten the abstract point of contention in place. The easy error is to take this passage for a digression off the topic. In practice: hereafter, whenever one reads the words “transmutation,” ask first, “is the entity of what is transmuted one and the same before and after?” If the answer is that it is the same, one has landed on the Sāṃkhya side; only if the answer is that the cause ceases and the result arises is it the position of this treatise.

〔2 appended〕The close of the nine mountains: what is sunk in the water is uniform, what stands out of it grows lower by half and half, and the breadth equals what stands out of the water. After the names and the arrangement of the nine mountains, the treatise gathers their measures at one stroke in a single passage: “Thus the nine mountains stand upon the golden circle, the measure sunk in the water being in every case eighty thousand yojanas, and Mount Sumeru standing out of the water likewise. The remaining eight stand out of the water lower by half and half, that is, the first, Upholding the Pair, stands out of the water forty thousand, and so on to the last, the Iron Circle Mountain, which stands out of the water three hundred and twelve and a half. The breadth of each of these nine mountains is in each case the same as the height by which it itself stands out of the water.” First ask: how many rules are given here in all? Three: ① what is sunk in the water is uniform — the portion of the nine mountains sunk in the water is eighty thousand yojanas in every case, without exception; ② what stands out of the water halves in turn — Sumeru stands out of the water eighty thousand as well, while of the other eight, beginning from Upholding the Pair, the first stands out forty thousand and then each successive one is halved: forty thousand, twenty thousand, ten thousand, five thousand, two thousand five hundred, one thousand two hundred and fifty, six hundred and twenty-five, and at the Iron Circle Mountain exactly three hundred and twelve and a half; ③ breadth equals what stands out of the water — the breadth across of each mountain is exactly equal to its own measure standing out of the water. The easy error is to take “sunk in the water” as halving too. It does not — only what stands out of the water halves; what is sunk is a constant. In practice: these three rules together fix the shape of the nine mountains completely: what is sunk is equally deep, what stands out grows lower by half with each mountain, and however high it stands out, so wide it is; and taking the last item, three hundred and twelve and a half, and working backward, seven halvings restore exactly forty thousand — this is the method by which the two ends verify each other.

III. The Eight Seas and the Water Possessed of Eight Qualities

〔3.1〕How the eight seas are reckoned. Between the nine mountains there are eight seas, “with the Sublime and Lofty first and the Circle Mountain last, and eight seas in between, of which the first seven are called inner.” The innermost is eighty thousand broad and three times as much on each of the four sides (two hundred thousand and forty thousand on each); the remaining six are each narrower than the one before by half, the second forty thousand and so on to the seventh, one thousand two hundred and fifty. The eighth is the outer sea, filled to the brim with salt water, three hundred thousand and twenty-two thousand broad.

First ask: why do the seven inner seas decrease by half and half while the outer sea is on the contrary especially large? Because the seven inner seas are wedged between mountain and mountain, and since the mountains are each lower and narrower than the one before by half, the seas decrease along with them; whereas the outer sea lies between the last golden mountain and the Iron Circle, and that is the broad expanse of water where the four great continents are. The treatise also states one thing honestly: it does not list the circumferences of the seven inner seas, “because they would be too cumbersome” — not that it does not know them, but that it finds them tedious.

The easy error is to think the eight seas are eight lakes side by side. They are eight rings of water. In practice: this passage is the first time in the whole fascicle that the reckoning “decreasing by half and half” appears, and the sideways projection of the four terraces of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain and the increase of the bodily measures of the gods later on all use the same manner of geometric reckoning; get familiar with it here first.

〔3.2〕The water possessed of eight qualities, and another set of eight items from a different sūtra. The water of the seven inner seas is possessed of eight qualities: “first sweet, second cool, third soft, fourth light, fifth pure, sixth free of foul odor, seventh not hurting the throat when drunk, eighth not harming the belly once drunk.” The eight items are plainly numbered, the first six stating the properties of the water and the last two the results of drinking it.

First ask: is this set of eight the only one? Puguang’s Record here adduces the Sūtra in Praise of the Pure Land, which sets up another set of eight items — “first limpid, second clean, third sweet-tasting, fourth light and soft,” and so on — and the two only partly overlap. Puguang records both sets together and passes no verdict of better or worse. The easy error is to think that numbered categories bearing the same name in Buddhist texts must agree item by item, and so, on meeting a disagreement, to hurry to reconcile them. In practice: when numbered categories share a name but differ in their items, it is often because the sūtra or treatise they rest upon is different; in reading, to ask first “which text does this set come from?” is more useful than hurrying to harmonize them.

IV. The Four Great Continents and the Eight Intermediate Continents

〔4.1〕The shapes of the four continents are the faces of the people of the four continents. Within the outer sea there are four great continents, facing the four sides of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain. Jambudvīpa in the south is “broad on the north and narrow on the south, its three sides equal in measure, its form like a chariot”; the continent of Videha in the east is “narrow on the east and broad on the west,” shaped like a half-moon; the continent of Godānīya in the west is “round like a full moon”; Uttarakuru in the north is “shaped like a square seat, its four sides equal in measure.” The treatise even explains one word, “equal,” in the stanza — “the word ‘equal’ is to make plain that there is no least increase or decrease.” Most interesting of all is the sentence that closes the passage: “according as the continent has its shape, so likewise the faces of its people.”

First ask: why should the shape of a continent have anything to do with people’s faces? Because within the framework of this treatise the outer receptacle and sentient beings issue from one and the same shared action, and so their characteristics correspond to one another and are not a coincidence. The easy error is to take this sentence for an amusing aside. It is in fact a small piece of evidence on that main axis, “the dominant force of action” — the receptacle and sentient beings are not two independent sets of things. In practice: the discussions of bodily measure and lifespan later on are extensions of this same line: in which continent one dwells determines one’s bodily measure and lifespan accordingly.

〔4.2〕Why the vajra seat is in the southern continent alone. “In this continent alone is there the vajra seat, which reaches up to the surface of the ground and rests down upon the golden circle,” and all bodhisattvas, when about to ascend to perfect awakening, sit here and arouse the “vajra-like concentration.” The reason the treatise gives is exceedingly terse: apart from this there is no other support and no other place possessed of firmness enough “to have the power to bear this.”

First ask: why should becoming a buddha require the choosing of a place? It is not a choosing of geomantic fortune but a question of bearing capacity — that last moment of concentration is too great in force, and only a piece of ground that reaches straight down to the golden circle can bear it. The easy error is to read it as making Jambudvīpa “nobler” than the other three continents. What the treatise speaks of is bearing capacity, not rank; and the text below on the contrary says everywhere that the people of Jambudvīpa have the least fixed lifespan and the smallest bodily measure. In practice: this sentence is one of the rare places in the whole fascicle that lands directly upon practice and realization — the description of the receptacle world is here joined to the “vajra-like concentration,” and when one reads later in the chapter on the worthy and the noble about the end of cutting off the afflictions, one may look back to this place.

〔4.3〕The eight intermediate continents and one small divergent account. On either flank of each of the four great continents there are two intermediate continents, eight in all, and the treatise names them one by one. Puguang’s Record leaves us the sound and sense of them: “Cāmara means here Cat-Ox. Varacāmara means here Excellent Cat-Ox.” The treatise says, “all these continents are inhabited by human beings,” and at once records a divergent account — “there is an account: one alone is inhabited by rākṣasas.”

First ask: why is this one divergent account worth keeping? Because upon a geographical detail that looks of no importance whatever, it demonstrates the standing practice of the treatise: wherever there are two accounts and the scriptures have no express text, both are recorded. The easy error is to read “there is an account” as the author’s own supplement. It is another school’s account, which the author records without adjudicating. In practice: in this fascicle “there is an account,” “some other masters say,” and “some other school says” occur more than ten times, and all are to be viewed in this way — first distinguish which sentence is the treatise’s own position and which is a separate account it records; without this step the disputes of the three commentaries below cannot be read at all.

〔4 appended〕The measures of the sides of the four continents: besides shape there are numbers. The shapes of the four continents (chariot box, half-moon, full moon, square seat) are only half of it; the treatise also gives the measures of the sides continent by continent. Of Jambudvīpa in the south, “the south side is only three and a half yojanas broad, and the three sides are two thousand each,” while for the other three continents it says “the east three hundred and fifty, and the three sides two thousand each. The continent of Godānīya in the west is round like a full moon, its diameter two thousand five hundred and its circumference seven thousand five hundred. Uttarakuru in the north is shaped like a square seat, its four sides equal in measure, each face two thousand.” First ask: how are these several sets of figures to be read? The southern and the eastern continents belong to the same type, “three sides two thousand each and one side alone short,” and differ only in that short side: three and a half yojanas in the south, three hundred and fifty in the east; the western continent is round, and so instead of sides it gives diameter and circumference (diameter two thousand five hundred, circumference seven thousand five hundred, still circumference equals diameter times three); the northern continent has four equal sides, and so one phrase, “each face two thousand,” exhausts it. The easy error is to take the southern continent’s “three and a half yojanas” and the eastern continent’s “three hundred and fifty” for quantities of the same order — they differ a hundredfold, and this is exactly why the southern continent is shaped like a chariot box (one end extremely narrow) while the eastern continent is shaped like a half-moon (one end still broad). In practice: shape and measure must be read together — shape is the outline, measure is the dimension; remember only the shapes and the four continents run together, remember only the measures and one does not know how they look.

V. The Black Mountains, the Snow Mountain, the Mountain of Intoxicating Fragrance, and the Lake Without Heat

〔5.1〕How the nine black mountains are counted out. “In this Jambudvīpa, going north from the middle, there are three places each of which has three ranges of black mountains” — three places with three ranges each, together making exactly the “nine black mountains to the north of this” of which the stanza speaks. North of the black mountains is the Great Snow Mountain, and north of the Snow Mountain the Mountain of Intoxicating Fragrance. Puguang’s Record explains the name Intoxicating Fragrance: “the Mountain of Intoxicating Fragrance means that within this mountain there are fragrances whose smell intoxicates a man, and so it is named Intoxicating Fragrance.”

First ask: where does this number nine come from? It is simply three times three. This deserves particular note, because the Taishō canon has a variant reading on exactly that graph “three” in “three places each having three ranges of black mountains”: the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Palace editions all read “five.” If the four editions were followed, three places with five ranges each would make fifteen, which does not answer to the “nine” of the stanza. Textually the two readings stand side by side, and this collection records without adjudicating; but a reader should at least know that the base text’s reading is self-consistent with the stanza.

The easy error is to regard a collation variant as a trifle of no consequence. Some variant graphs truly are of no consequence (such as the graph for a staff against the graph for arms); some, however, bear directly upon the reckoning. In practice: when the numbers in the stanza and in the prose commentary do not agree, first check whether the graph in question has a variant reading — this is the old method of the ancient masters in collating their reading.

〔5.2〕Lake Without Heat and the four great rivers. North of the Snow Mountain and south of the Fragrance Mountain is a great lake named Without Heat and Torment, fifty yojanas each way, filled to the brim with water possessed of the eight qualities, and “none but a person who has attained the supernormal powers has any way of reaching it”; and out of it flow four great rivers — the Gaṅgā, the Sindhu, the Sītā, and the Vakṣu. At the edge of the lake is a Jambu grove, “the trees tall of form and the fruit sweet to the taste,” and the name of the continent comes either from this grove or from this kind of fruit.

