Abhisamayalankara - The Eight Categories and Seventy Topics

The Eight Categories and Seventy Topics

The AA is divided into eight categories, which correspond to the first eight chapters of the work (the ninth being a summary), and (with one technical exception in chapter eight) to the eight "realizations" said to be necessary for full enlightenment. (Conze remarks that these eight are "not attested elsewhere.")

This division into eight appears thus at the beginning of the AA itself:

proclaim the Perfection of Wisdom by way of eight subjects. These eight are the knowledge of all aspects, knowledge of paths, and all knowledge. Then there is the awakening to all aspects, when culmination is attained, serial, awakening in an instant, and the Truth Body.

These eight categories naturally fall into three groups, as shown below. The seventy topics (here enumerated but not shown) are their subdivisions. Obermiller traces this list to a manual attributed to 'Jam dbyangs Bzhad pa, who also created the various definitions and category-boundaries familiar to Tibetan debaters. The text may be subdivided further still, into 1,200 items.

Unless otherwise indicated, the English terms below follow Sparham's translation (which revises Conze's).