Tattvasiddhi Śāstra
The Tattvasiddhi-Śāstra, is an Indian Abhidharma Buddhist text by a figure known as Harivarman.
It was translated into Chinese in 411 by Kumārajīva and this translation is the only extant version, which became popular in China. This text was translated into English by N. Aiyaswami Sastri in 1978.
Content
The Tattvasiddhi is preserved in sixteen fascicles in the Chinese with 202 chapters, it is organized according to the four noble truths.I. Introduction
- The three treasures of Buddhism
- Introduction to the treatise and its content
- Ten points of controversy
- Form
- Consciousness
- Apperception
- Feeling
- Volitional formations
- Karma
- Defilements
V. The truth of the path
- Concentration
- Insight
"All parts being analyzed again and again are reduced to atoms which again being broken become non-existent. All things culminate necessarily in the idea of Shunyata."
Another important argument covered in the text is on the relationship between mind or consciousness and mental factors. Harivarman argues against the common Abhidharma idea of "association" which held that caitasikas and citta were separate elemental constituents of experience which "associate" or join together. Instead, according to Lin, his view is that mental factors' are not actually things different from consciousness but are in their nature precisely consciousness manifested in different modes".
The Tattvasiddhi outlines a conception of the two truths doctrine, explaining conventional or nominal truth and ultimate truth.
The Tattvasiddhi also outlines the importance of a samadhi which is a "cause of knowledge of things as they are, which is the same as knowledge of Shunyata."
Author and school affiliation
What little information exists about Harivarman is from Chinese sources which put him sometime between 250 and 350 CE. According to Xuanzang's biography, Harivarman was born a Brahmin, ordained with the Sarvāstivāda, and became a student of the Sarvāstivāda teacher Kumāralāta who taught him the "great Abhidharma of Kātyāyana with thousands of gāthās" probably the Jñānaprasthāna. However Harivarman was unhappy with the Abhidharma teachings and spent years studying the sutras to find the source of the disputes of the different Abhidharma schools and afterward engaged in many debates with various Abhidharma teachers, becoming unpopular among them. Xuanzang says he later took up living among the Mahāsāṅghikas and wrote the Tattvasiddhi, while living in Pataliputra. The goal of this work was to “eliminate confusion and abandon the later developments, with the hope of returning to the origin.”The school affiliation of the author and his text has been debated for hundreds of years, even the early Chinese sources disagree. Jizang states that various Chinese teachers consider him as being either a Dharmaguptaka, a Sautrantika, a Dārṣṭāntika, an eclectic teacher, a Bahuśrutīya or a Mahayanist. Three monks, Zhiyi, Jizang and Jingying, labeled it a Hinayana school; it was Daoxuan who first identified it as Sautrāntika.
The Japanese scholars Katsura Shōryu and Fukuhara Ryōgon, in analyzing the doctrinal content, maintain that Harivarman is closest to the Bahuśrutīya school. This is also the position of A.K. Warder. Kumārajīva's student Sengrui discovered Harivarman had refused the abhidharma schools' approach to Buddhism seven times in the text, suggesting a strong sectarian division between them and the Sautrāntikas.
Qian Lin notes the difficulty of using doctrinal analysis to pin down a specific school affiliation due to the fluidity of said schools and the terms used to refer to them. He cautiously places him among the Dārṣṭāntika-Sautrāntika.
Chinese sect
The Chengshi school was a sect based on the Tattvasiddhi which was influential but short-lived in India and had a brief continuation in China and the Asuka and Nara periods of Japan.The Tattvasiddhi was initially promoted by three of Kumarajiva's students, Sengrui, Sengdao and Sengsong. Sengdao wrote a commentary on the text and his lineage was centered in Shouchun while the lineage of Sengson was centered in Pengcheng.
Other major expounders of the Tattvasiddhi in China include the group named "Three Great Masters of the Liang dynasty": Sengmin, Zhizang and Fayun, who initially interpreted the sect as Mahayana in outlook. The three of them in turn received instructions in this treatise from the monk Huici. The three of them also possibly influenced the writing of the Sangyō Gisho, a sutra commentary supposedly authored by Prince Shōtoku.
The tradition of the Tattvasiddhi remained strong up until the Tang dynasty, up to 24 commentaries were written on the text, all of which are now lost. The Madhyamaka teacher Jizang strongly criticized the work as "Hinayana" and possibly due to the rise of new more influential schools such as the Huayan and Tiantai schools, the Chinese tradition of the Tattvasiddhi died out.