First ask: why should it be said of a lake that “none but one who has attained the supernormal powers can reach it”? This sentence pushes the Lake Without Heat out of “geography” and into “a place that cannot be reached” — it has a position on the map, but in experience it is not open. The easy error is to take all the place names of this fascicle uniformly for actual places that can be investigated. The treatise itself marks out the boundary right here. In practice: of the map of the world in this fascicle, some parts join on to human experience (the continents, the rivers, the sun and moon), while of some parts it is expressly said that only the supernormal powers can reach them or only the force of action can enter them (the Lake Without Heat, the gods, the hells) — to keep these two classes apart in reading is more accurate than taking the whole either as a factual record or as an allegory.

VI. The Establishing of the Hells: the Unremitting and the Seven Hot Ones

〔6.1〕Why the Unremitting is called the Unremitting. Going down from Jambudvīpa past twenty thousand there is “the great naraka Avīci,” twenty thousand each in depth and breadth, so that its floor is forty thousand yojanas away from us. As for the origin of the name, the treatise states it plainly: “because suffering is undergone therein without remission, unlike the remaining seven great narakas where the undergoing of suffering is not constant, it is named the Unremitting.” And it takes Equal Reviving for contrast — the sentient beings in the hell of Equal Reviving, after being hacked, pierced, ground, and pounded, “as soon as they meet a cool wind blowing upon them revive again as they were at first,” and are therefore named Equal Reviving; in Avīci there is no such breathing space.

First ask: does “Unremitting,” then, say that the suffering does not stop, or that there is no gap? What the treatise takes here is the former (suffering without remission). But Puguang’s Record adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle and supplies another account — “there is an account: the name Unremitting is established from there being no gap, for although the sentient beings are few their bodies are large” — that is, though the sentient beings are few they are vast of body, and there is no gap between them. Puguang further adduces the words of the adjudicators of the Mahāvibhāṣā as settling it: “the adjudication says: one should not put it in that way. Those born in the other hells are many, those born in the Unremitting are few.”

The easy error is to take the “Unremitting means no gap” that one commonly hears in later times for the position of this treatise. What the prose commentary of this treatise takes is “suffering without remission.” In practice: when a term has several glosses, first make out the one the treatise itself gives, and take the rest as collateral reference — this is the order in which a treatise is to be read, and it is also where the three commentaries stand when they dispute with one another.

〔6.2〕How the eight hells are arranged. “The seven narakas dwell piled one upon another above the Unremitting,” and from below upward they are Equal Reviving, the Black Rope, Massed Crushing, Howling, Great Howling, Burning Heat, and Extreme Heat, with the Unremitting lowest of all. The treatise at once records a divergent account — “there is an account: these seven are at the flank of the Unremitting.” Puguang’s Record adduces a third account besides: “there is an account: the Unremitting hell is at the center, and the remaining seven hells encircle it round about, as a village today encircles a great city.”

First ask: which of the three arrangements is right? The treatise passes no verdict, and Puguang too merely records them together. This is precisely the normal state of this fascicle. The easy error is to think that the spatial layout of the hells is a question of fact that must be settled. Within the practice of this treatise, wherever the scriptures have no express text, divergent accounts standing side by side do no harm to the sense — what is really settled is the correspondence of action and result, not the map. In practice: in reading the spatial descriptions of this fascicle, lay down the expectation that “it must be thus” and put the attention upon each point of “which action calls forth which result,” and the gain will be far greater.

VII. The Sixteen Increases: the Four Places outside the Gates of the Eight Hells

〔7.1〕First there is a stanza of scripture. The treatise here adduces a stanza spoken by the World-Honored One: “These eight narakas, I say, are exceedingly hard to pass beyond; the ground is made of hot iron, iron walls encircle it round about, on the four sides there are four gates, shut fast with leaves of iron.” This stanza is not a root stanza of the treatise but a stanza of scripture adduced as proof — the text just before it expressly marks it, “and so the Bhagavat spoke this stanza, saying.” It first fixes the general characteristics of the eight great hells: iron ground, iron walls, four gates with leaves of iron, and fierce fire blazing throughout.

First ask: since the prose commentary has already said it, why is the stanza still adduced? Because the institution of the sixteen Increases has to hang upon the “four gates” — one gate on each of the four sides, and four places outside each gate, make sixteen. The stanza establishes the four gates first, and only then can the prose commentary set them out one by one. The easy error is to confuse a quoted stanza with a root stanza. There are twenty-three stanza blocks in this fascicle, of which three are quoted stanzas (this stanza, the stanza of Dharmasubhūti, and the stanza on the fragrance of flowers), and the remaining twenty are root stanzas of the treatise. In practice: in reading this treatise, where one sees “the stanza says” it is a root stanza, and where one sees “spoke this stanza, saying,” “as that stanza says,” or “the Bhagavat said,” it is for the most part adduced as proof — and this one distinction bears upon the reckoning of the stanza count for the whole chapter.

〔7.2〕What each of the four Increases is. The first is the Increase of Hot Ashes, where the hot ashes are knee-deep: “when a sentient being walks there, at the very first setting down of a foot the skin and flesh together with the blood are scorched, festered, and fall away; and at the lifting of the foot they grow again and are restored as before.” The second is the Increase of Corpses and Dung, filled with a mire of corpses and dung, in which are many nyaṅkuṭa worms, “sharp as needles, their bodies white and their heads black,” which bore the skin, break the bone, and eat the marrow. The third is the Increase of Blades, containing three kinds — the Road of Sword Blades (blades laid edge upward to form a road), the Forest of Sword Leaves (sword blades for leaves, which the wind blows down), and the Forest of Iron Thorns (iron thorns sixteen finger-breadths long, piercing upward and downward); and though the three differ, “because the iron implements are the same, they are gathered as one Increase.” The fourth is the Increase of the Fierce River, filled with hot salt water, where beings float and sink, go against the current and with it, as sesame and rice are boiled in a great cauldron, while on the two banks hell warders holding knives and spears bar them and drive them back.

First ask: why are the three instruments of punishment gathered into one Increase while the fierce river stands alone? The reason the treatise gives is material — the first three are alike made of iron and so are gathered as one Increase; the fierce river is water, and moreover “this river is like a moat, while the first three are like a garden park,” so that their forms differ as well. The easy error is to take this passage merely as a description of horrors and to pass over that stated reason for the combining. It is the special skill of Abhidharma: wherever several things are gathered into one, the principle on which they are gathered must be stated. In practice: hereafter, wherever one meets “such and such dharmas are together established as one” (the five feelings gathered into three, the nine places established as three births amid pleasure), one must ask the same question — on what principle are they gathered?

〔7.3〕Why the word “Increase” is called Increase. The treatise explains its own name: “this is a place of being punished over and above, and hence it is called an Increase, because in the hell proper one has just been injured and then suffers injury again” — having undergone punishment once in the hell proper, one comes out of the gate and undergoes it again, suffering upon suffering, and hence the name Increase. The treatise also records another account — “there is an account: sentient beings undergo this suffering after coming out of the hell, and it is therefore called an Increase.” Puguang’s Record adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle for a further explanation: “or else within this one undergoes sufferings of every kind, the instruments of suffering being of many types, and it is therefore called an Increase.”

First ask: why is this one graph worth so much ink? Because it is a pure case of choosing a rendering — Paramārtha’s older translation renders this graph not as “Increase” but as “Park,” taking the image of a garden enclosure; Xuanzang renders it “Increase,” taking the successive addition of suffering. The referent is the same and the two translations look in wholly different directions (see Further Resonances). The easy error is to think that a difference of rendering is only a habit of wording. The images the two translations take here are, the one spatial, the other one of degree; and a reader who reads one version only will hardly notice that the original term could have had two faces. In practice: when one meets a key rendering in this treatise and a divergent translation is available for comparison, it is worth a glance at both — not to judge which is better, but to see the thickness of the word.

VIII. Whether the Hell Warders Are Sentient Beings, the Eight Cold Hells, and the Places of the Other Destinies

〔8.1〕A discussion born out of a discussion. The treatise marks it itself: “now here a discussion arises from the discussion. Are the hell warders sentient beings or not?” — this is an incidental discussion and not the main outline. One school says they are not sentient beings, the reason being “the force of the actions of sentient beings, like the wind at the forming of an aeon”; the wind at the forming of an aeon has no one blowing it either, and works all the same. The objector at once brings up the stanza of the Venerable Dharmasubhūti and asks in return: “Whose heart harbors always rage and venom, who delights to heap up every kind of evil action, who sees the suffering of others and rejoices at it — he becomes at death a warder of Yama” — if someone becomes a warder of Yama after death, is that not a sentient being?

The answerer’s discrimination is very fine: King Yama sends rākṣasas to cast sentient beings into the hells, and those are called the warders of Yama and are real sentient beings; but those who carry out the punishments directly within the hells are not real sentient beings. That is to say, what the stanza speaks of and what is under dispute are not the same set at all. The other school says that they are sentient beings, and answers the two difficulties that follow upon this: where do their evil actions receive retribution — within the hells themselves; and why does the fire not burn them — “this is certainly because they are shut off by the force of action, or because they have called forth different great elements, and so are not burned.”

First ask: where does the crux of this dispute lie? In whether “those who inflict punishment within the hells” are an insentient operation produced by the force of action or a separate set of sentient beings undergoing retribution. Both accounts are recorded together. The easy error is to read the former school’s “not sentient” as “does not exist.” “Not sentient” says that it has no mind and consciousness, not that there is no such thing. In practice: this passage is the most typical instance of an incidental discussion in the fascicle — the author allows the question to branch off, and yet, having branched off, answers difficulty by difficulty and leaves nothing half done.

〔8.2〕Where the names of the eight cold hells come from. The hot hells are eight, and there are eight cold ones besides — Arbuda, Nirarbuda, Aṭaṭa, Hahava, Huhuva, Utpala, Padma, and Mahāpadma. The treatise gives one general principle of naming: “the sentient beings therein are oppressed by bitter cold, and their names are established according to the changes of body and of voice” — the names follow either the changes the freezing works upon the body or the cries of those frozen past uttering a whole syllable. Puguang’s Record makes each one concrete: “Arbuda means here Blister; bitter cold oppresses the body and the body blisters” · “Nirarbuda means here Burst Blister; bitter cold oppresses the body and the blisters of the body burst” · “in the next three the cold oppresses and strange sounds come from the mouth” · “Utpala means here Blue Lotus; bitter cold presses hard and the body changes and splits open like a blue lotus,” with Padma and Mahāpadma on the same pattern as red lotus and great red lotus.

First ask: why do the names of the cold hells sound like onomatopoeia? Because the middle three were named from sound in the first place. Puguang’s Record states the division of labor among this set of names most clearly — “the first two and the last three establish their names from the changes of body, the middle three from the changes of voice”: the first two and the last three follow the changes of bodily appearance, the middle three the strange sounds that come from the mouth when the cold presses. The easy error is to memorize the eight names as eight unrelated proper nouns. They are in fact a sequence of freezing injury running from shallow to deep: blistering, blisters bursting, being unable to utter a sound, the body splitting open. In practice: the names of numbered categories often carry their own sequence; once the sequence can be seen, there is no need to memorize by force.

