Simplistically speaking, the history of religious ideas can be approached
from two basic directions: backwards and forwards. The former approach
involves interpreting a particular movement or school of thought utilising
subsequent elaborations and commentarial expositions of it. The latter
approach involves beginning before the movement has even arisen and
examining the antecedent conditions, movements and potential influences
upon that movement as a way of contextualising its earliest stages. This
paper is a brief attempt to approach early Yogacara philosophy from the
latter perspective. In taking this approach to the material I wish to place
much greater emphasis upon the Abhidharma context of Mahayana philosophy by
suggesting a number of ways in which the Sautrantika analysis of perception
may have functioned as an important precursor of the Yogacara's own
position. I will attempt to demonstrate this by discussing certain
Abhidharma antecedents to the Yogacara notions of alayavijnana and
vijnaptimatrata.

The Abhidharmakosabhasya and Early Yogacara

The Sautrantika and Yogacara epistemologies are similar despite the
through-going realism of the former and the apparent idealism of the
latter. The Sautrantika accept that it is only the form (akara) or
representation (vijnapti) of an object which is perceived. Where the
schools differ is in the Yogacara refusal to accept the validity of
discussing external objects as causes (nimitta) given that an external
object is never (directly) perceived.

The thesis of the similarity between the two schools can be illustrated if
we examine the views of the two Vasubandhus, the author of the
Abhidharmakosa and its commentary (Abhidharmakosa-bhasya), and the author
of various early Yogacara works such as the Twenty Verses (Vimsatika) and
the Thirty Verses (Trimsika). These two thinkers may or may not be one and
the same person as tradition suggests [4], but given the similarity between
the Sautrantika and Yogacara epistemologies, movement from the former
position to the latter is not totally incomprehensible. In discussing the
doctrinal position of the author of the Abhidharmakosa-bhasya, Thomas
Dowling suggests that

Vasubandhu occupies a unique doctrinal position vis a vis the question of
what constitutes a dharma. On the one hand, he is unwilling to accept the
over inflated dharma list of the Vaibhasikas, and on the other, he is not
committed to the radical perspective of the ultimate voidness of all
dharmas (in the Kosa, at any rate.) His lack of recourse to such terms as
paramartha satya/samvrti satya in their specifically Mahayana sense is
evidence that the Kosa is a straightforward text grounded in the tacit
assumption that in some sense there 'are' dharmas [5].

In the Abhidharmakosa-bhasya Vasubandhu criticises the Sarvastivada notion
of `possession' (prapti) arguing that the difference between possession and
non-possession (aprapti) is merely the state of having destroyed or not
destroyed the defilements. This is a classic example of the Sautrantika
critique of the Vaibhasika position, curtailing the Vaibhasika tendency to
postulate theoretical and unexperienced entities (this is seen for example
in the Sautrantika denial of the category of
citta-rupa-viprayukta-samskaras, that is `formations neither associated
with consciousness nor form').

The Sautrantikas criticised the postulation of such entities as prapti and
avijnaptirupa, replacing this scheme with a causal model based upon the
notions of karmic seeds (bija) and the transformation of particular streams
of consciousness (samrana-parinamavisesa) [6]. This suggests another strand
of continuity between Vasubandhu qua Sautrantika and Vasubandhu qua
Yogacarin in the emphasis both place upon the transformation of
consciousness as a means of explaining the fluctuating nature of samsara.
Again, such notions as shape (samsthana), taken to be substantial and real
(dravya-sat) by the Vaibhasikas, are purely mental conceptions (parikalpam
kurvanti) arising from visual perception according to Vasubandhu in the
Abbidharmakosa-bhasya [7]. This account may prove to be a precursor of the
attack upon the notion of a six-sided atom in Vasubandhu's Twenty Verses
(Vimsatika), verses 12-14.

In the critique of 'possession' (prapti) in the Abhidharmakosa-bhasya
Vasubandhu qua Sautrantika seems to utilise a notion which becomes of
crucial importance in the subsequent Yogacara elaboration of the path to
liberation, viz. asraya-paravrtti, the conversion of the basis. He states
that

Verily, the physical basis of the Noble One has undergone transformation by
virtue of the path of vision and the path of cultivation such that those
defilements that are allayed no longer have the ability to shoot forth. As
rice seeds that are in a non-germinal (or impotent) state, just so one is