Qīshíwǔ fǎ míngmù 七十五法名目
The Names and Categories of the Seventy-Five Dharmas Anonymous
About the work
An anonymous single-fascicle Abhidharma primer listing and briefly defining the seventy-five dharmas (qī-shí-wǔ fǎ 七十五法) of the Sarvāstivāda-Abhidharma / Abhidharma-kośa (Jù-shè lùn 倶舍論) tradition. The seventy-five dharmas are the Hīnayāna analytical inventory of all phenomenal categories — the foundational Buddhist ontology that the Mahāyāna (in the Yogācāra) recasts as the bǎi fǎ 百法 (one hundred dharmas). For Japanese Hossō students, mastery of the seventy-five dharmas is the prerequisite for entry into the more elaborate Yogācāra one-hundred-dharma scheme.
The text is structured in the standard five categories (wǔ wèi 五位): (1) form-dharmas (sè fǎ 色法, 11 dharmas: 5 indriya roots + 5 sense-objects + 1 unmanifest-form avijñapti-rūpa); (2) mind-dharma (xīn fǎ 心法, 1: citta); (3) mind-associated-dharmas (xīn-suǒ fǎ 心所法, 46); (4) mind-disjoined formations (xīn-bù-xiāng-yīng xíng 心不相應行, 14); (5) unconditioned dharmas (wú-wèi fǎ 無爲法, 3: ākāśa space, pratisaṃkhyā-nirodha analytical-cessation, apratisaṃkhyā-nirodha non-analytical-cessation). The work then provides supplementary expositions of the eight types of sound, the twelve links of dependent origination (with the two-pair-three-life scheme: 2 past causes → 5 present results; 3 present causes → 2 future results), and the jié-shēng 結生 (rebirth-linking) doctrine.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The work is anonymous in the canon, and no transmission colophon survives. The author is not identified in any external source. The 1728 preface to Sōtei’s KR6t0021 Yǒu-zōng qī-shí-wǔ fǎ jì explicitly mentions the present work — “There has previously circulated [a primer titled] Qī-shí-wǔ fǎ míng-mù in the world. Although convenient for the novice, it is regrettable that it does not well distinguish what is concise and what is detailed. There also exist commentaries that purport to elucidate it, but their authors had not read the basic texts of the Kośa, and their meanings are therefore imprecise.” This is the terminus ante quem: notAfter = 1728. The terminus a quo is harder to fix, but the work’s circulation as a stand-alone Japanese primer presupposes the institutional consolidation of the Japanese Hossō school under the Hokuji 北寺 / Kōfuku-ji and Saidai-ji traditions — making a date earlier than the 12th century unlikely. notBefore = 1100, notAfter = 1728.
The work was the principal introductory Abhidharma primer in Japanese Hossō pedagogy from the late Heian through the early Edo period, and was eventually superseded by Sōtei’s more comprehensive KR6t0021 Yǒuzōng qīshíwǔ fǎ jì (1728), which subsumed it. Its survival in the Taishō canon is itself evidence of its long pedagogical role.
Doctrinal content: the work’s organisation follows the standard Kośa sequence of dharmas, with the unusual feature of providing eight categories of sound (shēng 聲) — distinguishing speech-uttered sounds (with affective valence: kě-yì, bù-kě-yì, “pleasant” vs. “unpleasant”) from non-speech-uttered sounds (hand-claps, etc.), and from sentient sounds (yǒu-qíng 有情) vs. non-sentient sounds. This eight-fold classification is a distinctive feature of the Kośa tradition and the work is one of its principal Japanese pedagogical witnesses.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Shichijūgo-hō myōmoku 七十五法名目.
- The work is mentioned in the standard Japanese Abhidharma-pedagogy literature.
Other points of interest
The text is one of the very few anonymous works in the medieval Japanese Buddhist canon to have circulated continuously as a pedagogical standard for at least six centuries — from the late Heian through the early Edo — eventually entering the Taishō canon despite its anonymity and brevity. Its preservation testifies to the importance of the seventy-five-dharma framework within the Japanese Hossō-Kusha (倶舍) curriculum.