〔8.3〕How a small continent can hold a great hell. The treatise sets a question: the area of Jambudvīpa is not large, “how then can what is below it hold the Unremitting and the rest?” The answer is exceedingly deft: “the continent is like a heap of piled grain, pointed above and wide below, and this is why the great sea grows narrower and deeper” — the continent is like a heap of piled grain, pointed above and wide below, and so the further down one goes the wider it becomes.

First ask: what weight does this question and answer carry? It demonstrates Abhidharma’s self-checking of its own system: wherever figures conflict with one another, a reconciliation must be given. The easy error is to take this for a merely geometrical piece of cleverness. It fixes at the same time the shape of the great sea (the deeper the narrower), the two being two faces of one and the same solid. In practice: in reading this fascicle, when figures seem to contradict, first assume that the author has already thought it through, and read on; for the most part a sentence will account for it.

〔8.4〕The solitary hells and the base places of the other two destinies. The sixteen hells are “called forth by the dominant action of all sentient beings” (shared action), while the solitary hells are “summoned each by a separate action” (separate action), dwelt in by many or by two or by one, with no fixed place — beside rivers and mountainsides and in the wilderness, underground, and in the sky. The base place of animals is the great sea, and “later they spread abroad to other places.” The base place of the ghosts is the realm of King Yama, five hundred yojanas beneath Jambudvīpa, and “from there they have spread by degrees and settled in other places”; among the ghosts there are also those “upright and majestic and possessed of great dignity, who enjoy every kind of wealth and pleasure in sovereign freedom like the gods,” and those “hungry and gaunt and ugly of countenance.”

First ask: why must base place and scattered dwelling be distinguished? In the passage on the hells the treatise expressly divides the two actions — “the sixteen hells discussed above are called forth by the dominant action of all sentient beings; the remaining solitary hells are summoned each by a separate action”; as for the base places and the spreading abroad of animals and ghosts, the treatise begins a new sentence and states their places directly, without matching them to shared and separate action. The easy error is to imagine the destiny of ghosts as uniformly hungry and ugly. The treatise says expressly that among the ghosts there are those of dignity and wealth and pleasure. In practice: the internal differences within the three evil destinies are very great, and this passage is one of the rare express texts on it in this treatise; when one reads in the chapter on action about separate actions calling forth separate results, one may look back and take this passage as a concrete instance.

IX. The Sun and Moon: Their Support, Their Size, and the Increase and Decrease of Day and Night

〔9.1〕Upon what the sun and moon rest. The treatise asks, “upon what do the sun, the moon, and the host of stars rest?” and answers, “they rest upon wind” — still the wind called forth by the dominant force of the actions of sentient beings, which turns around the Sublime and Lofty Mountain, “carrying and upholding the sun and the rest so that they neither stop nor fall.” Their height is level with the summit of Upholding the Pair, which is exactly half the height of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain. As for size: the sun fifty-one, the moon fifty, the smallest star one krośa and the largest sixteen yojanas. The underside of the sun’s disc is constituted of the fire-pearl and “can give heat and give light”; the underside of the moon’s disc is constituted of the water-pearl and “can give cold and give light.”

First ask: why should it be said expressly what jewel lies beneath the sun and moon? Because the source of their operation has to be accounted for — heat and cold are not abstract properties but are tied to the jewel of which they are constituted. And the treatise says at once that this operation is “produced according to the dominance of the actions of sentient beings,” working “benefit or harm, each as is fitting,” upon eyes, bodies, fruits, flowers, crops, and medicinal herbs. The easy error is to take this for pure astronomical description. The treatise’s landing point is “benefit and harm” — the operation of the sun and moon upon the myriad things of the world still lies within the framework of what action calls forth. In practice: wherever this fascicle speaks of a thing, it mostly goes on to speak of its operation upon sentient beings; grasp this thread and the numbers will not be read as a mere running account.

〔9.2〕How one sun and moon light four continents. The treatise asks: is what one day does the same at one time in the four continents? The answer is no. “When it is midnight in the northern continent the sun is setting in the eastern continent, at midday in the southern continent and rising in the western. These four times are equal” — these four moments occur at one and the same time, and each continent merely sees one of them.

First ask: what is the significance of this passage? It uses one sun and moon to explain four differences of time, which amounts to placing a self-consistent model of day and night within the Abhidharma framework. The easy error is to read “these four times are equal” as meaning that the time is the same in the four continents. “Equal” here says that these four moments correspond to one another (one and the same instant), not that the four continents all see midday. In practice: this is the sentence in the fascicle most easily read backward; a single graph misread turns the whole picture upside down.

〔9.3〕Why day and night grow long and short. “The sun’s course over this continent has its differences, and this makes day and night decrease and increase.” From the ninth day of the latter half of the second month of the rainy season the night gradually increases; from the ninth day of the latter half of the fourth month of the cold season the night gradually decreases; and the day is the opposite. Each increase or decrease is by one lava. The sun travels southward and northward, thereby making the night increase and the day increase in turn. As for why the moon has a gap, the treatise records two accounts: the Designations of the World says that the palace of the moon travels near the disc of the sun and is encroached upon and lit by the sunlight, so that “on its other side it puts forth a shadow that covers its own disc”; the masters of old say that it is “because the two discs of sun and moon differ in the degrees of their courses that fullness and gap appear.”

First ask: what is hardest in this passage? It is how the reckoning days of the three seasons (hot, rainy, cold) are to be matched when transposed to the calendar of the Chinese lands. The treatise gives only the three Indian seasons and gives no conversion. And it is precisely for this reason that this became the place where the three commentaries diverge most sharply (see Further Resonances). The easy error is to think that a calendar in the sūtras and treatises can be applied directly to Chinese months. In practice: whenever a detail crosses calendars, first make sure how far the text itself goes; what the text does not say has been supplied by the ancient masters severally, and may not be confused with what the treatise says.

X. The Four Terraces of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain and the Heaven of the Multitude of the Four Great Kings

〔10.1〕The two sets of figures for the four terraces. “Mount Sumeru has four terraces; reckoning from the water’s edge up to the first terrace, the distance is a measure of ten thousand yojanas,” and the distance between one terrace and the next is in every case ten thousand. The breadths by which they jut out sideways, however, decrease: sixteen thousand, eight thousand, four thousand, two thousand. These four terraces “jut out sideways from the Sublime and Lofty Mountain and encircle it, taking up the whole of its lower half” — they exactly fill the lower half of the portion of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain that stands out of the water (half of eighty thousand is forty thousand, and the four terraces are ten thousand each).

First ask: why must the figures be divided into two sets? Because one set speaks of the vertical intervals (all equal) and the other of the horizontal projection (decreasing by half and half). Read them mixed together and one is lost. The easy error is to read “jutting out sixteen thousand” as the height of the first terrace. It is a breadth. In practice: when this treatise speaks of measures it is its habit to state the vertical and the horizontal separately; ask first, “is this figure a height or a breadth?” and most confusions dissolve.

〔10.2〕Who dwells on which terrace. “There is a yakṣa god named Firm Hand who dwells on the first terrace, one named Garland Holder who dwells on the second, one named Ever Proud who dwells on the third,” and all three belong to the four great heavenly kings; only the fourth terrace is inhabited by the four great heavenly kings together with their retinues, and “the sūtras on this ground speak of the Heaven of the Multitude of the Four Great Kings.” More important still is the sentence that follows: upon the seven golden mountains too there are gods dwelling, fiefs belonging to the four great kings, “and this is called the Heaven of the Multitude of the Four Great Kings that dwells in dependence on the ground”; and therefore “among the gods of desire the extent of this heaven is the widest.”

First ask: why is the Heaven of the Multitude of the Four Great Kings the widest among the gods of desire? Because it occupies not only the fourth terrace of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain but also the fiefs upon the remaining seven golden mountains — the largest territory. The easy error is to think that the height of a heaven represents the size of its extent. The lowest heaven of all is on the contrary the widest. In practice: this sentence is a reminder for the later discussions of the increasing bodily measures and lifespans of the six heavens of desire — height of station and breadth of extent are two independent axes.

XI. The Heaven of the Thirty-Three and the City Fair to Behold

〔11.1〕The measure of the summit, and one instance of two figures standing side by side. “The Heaven of the Thirty-Three dwells on the summit of Meru; its summit is eighty thousand on each of its four sides, no different in measure from the four sides below” — the summit is eighty thousand a side, the same as the four sides at the foot of the mountain. The treatise at once records a divergent account: “some other masters say: it is eighty thousand in circumference, and they state separately that each of the four sides is only twenty thousand” — that is, that the eighty thousand is the circumference and that each side is only twenty thousand.

First ask: how great is the difference between these two figures? Very great: between eighty thousand a side and twenty thousand a side the area differs sixteenfold. The author takes the former and the other masters the latter, and both stand without adjudication. Puguang’s Record even supplies, on behalf of the other masters, the reckoning behind it, saying that that master means that the four terraces are formed “by cutting successively inward into the body of the mountain,” drawing in tier by tier, so that at the summit only twenty thousand a side is left. The easy error is to think that since the author has spoken, the divergent account need not be looked at. Here it is precisely the reverse — what the stanza text of Paramārtha’s older translation maintains is exactly twenty thousand a side (see Further Resonances), from which one may see that this divergent account is the position in another line of transmission. In practice: a dispute over a set of figures often involves a difference in the stanza text relied upon; when one reads “some other masters say” and the figures differ so widely, it is worth a second look.

〔11.2〕The layout of the city Fair to Behold. At each of the four corners there is a peak, five hundred in height and breadth, where the yakṣa god Vajra-Hand dwells and guards the gods. At the center of the summit is the city Fair to Behold, “two thousand five hundred on each side, ten thousand yojanas in circumference,” the golden wall a yojana and a half high, the ground “adorned with a hundred and one kinds of jewel,” soft to the touch “as tūla floss, rising and sinking with the foot when one treads upon it” — Puguang’s Record explains tūla floss: “tūla is the name of a tree, and the floss comes out of the fruit of the tree and is named tūla floss, as one says willow catkins.” Within the city is the Hall of Surpassing Excellence, “named Surpassing Excellence because it surpasses the other palaces of the gods.” Outside the city are four parks: Many Chariots, Coarse and Harsh, Mixed Groves, and the Grove of Joy. On the four sides of the four parks are four excellent pools, where “the gods vie with one another and take their pleasure.”

First ask: what is the point of each of the four parks’ names? The treatise only lists the names and does not explain their senses; Puguang’s Record fills this out from the Mahāvibhāṣā — “first, the Park of Many Chariots, meaning that in this park chariots of every kind appear according to the merit and power of the gods,” and the rest in order: armor and weapons appear in time of war; whatever is played with there is alike and yet all bring forth surpassing joy; the most excellent objects of desire of every different type gather there. The easy error is to read “Coarse and Harsh” as a bad place. It is where the gods practice arms, and so armor and weapons appear there. In practice: there are many places in this treatise where names are listed without their senses explained, and it is for just this that the ancient masters’ supplementary explanations were made; when one reads a list of bare names, it is worth looking for it in the commentaries.

