ABSTRACT
Not content with classifying facts into skandhas, sense-fields and elements (cf. pp. 106–16) the scholastics felt in the course of time the need to draw up an overall list of dharmas, thus arriving at some definite inventory for the purposes of meditation on the constituents of the universe which were held to influence salvation. The Theravādins counted 82 dharmas, the Sarvāstivādins 75 and the Yogācārins 100. Most of these are conditioned. 116 The lists agree on essentials and it would be a waste of space to print all three. 558 But since it is important to know what kind of things the Abhidharmists regarded as ‘facts’, it will be useful to first enumerate the items on which all schools known to us substantially agree, and then to note the more important divergences. The three schools of Abhidharmists of whom we have any knowledge 117 agree on everything except the arrangement and grouping of the dharmas, the order of their enumeration and some details of terminology. Their disagreements are quite insignificant, and concern only minor points. 118 The bulk of the list had obviously been compiled before Sarvāstivādins and Thravadinse had separated, and also the Yogācārins rarely departed from the well-established tradition, although here and there they added their own peculiar notions. This is the common list, arranged according to the five skandhas:
