ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Hīnayāna Buddhist philosophical system on the epistemological, ontological and semiotic themes in the list of Five Classes of Factors. The list has incorporated many of the other lists in earlier Hīnayāna Buddhist texts and is considered by scholars as the most definitive Sarvāstivāda formulation of the categories of thought in the Hinayana Buddhist system. In two senses a preliminary study of the Hīnayāna Buddhist system is compulsory for a serious engagement with the Mahāyāna Buddhist texts. The Hīnayāna analysts of dharma's wanted to provide a complete list of everything that counts as a dharma. A dialectical system would recognise an original movement towards the other, or a movement that threatens to blur the boundary between picture-thinking and reflection. Vasubhandu II even proposes to assign a new meaning to the term 'satkāyadṛṣṭi' It has been used as a name for ordinary people's 'doctrine of the existence of a physical body' Etymologically speaking.