〔11.3〕The Round-Growth Tree and a probing question about fragrance. Northeast of the city is the Round-Growth Tree, “the most excellent place where the Heaven of the Thirty-Three enjoy the pleasures of desire,” its coiling roots fifty yojanas deep and broad, its height and breadth a hundred each, its flower fragrance “perfuming a hundred yojanas with the wind, and when the wind is against it still extending over fifty.” The objector at once seizes upon it: with the wind, granted; “how can it perfume against the wind?” One school says that fragrance has of itself no sense of perfuming against the wind and that this is said only in dependence upon its “not passing beyond the bounds of the tree”; the author, however, establishes it head-on — “in truth of principle the Round-Growth has such a quality, and the fragrance that streams from it can perfume against the wind” — only that it is dammed back by the harmonious winds of the heavens, “growing weaker and subtler by degrees and stopping at no great distance,” and so cannot reach as far as when it perfumes with the wind. The treatise sets a further question: does the flower fragrance turn on with the wind to another place, or does it merely perfume the wind so that a fragrance arises separately? The answer: “this sense is not settled; the preceptors allow both gates without fault.”

First ask: of the two questions, which did the author answer and which did he not? To the first (whether it can perfume against the wind) the author gave a direct solution; to the second (how the fragrance is conveyed) he expressly allowed both gates. The easy error is to read the two questions together as “the author adjudicated neither.” In practice: to tell apart where the author gives his own solution and where he leaves two standing is the most basic skill in reading this treatise, and here both appear within a single passage, which makes it a good specimen. In passing: the graph “ten” in the “fifty yojanas” of the coiling roots is absent from all four of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Palace editions — if the four editions were followed there would be five yojanas only, a difference of tenfold. Textually the two readings stand side by side, and this collection records without adjudicating.

XII. Fragrance against the Wind: a Close Drawn from a Stanza of Scripture

〔12.1〕The World-Honored One’s words and the author’s sense of proportion. The objector produces a scriptural proof: “the fragrance of flowers cannot perfume against the wind, and the fragrance of roots and stems and the rest is likewise; the fragrance of a good man’s qualities is rich and pervading, and against the wind streams its fair name abroad through every quarter” — the World-Honored One plainly says that the fragrance of flowers cannot perfume against the wind, and yet the author says that the fragrance of the Round-Growth Tree can; is this not a contradiction? The author’s solution is to mark out a range: “this was said with respect to the fragrances of the human world, for the fragrances commonly known to people of the world truly have no such power” — that sentence of the World-Honored One’s was said with respect to the fragrances of the human world, and the fragrances of the human world truly have no such capacity. And he adds one collateral proof: “a sūtra transmitted by the Mahīśāsakas says of this fragrance that with the wind it perfumes a hundred yojanas, and when there is no wind extends over fifty only.”

First ask: is this making excuses on the author’s behalf? It is not. It is the standard method of Abhidharma for handling a case where a scriptural text and a doctrinal sense appear to conflict — ask first what range that sentence of scripture rests upon, and once the range is divided the conflict resolves itself. The easy error is to think that wherever scripture is adduced it is a settled conclusion and the author may not establish anything else. The practice of this treatise is that scripture is settled, but one must see the capacity it addresses and the situation it rests upon. In practice: this move recurs again and again in the chapters that follow (wherever one meets a sentence of the form “this was said with respect to such and such”), and this is the specimen for the fascicle.

〔12.2〕The Hall of Good Dharma and the close of a section. At the southwest corner outside the city is the Hall of Good Dharma, where “the Heaven of the Thirty-Three assemble from time to time and discuss in detail what is according to the Dharma and what is not.” With this the outer receptacle inhabited by the Heaven of the Thirty-Three is finished.

First ask: why should a council hall be recorded expressly? Because it stands in contrast to the four parks, the excellent pools, and the Round-Growth Tree above: those are places of sport and the enjoyment of pleasure, this one a place of deliberation. The easy error is to imagine the world of the gods uniformly as a place of enjoyment. The treatise expressly leaves this one stroke at the close. In practice: reading upward from the receptacle world, one finds that the author never writes the gods as a pure realm of pleasure — it is still within the desire realm, and there is still business to deliberate and Dharma and non-Dharma to be told apart.

XIII. Above the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, the Palaces Dwell in Space

〔13.1〕The leap from “resting on the ground” to “resting on space.” “The gods possessed of form above this dwell in dependence upon palaces in space” — the palaces of the gods possessed of form above the Heaven of the Thirty-Three are all in space. Which count as the gods possessed of form above? “That is, the Yāma Heaven, the Tuṣita Heaven, the Heaven of Delight in Working Transformations, the Heaven of Sovereignty over Others’ Transformations, together with the Brahmakāyika Heaven and the rest spoken of above, sixteen places; and with the foregoing there are twenty-two heavens in all, all dwelling in dependence upon an outer receptacle.”

First ask: where does this sentence draw its line? At the Heaven of the Thirty-Three — above the Heaven of the Thirty-Three all rest upon space. But this line can only be stated upward and cannot be inverted into “all below rest upon the ground”: those belonging to the four great kings are themselves divided into two classes. In the passage on the sun and moon the treatise asks first, “what sentient beings inhabit the palaces of the sun and the rest?” and answers, “the host of gods belonging to the four great heavenly kings,” and then divides them itself: “do these gods dwell only here? If they are gods dwelling in space, they dwell only in the palaces of the sun and the rest; if they are gods dwelling on the ground, they dwell on the several terraces of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain and the like.” ⇒ Among those belonging to the four great kings, those in the palaces of the sun and moon and the rest dwell in space, while those on the terraces of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain and the like dwell on the ground; and the Heaven of the Thirty-Three dwells on the summit of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain and so belongs to those dwelling on the ground. The correct statement is therefore: above the Heaven of the Thirty-Three all rest upon space; the Heaven of the Thirty-Three and the ground-dwelling portion of those belonging to the four great kings occupy respectively the summit and the several terraces of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain, while those belonging to the four great kings have besides a space-dwelling portion residing in the palaces of the sun and moon and the rest. The easy error is to read “possessed of form” as “having shape.” It is said in contrast to the formless realm — the gods of the form realm, though they rest upon space, still belong to those possessed of form. In practice: the figure twenty-two should be remembered: six heavens of the desire realm and sixteen places of the form realm make twenty-two; and when the text below speaks of “the twenty-two places of the gods, and what the measures are by which they are distant above and below,” it is this figure that is used.

〔13.2〕How space can bear the palaces up. The prose commentary of this treatise offers no explanation of this and only says that they dwell resting upon space. Puguang’s Record adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle for a supplementary account — “there is an account: in space dense clouds are spread out like ground, and serve as the support of those palaces” — taking the dense clouds for the support of the palaces.

First ask: since the treatise offers no explanation, why did the ancient master supply one? Because a reader is bound to have the doubt: space has nothing in it, so how can it hold a thing up? The supplementary explanation is meant to let the sense of the text run smoothly, not to alter the sense of the treatise. The easy error is to take this account for the position of this treatise. It is a supplementary account from the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle, adduced by way of Puguang, and there is no such text in this treatise. In practice: in reading a commentary one must at every point tell apart which sentence is the treatise and which is supplied by the commentary; without this distinction, reading the treatise turns into reading the commentary.

XIV. The Manner of Sexual Union of the Six Heavens of Desire: Intercourse, Embracing, Holding Hands, Laughing, Looking

〔14.1〕The higher, the lighter. “Only the six heavens of desire undergo excellent objects of desire.” In the lowest two heavens, which dwell resting upon the ground, “sexual union is accomplished by the joining of bodies, no different from human beings,” only that “when the breath of wind is released the burning distress is removed, and it is not as in the human world where there is other impurity besides.” Upward from these, in order: in the Yāma Heaven “a single embrace accomplishes it”; in the Tuṣita Heaven “merely by holding hands”; in the Heaven of Delight in Working Transformations “only by laughing toward one another”; in the Heaven of Sovereignty over Others’ Transformations “gazing at one another accomplishes it.”

First ask: why does it grow lighter the higher one goes? The treatise gives the reason — “because the higher the gods, the more excellent the objects of desire and the swifter the greedy mind, it is made to be so.” The more excellent the object and the more swiftly the greedy mind stirs — on this explanation of the Vaibhāṣikas, what the differences among the names of the manner of sexual union in the six heavens display is that the length of time required to accomplish it grows shorter, not that the contact required grows less. The easy error is to read this passage as an ethnography of the world of the gods. Its landing point is the speed of the greedy mind: this is a ruler that measures the inner by the outer. In practice: this item is usable in practice — on this account, the more excellent the object the swifter the greedy mind, and the shorter the time required for one and the same thing, from which one may see that the force of greed grows fiercer the higher one goes, not thinner.

〔14.2〕Another school’s reading, and the children of the heavens. The Vaibhāṣikas have a further explanation: “all six heavens accomplish sexual union by the joining of bodies,” and what the Designations of the World says about embracing, holding hands, and the rest is meant only to display “the difference in the length of time for them” — that is, the length of time required to accomplish it, not a difference of act. The treatise records this too. As for where the sons and daughters of the heavens come from: “upon the knees of the male and female among those gods, boys and girls are suddenly born by transformation.”

First ask: where do the two explanations differ? The former says the acts differ; the latter says the acts are the same and the time differs. Both are recorded without adjudication. The easy error is to think that what the Vaibhāṣikas say must be what this treatise upholds. Here this treatise records without adjudicating. In practice: “the Vaibhāṣikas explain it thus” occurs only this once in the fascicle, and it may be read against the several occurrences of “there is an account” above — each alike a separate school’s account, and an instance of recording both.

XV. The Bodily Measure and the Speech of the Host of Gods at Their First Birth

〔15.1〕Six heavens hidden inside five graphs. The stanza has five graphs only: “at first like five up to ten.” The prose commentary of the treatise likewise says only, “the six heavens of desire, at their first birth, are in order like people of five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten years.” The two words “in order” are the key here — the six heavens correspond in order to six ages. Puguang’s Record spreads it all out: “the Heaven of the Four Kings like five years, the Heaven of the Thirty-Three like six years, the Yāma Heaven like seven years, the Tuṣita Heaven like eight years, the Heaven of Delight in Working Transformations like nine years, the Heaven of Sovereignty over Others’ Transformations like ten years.”

First ask: why must one rely upon the commentary to spread it out? Because the stanza is extremely economical and the prose commentary too gives only a string of numbers; and a reader who does not pair them one by one very easily reads the six numbers as a vague “somewhere between five and ten years old.” The easy error is precisely to read it as a range. It is six fixed values in one-to-one correspondence. In practice: wherever the words “in order” appear in this treatise, one must stop and make a one-to-one pairing; omit this step and many passages degenerate from “a precise table” into “a rough remark.”

〔15.2〕The gods of the form realm, and what all the gods have in common. “The host of gods of the form realm, at the time of their first birth, are complete and full in bodily measure and possessed of excellent garments” — the gods of the form realm are of adult measure at birth and naturally have garments, unlike the gods of desire who must grow up from a small child. It says further, “all the hosts of gods speak the noble speech, that is, their language is the same as that of Central India.”

First ask: why are the gods of the form realm full and clothed as soon as they are born? Because the form realm has already left the defilement of desire, and this treatise here takes the fact of “having garments” as an outward mark of freedom from desire. The easy error is to take “having garments” for a detail of decorum. It forms a pair with the manner of sexual union of the six heavens of desire in the preceding passage — the one a diminishing of the marks of desire, the other the completion of freedom from desire. In practice: in writing of the gods, this fascicle keeps throughout to the line of “the thickness and thinness of desire”; and if the narrative seems suddenly brief when one reaches the form realm, it is precisely because the marks of desire are here exhausted.

