India · c. 4th–5th c. CE
Vasubandhu
Abhidharma master who became Yogācāra’s great systematiser
He first summed up Abhidharma in his Treasury; then, converted by Asaṅga, he argued in short verse treatises that experience is ‘mere representation’, using dream examples and a critique of atoms.
Life and thought
Vasubandhu, from Puruṣapura (Peshawar), is usually dated to the 4th–5th century, though some scholars think tradition merged two men of that name. He first made his name in the Abhidharma schools of Kashmir and Gandhāra, summing up the Sarvāstivāda system—and criticising it from a Sautrāntika standpoint—in his Treasury of Abhidharma. Later, persuaded by his half-brother Asaṅga, he turned to Yogācāra.
His short Twenty Verses argue that the objects we experience are “mere representation” (vijñapti-mātra). Objectors ask: if there is no outer world, why do things appear at fixed places and times, and to many people at once? He answers with dreams, where objects also appear at definite places and times and can have real effects, and with hungry ghosts, who all see the same river as a river of pus. He then argues that external atoms are incoherent: if they had parts they would not be atoms, and if they had none they could not combine. Dignāga, Xuanzang and the Chinese Weishi school built on him.
Works
Teachers
c. 4th c. CEAsaṅgaTradition says Asaṅga converted his younger half-brother from Abhidharma to the Mahāyāna.Shaped
c. 480–540DignāgaTradition makes Dignāga a pupil of Vasubandhu; whether they actually met is uncertain.Criticised by
1885–1968Xiong ShiliXiong studied Yogācāra under Ouyang Jingwu and then broke with it in his own “new” consciousness-only.Meanwhile, in other traditions
354–430Augustine of HippoNorth African bishop who fused Christianity with Platonismborn c. 350–370; died 415HypatiaMathematician and Neoplatonist teacher in AlexandriaOn the record
Vasubandhu lived c. 4th–5th century CE and was Asaṅga’s younger half-brother.
The Stanford Encyclopedia dates him to the 4th to 5th century, partly on Paramārtha’s report that he taught at the court of a ‘Vikramāditya’ often identified with Chandragupta II (r. 380–415), and confirms that Asaṅga was his elder half-brother who won him over to Yogācāra. Frauwallner’s theory that two Vasubandhus were merged into one still has supporters.