86 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Carefully rendered, well presented, immensely important., April 8, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Abhidharmakosabhasyam, 4 Volume Set (Hardcover)
Abhidharma Kosa Bhasyam. By Vasubandhu. Leo M. Pruden's landmark translation of
Vasubandhu's encyclopedic treatment of the
Abhidharma from the French of Louis de La
Vallee Poussin is a stunningly meticulous
work of scholarship. In the marvelous
setting of a high-quality hardcover edition,
it displays Professor Pruden's
uncompromising dedication to bringing a
complete, accurate and well-annotated
rendering of the crown jewel of Abhidharma
compilations into English.
For those who are unfamiliar with the
significance of the Abhidharma, it is the
systematic delineation of Buddhist
philosophical tenets. In aggregate, it forms
one of the three collections comprising the
three-fold Buddhist canon known as the
Tripitaka. The importance of this work of
Vasubandhu lies a) in its encyclopedic
completeness; and b) in its exposition of
the common philosophical ground shared by
both the Southern and Northern traditions of
Buddhism. It is a work which, though
dedicated primarily to material most readily
associated with the fundamental teachings of
Southern-tradition Buddhism, has always been
held in the highest esteem in Chinese and
Tibetan traditions as well.
This work is graced by a 60-page
introduction to Abhidharma written by
Professor Pruden entitled The Abhidharma:
The Origins, Growth and Development of a
Literary Tradition. That is then followed by
de La Vallee Poussin's own 50-page
introduction to Vasubandhu's work. Each
volume is preceded by an extremely detailed
table of contents, totaling 30 pages in all.
The final volume includes a carefully
compiled 50-page index to the entire work.
Each chapter includes copious annotation in
the form of end notes. Given this sterling
approach to presentation and annotation,
this four-volume edition constitutes a
veritable encyclopedia of abhidharma tenets.
To help the reader better understand the
construction of Vasubandhu's work, I present
here the basic breakdown of its
construction:
Chapter One: The Dhaatus
Chapter Two: The Indriyas
Chapter Three: The World
Chapter Four: Karma
Chapter Five: The Latent Defilements
Chapter Six: The Path and the Saints
Chapter Seven: The Knowledges
Chapter Eight: The Absorptions
Chapter Nine: Refutation of the Pudgala
Ideally, this work should abide on the shelf
of every serious English-speaking Buddhist
as a counter-weight to the foolish notion
that "just-sitting" will somehow bring about
true liberation. The Buddha himself insisted
that the two provisions of: a) merit; and
b) wisdom are essential to any meaningful
advancement along the path to enlightenment.
This work contributes a solid foundation
stone to the edifice of wisdom which each
practitioner must endeavor to construct. Its
utility as a foundation is equally valuable
whether that construction eventually
expresses a Southern-tradition or Northern-
tradition architecture.
The expense of this work ($300), while not
at all unreasonable given the extravagance
of the meticulous four-volume hard-cover
edition, may place this work beyond the
grasp of many struggling Dharma students.
At the very least, however, every Dharma
center could acquire a single copy as a non-
circulating library reference. It is
difficult to overestimate the value of this
work in clarifying the meaning of
fundamental Buddhist philosophical tenets.
For the translator, it is an invaluable
reference work which serves well in the
correct translation of abstruse technical
terms which might otherwise be distorted by
over-reliance upon the Tibetan- or Chinese-
language renderings of such terms.
In short, the presence of this marvelous
compendium of Abhidharma in such a fine
English edition is a cause for celebration
in every tradition of Western Buddhism.
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Classic, April 7, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Abhidharmakosabhasyam, 4 Volume Set (Hardcover)
The Abhidharmakosa is undoubtedly the most widely studied textbook of Buddhism. It forms one of the five basic textbooks of the Tibetan monastic curriculum, and in Japan it is the traditional way to begin the study of Buddhist philosophy. But it is by no means an easy or simple book. Years are devoted to its study in these countries.
Vasubandhu sifted through the whole mass of Buddhist teachings to produce this "treasury" (kosa) of them. Because of its excellence, it soon eclipsed all its rivals in early India, and has remained a classic for fifteen hundred years. This translation includes Vasubandhu's own detailed commentary, "bhasyam," so it forms a self-contained veritable encyclopedia of Buddhism.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Extremely Important Work -- The Best English Translation Available, February 21, 2008
This review is from: Abhidharmakosabhasyam, 4 Volume Set (Hardcover)
For the time being, this is the best (and one of the only) English language translations of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasyam, one of the most important works in Buddhist literature. A forthcoming work in English may render this volume less important, but it is not clear when that translation is going to be published. Thus, for the time being, this is the edition to refer to for those who are not able to read in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese or Japanese.
An important note: although this work is indeed a translation based on the French translation of Louis de Vallee Poussin, Leo Pruden himself is a Buddhist scholar who knows Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese. So it is not a case of this work merely being a translation from French into English. Pruden has checked the work against the Sanskrit text (which was not available in most instances to Poussin at the time of his translation) to examine it for accuracy. So although the translation is not likely to be 100% faithful to the Sanskrit, it is probably pretty good. In fact, one could argue that since it is based also on an understanding of the Chinese and Japanese translations and traditions, it may be (possibly?) even richer than a translation by a scholar of Sanskrit who translates straight from Sanskrit to English without knowledge of Chinese or Japanese. This is because, unlike some translation jobs, the translation of Buddhist texts is very much dependent upon interpretation, and therefore a knowledge of the commentarial traditions that have emerged in living Buddhist societies.
That being said, this, along with Asanga's Abhidharmasamuccaya, is the most important work on the "Abhidharma"-- a crucial aspect of Buddhist thought. Abhidharma is one of the five main topics studied in Gelugpa Tibetan monasteries, for example. It examines issues such as the aggregates, perception and cognition, mental states and emotions, the sense faculties, and so forth.
For those with no prior knowledge of Abhidharma, one might be better off beginning with a shorter introductory work before heading straight into this lengthy treatise. Chogyam Trungpa has written a short work on Abhidharma, but unfortunately there are not that many accessible studies written in English to my knowledge.
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