XVI. Three Kinds of Birth amid Desires and Three Kinds of Birth amid Pleasure

〔16.1〕The three kinds of birth amid desires: where the objects enjoyed come from. The treatise lists three classes: first, those who “delight to undergo the several excellent objects of desire present before them” and turn in sovereign freedom, comprising the whole human destiny and the four heavens below; second, those who “delight to undergo the several excellent objects of desire of their own transforming,” the fifth heaven alone, the Heaven of Delight in Working Transformations; third, those who “delight to undergo the several excellent objects of desire of others’ transforming,” the sixth, the Heaven of Sovereignty over Others’ Transformations. The distinction among the three is not in how much pleasure is received but in where the objects received come from — ready-made, transformed by oneself, transformed by another.

First ask: why are human beings and the first four heavens gathered into one class while the last two heavens each form a class of their own? The prose commentary of this treatise does not answer this question. Puguang adduces the Mahāvibhāṣā to supply it: “question: why are human beings and the hosts of the first four heavens together established as birth amid desires, while the hosts of the last two heavens are each established separately? Answer: the afflictions of human beings and of the first four heavens are coarse, those of the last two heavens subtle.” The easy error is to think the ground of the classification is the height of the objects. On what the Mahāvibhāṣā supplies, the ground is the coarseness or subtlety of the afflictions. In practice: a classification of numbered categories looks as though it speaks of objects, while in fact it very often speaks of mind; to ask, “is this set divided by object or by mind?” often lays bare the skeleton of a table.

〔16.2〕The three kinds of birth amid pleasure, and a question left hanging. “Within the three meditative absorptions, in nine places, one is born and receives three kinds of pleasure” — the joy and pleasure born of seclusion of the first meditative absorption, the joy and pleasure born of absorption of the second, and the pleasure alone, separated from joy, of the third; and therefore “abiding long, long separated from suffering, and long receiving pleasure, it is named birth amid pleasure.” The fourth meditative absorption is not in the list, because pleasure has there been relinquished.

The treatise then sets itself a question and does not answer it: “those born in the intermediate absorption have no joy or pleasure at all; it should be pondered why they too are called a heaven of birth amid pleasure” — since the intermediate absorption (where the great Brahmā dwells) has no joy or pleasure, why is it counted a heaven of birth amid pleasure? The treatise writes only the two words “should be pondered.” Puguang’s Record adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle to supply an explanation: “since the great Brahmā does have joy and pleasure occurring, there is no fault in naming it a heaven of birth amid pleasure.”

First ask: why does the author leave a “should be pondered” here? This is a manner of writing common in this treatise — where the question stands but no settled conclusion is secure, he would rather mark the doubt than force a conclusion. The easy error is to read “should be pondered” as an omission or oversight of the author’s. It is an express mark of doubt. In practice: when one reads such expressions as “it should be pondered,” “this sense is not settled,” and “both gates are allowed without fault,” they are to be taken as signposts and not as gaps — those are precisely the places the author has himself marked as not yet brought to a close. In passing: the graph “born” in the “joy and pleasure born of seclusion” of this passage is absent from all four of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Palace editions; and if this graph drops out, the name of the pleasure of the first meditative absorption becomes confused with the “pleasure separated from joy” of the third. Textually the two readings stand side by side, and this collection records without adjudicating.

XVII. The Distance Upward Equals the Distance Downward

〔17.1〕A labor-saving reckoning. The measure in yojanas by which the twenty-two heavens are distant from one another above and below is “not easily counted,” and so the treatise gives one general rule: “according as one reckons from whichever heaven its measure of distance from the sea below, what it reaches upward is the same as its distance downward” — the distance from any heaven upward to the next equals its distance downward to the great sea. For example: the fourth terrace where the four great heavenly kings dwell is forty thousand from the great sea below, and so from there upward to the Heaven of the Thirty-Three is likewise forty thousand; from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three upward to the Yāma Heaven equals the measure of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three downward to the great sea; and so on, up to the Sudarśana Heaven and from there upward to the Akaniṣṭha Heaven.

First ask: what is the advantage of this rule? It dispenses with all twenty-two figures of distance: one need only know how far each heaven is from the sea, and the distance upward follows automatically. This is a structure of geometric doubling — with each heaven upward, the height above the sea exactly doubles. The easy error is to read “so likewise is its number upward” as meaning that the distances above and below are all equal (a fixed value). It is not a fixed value; each is equal to its own measure downward, so that in fact it doubles heaven by heaven. In practice: there are not a few places in this treatise where one sentence takes the place of a whole table; on meeting such a general rule, it is best to work out two or three heavens with one’s own hand and confirm that one has read the rule correctly.

〔17.2〕The highest heaven and its second name. “From this point upward there is no further place of dwelling; this place is the highest and is named the Akaniṣṭha.” The treatise at once records a divergent account: “some other masters say: it is named the Heaven of the Limit of Resistance,” and explains the ground of that naming — “by resistance they mean form as accumulated, and since resistance is exhausted upon reaching here, it obtains the name limit” — that is, that resistant form is exhausted at this point.

First ask: where do the two names differ? “Limit of form” is said with respect to form, “limit of resistance” with respect to resistance. Both accounts are recorded together. The easy error is to take the two names for two different heavens. They are two names of one and the same heaven. In practice: where one name has two designations in this treatise, each mostly rests upon a different sense; to ask clearly what sense each rests upon is more useful than remembering which is the “proper name.”

XVIII. Ascending and Seeing: An Iron Rule of Realms and Levels

〔18.1〕Ascending requires supernormal power or another’s power; those who arrive at the same place can see, but across realms and levels one cannot. “The Heaven of the Thirty-Three, by their own power of supernormal power, can ascend from their own place to the Yāma Heaven; or else in dependence upon another’s power, that is, one who has attained the supernormal powers or a host of gods above may convey them to the Yāma Heaven” — for ascending there is either one’s own supernormal power or conveyance by another’s power, and apart from these two there is no third road. As for “seeing,” the order of the treatise is: “the ascending of the remaining gods is on this same pattern; whether one comes down or one arrives, those below see the god above. Yet the eye below cannot see an upper realm or upper level, because that is not its object field” — when a god above comes down, or a god below ascends to his place, one who is at the same place gets to see the god above; what is forbidden is that an eye of a lower realm and lower level should take the form of an upper realm and upper level. The two sentences must be read together, and one may not take the latter half alone and say “even if one goes up one cannot see.” The treatise takes the tangible for an analogy: “just as one does not feel the tangible object of that upper realm” — the tangible object of the upper realm cannot be felt by the lower either. Therefore when a god of an upper level comes to a lower level, “he does not come in his own body but must make a transformation body of the lower level.”

First ask: are “being able to ascend” and “being able to see” one and the same thing? They are not. The treatise divides two matters: ascending requires supernormal power or another’s power; as for seeing, if a god above comes down or a god below arrives above, one at the same place gets to see him, while an eye of a lower realm and lower level can never see the form of an upper realm and upper level. On this the treatise gives one reason only — “because that is not its object field”: the object field of an eye of a lower level extends just so far, and changing realm and level changes the whole set of faculty and object. As for the reason from action and result, “the eye faculty of a lower level does not see the form above, because it is a result called forth by lowly action,” that comes from Saṅghabhadra; see Further Resonances. The easy error is to read this item as meaning that the distance is too great to see. It has nothing to do with distance; the object fields do not reach one another. In practice: this item is a fundamental premise for reading of the divine eye later on and of affiliation to realms and levels — the affiliation of faculty and object is determined by action, not by space.

〔18.2〕A separate school’s account that has been recorded. At the end of this passage the treatise records: “some other school says: those gods of a lower level can, according as they wish, also see the form of an upper level, just as one born in this realm can see the gods above from below” — the separate school maintains that the gods of a lower level can see the form of an upper level whenever they wish. This treatise merely records it and adds no critique.

First ask: why does the author record without refuting? This is the standing practice of this treatise. But it is worth noting that Saṅghabhadra, in the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle, refutes this very sentence head-on, and that Puguang has drawn that refutation in as well (see Further Resonances). The easy error is to take the refutation adduced by Puguang for the sense of this treatise. This treatise here takes the posture of recording. In practice: one and the same statement of another school is in this treatise “recorded,” in Saṅghabhadra “refuted,” and in Puguang “a refutation adduced” — three different layers, and in reading each must be returned to its own place.

〔18.3〕The measure of the supports of the heavenly palaces: four accounts side by side. The treatise goes on to ask how large the supports of the palaces of the Yāma Heaven and the rest are, and records four schools: one says the measure is the same as the summit of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain; one says “each upward doubles the one before”; one says the first meditative absorption equals one set of four continents, the second a small thousand, the third a middling thousand, the fourth a great thousand; and yet another says the three lower meditative absorptions equal in order a small, a middling, and a great thousand, while the fourth meditative absorption is “without limit in measure.”

First ask: with four accounts listed side by side, which does the author take? Here he takes none. The easy error is to think that listing them side by side must imply a tacit approval. In practice: by this point in the fascicle, “some other masters say” has become a common sight; and a count will show that this is a fascicle of extremely high density of divergent accounts within the whole treatise — because for most of the details of the receptacle world the scriptures have no express text. And this is exactly why the next section must establish the measure of the three-thousandfold great thousand: however many the divergent accounts, the definition of the total must be fixed first.

XIX. The Small Thousand, the Middling Thousand, and the Great Thousand

〔19.1〕Three thousands piled up. “A thousand sets of four great continents and so on up to the Brahmā world, thus stated together, are one small thousand; a thousandfold of the small thousand is named one middling-thousand world; a thousand middling-thousand worlds are named together one great thousand.” One small thousand contains a thousand sets of four great continents, sun and moon, Sumeru, gods of desire, and Brahmā worlds; a thousand small thousands are a middling thousand; a thousand middling thousands are a great thousand. So the great thousand is a thousand to the third power of worlds, and this is where the name “three-thousandfold great-thousand world-sphere” comes from — not three thousand of them, but three tiers of thousands.

First ask: why is this name the most easily misread of all? Because in Chinese “three thousand” looks like a plain number. It is in fact an abbreviation for “three kinds of thousand.” The easy error is precisely to read the three thousand as a number. In practice: this is one of the most frequently misread terms in the Buddhist texts; once it is understood to be a threefold power, the sense of scale in the scriptures’ “three-thousandfold great-thousand world-sphere” comes home.

〔19.2〕Coming into being together and being dissolved together, and one boundary. The treatise says, “such a great thousand comes into being together and is dissolved together,” and gives notice that “the characteristics of coming into being and being dissolved together will be analyzed at length below” — that is the business of the section on the measure of aeons in the next fascicle. As for the boundary of the small thousand, the prose commentary of this treatise goes only as far as the Brahmā world; Puguang adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle to make the boundary plain: “here the small thousand adduces the Brahmā world only, and so the Parīttābha and the rest are not included in the small-thousand world” — the Parīttābha Heaven and above are not reckoned within the small thousand.

