Samyuktabhidharmahrdaya: Heart of Scholasticism with Miscellaneous Additions

The present work provides the first complete annotated translation into English of the Chinese version of Dharmatrata’s fourth century Samyuktabhidharmahrdaya. Samyuktabhidharmahrdaya (Heart of Scholasticism with Miscellaneous Additions) is the last of a series of expository treatises that summarised the Sarvastivada philosophy as it was prevailing in Bactria and Gandhara and that were based on Dharmasresthin’s Abhidharmahrdaya. The next work in the series, Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosa, is a Sautrantika revision of Dharmatrata’s Vaibhasika influenced treatise. The introduction to the present work gives a general description and a doctrinal comparison of the Bactrian and Gandharan Sarvastivada Abhidharma works. In the notes to the English translation of Samghavarman’s fifth century Chinese version of the Indian text, the work is placed both geographically and historically within Sarvastivada Abhidharma (Bactria-Gandhara/Kashmira). The work is supplemented with indexes, glossaries and a concordance to the Hrdaya treatises and the Kosa.