First ask: why ask after this boundary? Because if it is not fixed, one does not know up to which heaven “one world” extends. The easy error is to think the small thousand contains the whole form realm. On the account supplied, it goes only as far as the Brahmā world (the first meditative absorption). In practice: the unit by which the three-thousandfold great thousand is counted is “one set of four great continents together with the gods above it up to the Brahmā world”; get this unit clear and one will not misplace the tier when the range of what a catastrophe of the aeon destroys is discussed later.

XX. Bodily Measure: from Three and a Half Cubits to Sixteen Thousand

〔20.1〕The bodily measures of the people of the four continents increase by a doubling each time. The people of Jambudvīpa are “for the most part three and a half cubits tall,” a few reaching four cubits; the continent of Videha in the east is eight cubits, the continent of Godānīya in the west sixteen cubits, Uttarakuru in the north thirty-two cubits — from the eastern continent onward each continent doubles.

First ask: why are two figures given for the measure of the people of Jambudvīpa (three and a half cubits and four cubits) while the other continents are given only one? Because Jambudvīpa is the continent least fixed in both lifespan and bodily measure, as the passage on lifespan in the next section says more plainly. The easy error is to read the bodily measures of the four continents as one continuous increasing line (three and a half cubits, seven, fourteen . . .). The doubling begins from the eight cubits of the eastern continent, and Jambudvīpa forms a class of its own. In practice: wherever this treatise gives two figures that do not fit the geometric run, it is usually marking “this item is not fixed” — which is more useful than remembering the figures themselves.

〔20.2〕The bodily measures of the gods: two units and two reckonings. The six heavens of the desire realm take the krośa as their unit, the lowest being a quarter of a krośa, and “thereafter each successive one adds a portion,” until the sixth is a krośa and a half — this is a constant difference (each heaven adding a quarter). The form realm takes the yojana as its unit: the Brahmakāyika half, the Brahmapurohita one, the Mahābrahmā one and a half, the Parīttābha two, the first four heavens each adding a half (still a constant difference); “above these all the remaining gods increase by doubling,” which changes to a constant ratio. And within the geometric run there is one exception — “only the Anabhraka subtracts three yojanas,” the Apramāṇābha increasing from twice to four, and so doubling on until at the Akaniṣṭha Heaven it exactly “reaches a full sixteen thousand.”

First ask: why must three be subtracted in the middle? The prose commentary of this treatise gives no reason and gives only the result. The three commentaries dispute most fiercely here (see Further Resonances). The easy error is to take the subtraction of three for a slip of the brush or a corruption in transmission. Puguang here lists several explanations side by side and settles on none, one of them saying, “a further explanation: three are subtracted in order to make the Akaniṣṭha Heaven sixteen thousand,” and after that another, “a further explanation: it is so by the nature of things” — the treatise itself gives no reason, and the ancient masters likewise keep several explanations side by side; see Further Resonances. In practice: when an exception suddenly appears in a run of regular values, verify the two ends once; an exception that makes the two ends match is usually there for the sake of closing the count. Fabao here supplies a further vivid point of reference, adducing the Mahāvibhāṣā: “as the bodily form obtained by the asura king Rāhu is vast in measure, like the bodily form obtained in the Akaniṣṭha, a measure of sixteen thousand and six yojanas” — the bodily measure of the asura king can be compared with the Akaniṣṭha Heaven.

XXI. Lifespan: the Day and Night of the Heavens Must Be Established First

〔21.1〕The lifespans of the four continents of the human world. “The people of Uttarakuru in the north have a fixed lifespan of a thousand years, the people of the continent of Godānīya in the west five hundred years, the people of the continent of Videha in the east two hundred and fifty years” — each of the three continents halving in turn, and moreover a “fixed lifespan.” Only “the people of Jambudvīpa in the south have no fixed limit of lifespan”: when the aeon has decreased to its last, ten years only; at the beginning of the aeon, “human life is beyond measure and cannot be reckoned by hundreds or thousands.”

First ask: is the “not fixed” of Jambudvīpa a defect or a distinctive feature? From the side of lifespan it is a defect; from the side of practice not necessarily — it is precisely this continent that has the vajra seat and in which buddhas appear. The treatise offers no comment here and merely records the fact. The easy error is to read “at the last ten, at the first beyond measure” as an increase from ten years to immeasurable. The direction is the reverse: at the beginning of the aeon it is immeasurable, and only after the aeon has decreased does it fall to ten years. In practice: of the four continents, three have fixed lifespans and one is not fixed. It should be noted that whether a lifespan is fixed and whether untimely death is possible are two axes — the treatise says expressly below that “in every place the lifespan admits of untimely death, save only Uttarakuru in the north, whose fixed lifespan is a thousand years,” so the western and eastern continents, though their lifespans are fixed, still admit of untimely death.

〔21.2〕Without establishing day and night first, the lifespans of the gods cannot be reckoned. The treatise says it very plainly: “the day and night of the heavens must be established first, and only then can the length and shortness of the lifespans of the gods be reckoned.” The method is to exchange years of the human world for one day and night of the heavens: fifty human years are one day and night of the Heaven of the Multitude of the Four Great Kings, thirty days making a month and twelve months a year, and that heaven has a lifespan of five hundred years. Upward from there, one hundred, two hundred, four hundred, eight hundred, and one thousand six hundred human years are in order one day and night, and the lifespans are in order one thousand, two thousand, four thousand, eight thousand, and sixteen thousand years.

First ask: what kind of structure is this? It is a double doubling — the length of the day and night doubles and the number of years doubles too, so that the actual lifespan leaps upward fourfold. The easy error is to see only that string of figures, “their lifespan five hundred,” “their lifespan a thousand,” and to forget that the length of those “years” itself differs in each case. In practice: this is the passage in the fascicle most easily read lightly and most in need of pen and paper; work out the two doublings separately once, and the table of the lifespans of the six heavens of desire is really in hand.

〔21.3〕How day and night are divided where there is no sun or moon. The treatise sets itself a question: above Upholding the Pair there is no sun or moon, so how do those gods establish day and night and light? The answer gives four routes: “they establish day and night by the opening and closing of flowers, such as the kumuda and the padma,” or by the difference between the crying and the silence of the birds, or by the difference between the gods’ sleeping and waking; and as for light, “they accomplish outer light by means of the light of their own bodies.”

First ask: why must this question be asked? Because the passage just before used “day and night” as the unit for reckoning lifespan; and if the gods above had no day and night at all, the whole reckoning would come to nothing. So this question supplies the foundation of the reckoning. The easy error is to take it for a passage of local color. It is a necessary link in the argument. In practice: whenever Abhidharma establishes a reckoning it turns back to supply its premise — this is what most distinguishes it from ordinary narrative.

〔21.4〕The form realm and the formless realm: lifespan equals bodily measure. In the form realm there is “no distinction of day and night, and the length and shortness of lifespan is known by the number of aeons alone,” and moreover “the length and shortness of their lifespan in aeons equals the number of their bodily measure” — a bodily measure of half a yojana means a lifespan of half an aeon, and a bodily measure of sixteen thousand a lifespan of sixteen thousand aeons. The four heavens of the formless realm, from below upward, are twenty thousand, forty thousand, sixty thousand, and eighty thousand aeons.

First ask: why should the lifespan of the form realm be tied to bodily measure? Because the form realm has no day and night to count and another ruler must be found; and this treatise takes the number of the bodily measure as the number of the aeons of lifespan, one table serving two uses. The easy error is to think there is a causal relation between bodily measure and lifespan. The treatise says only “the numbers are equal” — the figures are equal, not that one produces the other. In practice: in the study of the characteristics of dharmas, “the numbers are equal” and “it is the same as” are two different things; keep this layer clear and many tables of correspondence will not be read as causal.

〔21.5〕Which kind of aeon the “aeon” is. The treatise asks itself: the aeon spoken of above, is it an aeon of dissolution, of formation, an intermediate aeon, or a great aeon? The answer: “from the Parīttābha upward the whole of a great aeon is the aeon, and for the gods below it the half of a great aeon is the aeon” — from the Parīttābha Heaven upward a whole great aeon is used, and for the three heavens below half a great aeon. And it verifies this by the example of the great Brahmā king: the great Brahmā exceeds the Brahmapurohita Heaven in lifespan by an aeon and a half, and twenty intermediate aeons each for formation, abiding, and dissolution, sixty intermediate aeons in all, make an aeon and a half; so the “aeon” used by the three heavens below is forty intermediate aeons (the half of a great aeon).

First ask: why ask expressly “which kind of aeon”? Because the text has all along been saying “a lifespan of one aeon,” “a lifespan of half an aeon,” and if the kind of aeon is not fixed all the figures hang in the air. The easy error is to read “the great half” as “the greater part.” It is “the half of a great aeon.” In practice: this is the most tightly reckoned section in the fascicle, and the author makes the definition concrete by an example that can be verified (the great Brahmā’s aeon and a half) — whenever there is a dispute about a unit, finding an instance that can be verified is the most reliable method.

XXII. The Lifespans of the Evil Destinies: the Lifespan of a Heaven as One Day and Night of a Hell

〔22.1〕The correspondence of the six heavens of desire and the six hells. “The lifespans of the six heavens of desire, the Four Great Kings and the rest, serve in order as one day and one night for the six narakas beginning with Equal Reviving, and their lifespans in order are likewise the same as those of the gods” — the five hundred years of the Heaven of the Multitude of the Four Great Kings are one day and night in the hell of Equal Reviving, and reckoning such days and nights into years, the hell of Equal Reviving has a lifespan of five hundred years. And so on to the sixteen thousand years of the Heaven of Sovereignty over Others’ Transformations, which are one day and night in the hell of Burning Heat, so that the hell of Burning Heat has a lifespan of sixteen thousand years.

First ask: why must this correspondence be established? Because the hells, like the heavens, have no sun or moon by which to count day and night, and so the lifespans of the gods are borrowed as a ruler. This is the same device as in the preceding section, used a second time. The easy error is to take “their lifespans in order are likewise the same as those of the gods” to mean that the lifespans of the hells and of the gods are equal. The figures are the same but the units are not — a “year” of the hells is far longer than a “year” of the gods. In practice: by this point the fascicle has used the reckoning of “changing the unit” three times, and the structure of all three is exactly the same; recognize the structure and the two remaining hells, Extreme Heat and the Unremitting, need not be reckoned again.

〔22.2〕The four that do not enter this table. The hell of Extreme Heat has a lifespan of half an intermediate aeon and the Unremitting hell of one intermediate aeon — these two are not converted from the lifespans of the gods but reckoned directly in aeons. The lifespan of animals is “for the most part without fixed limit,” the longest being one intermediate aeon, “that is, the great nāga kings such as Nanda and the rest”; and the treatise adduces the words of the World-Honored One as proof: “there are eight great nāgas, all of whom can abide for an aeon and can uphold the great earth.” Puguang fills out the names of these eight from the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower: “there are eight nāga kings: the nāga king Nanda, the nāga king Upananda, the nāga king Sāgara, the nāga king Vāsuki, the nāga king Takṣaka, the nāga king Anavatapta, the nāga king Manasvin, the nāga king Utpalaka.” Ghosts “take one human month as a day” and live five hundred years.

First ask: why do Extreme Heat and the Unremitting jump out of that table of correspondence? Because the heavens of desire are only six, and matching six hells uses them all up; the remaining two can only be established separately. The easy error is to think that the lifespans of the eight great hells form one continuous geometric run. The first six are converted, the last two directly stipulated. In practice: how to carry on once a table is used up is a common technical problem in Abhidharma; the method of this treatise is to change the unit and begin reckoning afresh, rather than force a fit.

〔22.3〕The lifespan of the cold hells: a simile of sesame. The lifespan of the cold hells cannot be reckoned by the foregoing method, and so “the World-Honored One committed it to a simile to display their lifespan”: twenty human khārī make one vāha of sesame in the land of Magadha, filled with sesame, and suppose a man took out one seed every hundred years; “such sesame would readily come to a time of exhaustion, whereas the lifespan of one born in Arbuda would be hard to exhaust.” The second is twenty times it, and thereafter “each successive one increases twentyfold,” and the lifespans of the eight cold hells are fixed by this. Fabao supplies a gloss for these two units of capacity: “khārī” is “the name of a vessel that holds one hu,” and “vāha” is “what is called here a chuan, holding twenty hu,” and he says that “the sesame chuan of the land of Magadha mostly holds twenty dan.”

First ask: why use a simile here instead of giving a figure? Because this number is so great that giving a figure would convey nothing; a simile on the contrary lets one take its measure. Moreover, the World-Honored One says only “hard to exhaust” and gives no fixed value — and since it is so for the first hell, and each successive one is twentyfold, the figures after eight need not be stated at all. The easy error is to take the sesame seed removed every hundred years for an actual method of reckoning the lifespan. It is a skillful means for displaying “hard to exhaust,” not a formula. In practice: that this treatise changes to simile at the extremes of measurement is a device worth remembering — when a number has passed beyond the range of what can be felt, a comparison is more honest than a figure.

XXIII. Untimely Death, and Those Who Do Not Die Untimely

〔23.1〕The two layers of “every place” and “particular sentient beings.” “In every place the lifespan admits of untimely death, save only Uttarakuru in the north, whose fixed lifespan is a thousand years” — apart from Uttarakuru, the lifespan in every place may be cut off midway. But the treatise at once adds the crucial layer: “this is said with respect to place and not with respect to particular sentient beings, for there are particular sentient beings who do not die untimely.”

First ask: where is this sentence added? It is added upon the distinction between “place” and “person.” With respect to place, apart from Uttarakuru all admit of untimely death; yet within the places that do admit of it, there are still particular individuals who will not die untimely. So these are two layers of judgment and not one. The easy error is to read “in every place there is untimely death” as “every single person may die untimely.” The treatise says expressly that it is not so. In practice: wherever this treatise says “in such and such a place it is thus,” one must ask, “is this said with respect to place or with respect to person?” — a distinction that recurs again and again in the discussions of destinies and of affiliation to realms below, and this is the clearest specimen of it.

〔23.2〕Who does not die untimely. What the treatise lists is: the “bodhisattva bound to one more birth” dwelling in the Tuṣita Heaven, one “in his last existence,” one to whom the Buddha has given prediction, one whom the Buddha has sent, one who follows through faith, one who follows the dharma, and the mother who carries a bodhisattva in the womb and the mother who carries a wheel-turning monarch in the womb. The treatise sums up in a phrase: “these, each as is fitting, are all without untimely death.”

First ask: what do these several classes have in common? All of them are people who carry about them a matter that must be brought to completion — one who awaits buddhahood, one who awaits prediction, one who awaits a mission to be received, and even the mothers who carry such persons. Lifespan here is not a question of the length of retribution but of whether a task can be completed. Puguang glosses the first class: “that is, the bodhisattva bound to one more birth dwelling in the Tuṣita Heaven, who from beginningless time has been bound by many births and deaths, and is now bound by one birth only” — “bound to one more birth” means that only one birth of bondage remains, not that he is bound to some one birth.

The easy error is to read “bound to one more birth” in the negative sense of “bound by a single lifetime.” On Puguang’s gloss it means only one birth remaining, and is a mark of nearness to liberation. In practice: this fascicle speaks from the wind circle lowest down to the Akaniṣṭha highest up, from the shortest ten years to eighty thousand aeons, and after the numbers have been set out to their utmost it closes upon this one sentence — that some are not governed by this table, because they carry about them a matter not yet finished. With this the table of measures of the whole fascicle is given an exit.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of Three Commentaries

The foregoing is the sense of the text of this fascicle itself. Below, a separate section gathers four matters: the outlines and adjudications of the three commentaries and where they diverge, Saṅghabhadra’s refutations and supplements, the divergences of Paramārtha’s older translation, and coordinates for collateral reading. A mirror is not the treatise; it is only a different way of reading one and the same text. Both are recorded without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

1. Where the Three Commentaries Diverge

A commentary that has left only a few words, and those in citations. The commentaries on this fascicle present a special case: Shentai’s Commentary is an incomplete text, the seven fascicles now extant belonging to the Chapter on the Elements, the Chapter on the Faculties, and the Chapter on the Worthy and the Noble, while the Chapter on the World is wholly wanting; and so there is no verse-by-verse explanation of Shentai’s that can be attached to this fascicle. Yet the three commentaries expressly cite “Master Tai” (Fabao writing the graph differently) four times, and all that is cited falls precisely within the topics of this fascicle — the reckoning of the three seasons of day and night, and the number of aeons for Maitreya’s ascent and descent. This shows that Shentai’s commentary did once explain the Chapter on the World, only that this portion is no longer transmitted and a few words of it are visible only by way of others’ citations. The lacuna is marked as it stands, and text from other fascicles is not made to serve in its place.

How many explanations the word “Increase” has. The prose commentary of this treatise gives two accounts; Puguang analyzes out of them a third and independent one, “a third explanation says: there is an account that sentient beings, having come out of the hell, repeatedly undergo this suffering again, and it is therefore called an Increase,” and says, “this takes as Increase the repeated undergoing of suffering after coming out of the hell proper, and so differs from the second”; besides which he adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle for a further explanation. Fabao refutes this head-on: “weighing the sense of the treatise, there are only two explanations, not three. Some hold that there are three explanations, which is a mistake.” Yuanhui does not enter into this section. What the two commentaries dispute is into how many parts one and the same passage of the treatise should be cut. Both are recorded without adjudication.

The geography of the vajra seat and the capital of King Yama. Puguang adduces the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle: “straight down from the southern edge of this Jambudvīpa, past a measure of five hundred yojanas, there is the capital of King Yama, its length and breadth likewise,” and offers a reconciliation of his own: “on the evidence of this text it is plain that the vajra seat is toward the north, and the hells and the rest are below the capital and somewhat toward the south, so that they do not obstruct one another.” Fabao refutes him directly: “examining this explanation now, the matter is likely not so. The Unremitting hell is twenty thousand yojanas broad, and outside its four gates there are sixteen Increases; or it is said that seven hells encircle the Unremitting hell, and at their flank there are further the cold hells; so that even if they lie somewhat toward the south they still encroach beneath the vajra seat,” and he sets up an explanation of his own — that the dwellings of the human destiny and the abodes of the destiny of ghosts do not obstruct one another in the first place, and so neither do the hells and the vajra seat. The two commentaries explain differently while defending the same thing (both wishing to let the vajra seat and the hells coexist without obstruction). Both are recorded without adjudication.

Why the Anabhraka Heaven subtracts three. Puguang explains it as “from feeling that changes. It is difficult at first to cultivate the feeling that does not change, and so three are subtracted,” and gives two further explanations besides (to make the round sixteen thousand of the Akaniṣṭha; that it is so by the nature of things). Fabao judges this inverted: “this seems inverted. Since what is obtained is hard to fix, body and lifespan ought rather to be increased. It should be said: the feeling that changes below has the superior force of a mind of joyous desire, and by this it performs actions that call forth a superior lifespan and the rest; the feeling that does not change draws forth a mind of gladness that is inferior, and by this it performs actions that call forth a diminished lifespan and the rest” — the direction he establishes is exactly the reverse of Puguang’s. This is the most vivid instance in the fascicle of the three commentaries meeting head-on. Both are recorded without adjudication.

The reckoning of the three seasons of day and night: three masters and three ways of closing. This is the place of sharpest divergence in the fascicle, and the one that best displays the character of each of the three commentaries. Puguang adduces in detail the reckoning of Master Tai and the reckoning of Master Paramārtha, then raises a difficulty of his own, “objection: this too is contrary to principle. If it is said that on the ninth day of the seventh month the night begins to increase, on what time is this based?” and at the end sets up a reconciliation of his own: “the explanation now is this: in the countries of the West the three seasons of cold, heat, and rain are not fixed, and the three periods are established differently according to local custom. The bodhisattva Vasubandhu established the three seasons of the place where he composed the treatise.” Fabao adduces instead the oral teaching of Xuanzang himself — “the Tripiṭaka Master of the Tang takes the sixteenth day of the third month as the beginning of the rainy season, and takes the ninth day of the fifth month as the increase of the night, which likewise does not contradict the Mahāvibhāṣā” — and lists the reckoning of Master Tai alongside, and finally reconciles them on the ground that the cold and heat of the two lands differ, fixing his own reckoning: “explaining the Kośa now, the ninth day of the bright half of the second month of the rainy season is settled as the ninth day of the fifth month in this land.” Yuanhui lists the two schools and expressly declares that he passes no verdict: “of these two explanations above, Master Tai’s intent is that increase and decrease are spoken of after day and night are equal; Master Guang’s intent is that increase and decrease are spoken of after the day is longest. Each rests upon one sense; take or leave as you please. There are further many explanations, which cannot be set out in full.”

Three masters upon one and the same question: one sets up a new explanation of his own, one refers it to local custom, one expressly leaves both standing. Yuanhui’s sentence, “each rests upon one sense; take or leave as you please,” is especially to be noted — it is an ancient master’s own statement of the practice of “recording one sense and two schools together,” and not a rule laid down for him by later hands.

Puguang alone criticizes the reckoning of the divergent translation. At the conversion of capacity in the lifespan of the cold hells, Puguang directly judges Paramārtha’s reckoning to be wrong, what he criticizes being “twenty khārī make one vāha, and one vāha holds two hundred and fifty-six hu.” This is a commentary criticizing a divergent translation, not one commentary criticizing another; Fabao does not touch upon it here and instead supplies his own gloss of “khārī” and “vāha.” Both are recorded without adjudication.

One place where Fabao supplies alone and Puguang does not touch. On the question of the relative breadth and narrowness of the three circles, the prose commentary of this treatise does not discuss it and Puguang does not touch upon it either; Fabao audits it independently, first rejecting one error, “some hold that the twelve and more hundred thousand is the diameter of the great thousand. That does not correspond at all,” then adducing the several masters’ accounts given in the Mahāvibhāṣā, and finally setting down his own judgment: “examining the two accounts above, the former is the better. Since one and the same rainwater forms the water circle, what need is there within it to divide gold from water? And since the three circles rest upon one another, if the wind circle equals the great thousand, why should the water and gold be small?” Fabao’s character of independent criticism may be seen here.

The ancient masters’ own marks of doubt. Beneath this treatise’s sentence “some other school says,” Fabao states that he does not know: “the treatise from ‘some other school says’ to ‘as a chuan holds the grain’ relates the explanation of a divergent school. It is not known which school; it should be looked into” — not knowing which school this divergent account comes from, he expressly marks it for investigation. That the ancient masters marked their doubt where nothing was secure is also part of the practice, and is recorded as it stands.

Puguang’s stated criterion for handling a case where the Mahāvibhāṣā has not adjudicated. At the divergent account of the measure of the terraces of the Sublime and Lofty Mountain, Puguang says, “although the Mahāvibhāṣā has no adjudicator, since this treatise has no divergent account, this treatise is taken as correct” — where the Mahāvibhāṣā itself has not adjudicated, this treatise is taken as correct. This is Puguang’s own statement of his method of choice, and is not in the text of the treatise.

In which aeon Maitreya descends: three accounts set out without decision. Puguang adduces Master Tai’s account based on the Sūtra of the Establishing of the World (ascent in the ninth aeon of abiding, descent in the tenth), and records that Master Paramārtha likewise held this; then he adduces a divergent account from his own line of transmission, “but the Preceptor says: Śākyamuni appeared in the first aeon of the aeon of abiding. Within this aeon four buddhas have already appeared, from the Buddha Krakucchanda to the Buddha Śākyamuni. As for the Buddha Maitreya, he will descend in the second aeon of abiding” — so that Maitreya would descend in the next aeon of abiding. Puguang sets out three accounts and makes no final decision. This belongs to an appended discussion of calendrical reckoning; both are recorded without adjudication.

2. Saṅghabhadra’s Refutations and Supplementary Explanations

Saṅghabhadra’s two treatises name this chapter not “the chapter on the world” but “the chapter analyzing dependent origination”; his opening boundary reads, “thus has the world of sentient beings been analyzed; the receptacle world is now to be analyzed,” the same boundary as this fascicle.

Saṅghabhadra does not use the name “the Sūtra-master” to point at Vasubandhu in this fascicle — but this does not mean there is no dispute in it. Searching graph by graph for the marks of counter-refutation habitual to the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle, the term “the Sūtra-master” has zero hits within the strict range of this fascicle; its one occurrence falls within the explanation belonging to the next fascicle (the ultimate atom, the syllable, the moment). Within the same range the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine likewise has zero hits. This is an honest negative proposition, but the only thing it can prove is this: Saṅghabhadra does not, in this fascicle, use the designation “the Sūtra-master” to point at Vasubandhu by name. From this one cannot infer that there is no dispute in the fascicle. In fact, when Saṅghabhadra reads through to the stanza on the characteristics of the four continents, he criticizes the wording of the root stanza clause by clause: since it has already said “exactly square, each face two thousand,” the sense is already displayed and the word “equal” is useless; and “round without a gap” and “exactly square” display each other and are likewise redundant; he holds that it should simply say “like a full moon” and “like a square seat.” The stanza at the same place in the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine has already been altered to “the continent of Godānīya in the west, its characteristic like a full moon” and “the northern continent like a square seat.” ⇒ Zero hits for a designation is not the absence of criticism. For the wording and page anchors see section V of this unit’s apparatus. Here it is only recorded, and it is not adjudicated who is right.

The dispute over the hell warders: Saṅghabhadra changes the genre. This treatise sets out the two positions together in a form of question and answer and adduces Dharmasubhūti’s stanza as proof; Saṅghabhadra at the same place uses no question-and-answer form at all and does not adduce that stanza, but states it synthetically: “in the three, the Unremitting, Great Heat, and Burning Heat, there are no hell warders on guard within. In the three, Great Howling, Howling, and Massed Crushing, there are few hell warders, since the messengers of King Yama come and go from time to time to inspect them. All the rest are guarded by hell warders. Since hell warders of the differing classes, sentient and insentient, guard and punish the sentient beings that have offended, the fire does not burn them.” The corresponding passage of the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine is nearly the same word for word. With the single phrase “hell warders of the differing classes, sentient and insentient,” Saṅghabhadra gathers in both classes and supplies a detail this treatise does not reach — which hells have warders and which do not. This is not a counter-refutation (Saṅghabhadra does not say this treatise is contrary to principle) but a difference of narrative genre. Puguang too has drawn in this passage of the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle to supply what this treatise leaves unstated. Both are recorded without adjudication.

A god below seeing above: what Saṅghabhadra refutes is a separate school, not the author. This treatise merely records “some other school says” without adding a critique; Saṅghabhadra refutes it head-on: “some other school says: as in the desire realm, whether going or coming, an eye below sees above, so likewise in the form realm, in the goings and comings among the several levels, even setting aside a transformation body of the lower level, an eye below also sees above. That account is contrary to principle, because among the several levels of the form realm cause and result are cut off from one another, and because one must be free from the defilement of a lower level in order to be born above. That the eye faculty of a lower level does not see the form above is because it is a result called forth by lowly action.” Puguang draws this refutation in and marks which school is refuted. The point is that what Saṅghabhadra refutes agrees with what this treatise does not adopt, only that this treatise records it while Saṅghabhadra argues it out. Both are recorded without adjudication.

Between the two treatises there is also a difference of fullness. The Treatise Revealing the Doctrine, after “he must make a transformation body below in order to be seen by those below,” goes straight on to the next question and has no passage “some other school says . . . that account is contrary to principle” — at the same place the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle has the refutation and the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine does not. This is a difference between the two treatises themselves and not one between Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra, and it is recorded as such.

Saṅghabhadra supplies at the head of the fascicle a passage on the background of dissolution and formation. This treatise speaks at the outset of the arising of the wind circle; Saṅghabhadra first accounts for why there is an arising of the wind circle at all: “this hundred koṭi of four-continent realms is established thus, and is dissolved together and formed together. That is, since sentient beings by the nature of things cultivate and obtain the meditative absorptions, when their lives end below they are born in the levels of the second absorption and the rest; the receptacle world below is destroyed by the three catastrophes, and after a long time, resting in the space below, by the dominant force of the actions of sentient beings a slight wind arises, which grows greater and greater and coils into a circle, its entity firm and dense.” This is a taking up and not a counter-refutation, and belongs to an expansion in the fullness of the prose commentary. If a reader would ask “where did the previous world go?”, this passage is the material for collateral reading.

3. The Divergences of Paramārtha’s Older Translation

Paramārtha’s Expository Treatise on the Treasury forms a line of its own in the passage corresponding to this fascicle. The first thing to know is that the opening boundary sentence of this fascicle reads in Paramārtha’s version, “the world-sphere of living beings having been stated, the receptacle world-sphere is now to be stated” — throughout he writes “receptacle world-sphere” and not “receptacle world.” Searching Paramārtha’s version with Xuanzang’s words, this boundary will never be found; comparison across versions can be made only by the structure of the scene. The two versions also differ in the number of fascicles: Paramārtha divides the chapter on the world into four fascicles and Xuanzang into five, and the passage answering to this fascicle straddles two of Paramārtha’s.

The renderings form a line of their own. Sumeru is written Xumilou, yojana youxun, lakṣa luosha, Jambudvīpa the Yanfu Continent, Avīci Apizhi, Uttarakuru North Jiulou, Equal Reviving Renewed Life, Tuṣita Doushuaiduo; the transcriptions of the nine mountains and the four rivers are all different. In point of practice, Xuanzang writes “the stanza says / the treatise says” and brings out the whole stanza first, while Paramārtha writes “the verse says / the explanation says” and embeds his explanation clause by clause among the lines of verse.

Two instances that best display the parting of the ways in method of translation. The first is the sixteen “Increases” — Paramārtha writes sixteen “Parks.” Xuanzang takes the successive addition of suffering, Paramārtha the image of a garden enclosure: the same referent, and wholly different in what they look to. The second is a personal name: that Venerable who spoke the stanza on the warders of Yama is written by Xuanzang as Dharmasubhūti, half rendered by sense and half transcribed, and by Paramārtha as Damo-xubudi, wholly transcribed; and the graphs of the stanza itself differ too, Xuanzang writing “who sees the suffering of others and rejoices at it” and Paramārtha “who sees the suffering of others and takes pleasure in it.” Of the same type is a school’s name: Xuanzang writes the Mahīśāsakas with a sense-rendering and Paramārtha with a transcription. In passing, the condition to which the two versions attach the clause differs here as well: Xuanzang writes “when there is no wind,” Paramārtha “perfumes fifty youxun against the wind.” Both are recorded without adjudication.

One set of figures with principal and secondary exactly reversed. As to the measure of the summit of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, Xuanzang’s stanza text maintains eighty thousand a side and gives “each of the four sides is only twenty thousand” as the account of other masters; Paramārtha’s verse text maintains “the Thirty-Three dwell on the summit, its length and breadth twenty thousand” (twenty thousand a side) and gives “each side eighty thousand youxun” as an account of other masters, and adds yet another master who affirms twenty thousand a side and eighty thousand in circumference. With one and the same set of figures, the “position” and the “account of other masters” are exactly interchanged between the two versions. This is not a difference of rendering but a difference in the variant readings of the stanza text each version received, each translator being faithful to what he had. Both are recorded without adjudication.

One instance of a difference of grouping. Among those listed at the end of the passage on untimely death as not dying untimely, both versions list two first items: Xuanzang “the bodhisattva bound to one more birth” and “one in his last existence,” Paramārtha “the bodhisattva who fills the place in one birth” and “the bodhisattva of the last birth” — the first items can be read against each other, while the range of the second is stated differently in the two versions. Whether these are two stages of one and the same bodhisattva or two classes of person, the two translations group differently, and both are recorded without adjudication.

The direction of fullness runs both ways. It cannot be said of this fascicle that one version is throughout the fuller: at the water possessed of the eight qualities Xuanzang sets out the eight items in full while Paramārtha states them summarily in a running phrase, whereas at the bodily measure at first birth Xuanzang has the five graphs “at first like five up to ten” while Paramārtha writes “like five years and so on, like ten years at first birth,” twice as many graphs. Fullness and brevity vary with the passage and have no fixed direction.

4. Coordinates for Collateral Reading

What this fascicle establishes is a map of the world without an architect. The arising of the wind circle, the forming of the jewels, the not falling of the sun and moon — all of these the treatise refers without exception to “the dominant force of the actions of sentient beings”: the receptacle world is not made by a single cause, nor upheld by an outer power, but is called forth by shared action alone. This proposition turns, in the Yogācāra line, into another kind of statement: the receptacle realm is what the seeds of common characteristics within consciousness transform into. One and the same question with answers from two generations is the most collateral-readable place in this fascicle.

The institution of the three-thousandfold great thousand (a thousand sets of four great continents up to the Brahmā world being a small thousand, and three tiers of multiplying by a thousand a great thousand) and the tables of the bodily measures and lifespans of the four continents have counterparts in the root treatise of the Yogācāra line that can be read against them word for word — so it is with the threefold multiplication by a thousand into small, middling, and great thousands, and so also with the method of establishing the day and night of the heavens by the years of the human world and deriving lifespans from them by degrees; as for the bodily measures of the four continents, both treatises present an increase continent by continent while stating the values differently, and this is recorded without adjudication. The numbers are the same while the doctrinal frameworks to which they are tied differ, and the two may be viewed side by side.

As for the “bound to one more birth” with which this fascicle closes, Paramārtha’s older translation has precisely “the bodhisattva who fills the place in one birth” — a difference of one name, and it is only recorded.