Because of his innumerable star-eyes, Varun: a was re-garded as omniscient. His knowledge and his function as amoral judge were the chief sources of his power, as he hadno remarkable achievements to his credit. He watched overhuman beings: When two persons conversed, he was the in-visible third; when anyone sinned, Varun: a afflicted the trans-gressor with disease, and until the god relented, the victimwould not be restored to health. In the solemnVarun: apraghasa rite, a seasonal sacrifice, the sacrificer’s wifewas required to confess her sin (i.e., conjugal infidelity) be-fore the officiating priest. This is a unique instance of confes-sion of sin in the early Vedic literature, and Varun: a was thegod associated with this sacrifice. The punishment he metedout in such cases was called a “seizure,” hence the elaborateprayers to Varun: a for forgiveness of sins.

In later literature Varun: a’s ethical role diminishes, butearly texts frequently associate his majesty or supremacy withhis function as upholder of the moral order referred to in theR: gveda as r: ta or, sometimes, dharma (i.e., “that which up-holds”) or satya (“truth”). In the Avesta this all-pervasivemoral order that controls and regularly maintains the cosmicforces is arata, asa, urta, or arta; a cardinal concept in Zoro-astrianism, it is first mentioned in the Tel-el-Amarna Tablet(c. fourteenth century BCE). R: ta is Varun: a’s special domain,and it is often mentioned in connection with him.

Another concept associated with Varun: a is the magicalpower known as maya; for example, Asura’s (i.e., Varun: a’s)maya. In the Vedic context maya meant both wisdom andpower. With his maya Varun: a envelops the night and createsthe dawn. Maya predominantly links him with demons, forin later literature asura meant “demon,” and demons wieldedmaya.

Varun: a’s dark associations bring him close to the pri-marily chthonic gods such as Yama, Nirr: ti, Soma, andRudra. As a chthonic god, Varun: a is associated with snakes(indeed, in Buddhist literature he is sometimes called the“king of snakes”), with barren black cows, or with deformedand ugly creatures. His ritual symbols are dark, depraved,and deformed things or creatures. His son Bhr:gu is said tohave descended into hell. His connection with Vasistha,however, goes back to Indo-Iranian times: In the Avesta,Asha Vahishta (Vedic, R: ta Vasis: t:ha) is one of the AmeshaSpentas who were Ahura Mazda’s active assistants. Varun: ais Soma’s brother. Of his wife, Varun: ani, nothing more thanher name is known.

The dynamic character of Varun: a’s mythological careersubsided in the later Vedic literature, where he is associatedwith the celestial waters. In the epics and Puranas, however,his domain shifted from the firmament toward the earth, andhe became the overlord of the terrestrial waters, rivers,streams, and lakes, but primarily of the ocean. He dwelt inroyal splendor in an underwater palace. Like Poseidon,Greek god of the ocean, he is often associated with horses.Finally, he is relegated to the position of “lord of the West,”another dark and chthonic association. Here the circle of his

mythological career closes, because as a dikpala (“lord of aquarter [of the sky]”) he is no more than a wholly passivegod.

BIBLIOGRAPHYApte, V. M. “Varun: a in the R: gveda.” New Indian Antiquary

(Bombay) 8 (1946):136–156. Deals with Varun: a’s Vedicbackground.

Bhattacharji, Sukumari. Indian Theogony: A Comparative Study ofIndian Mythology from the Vedas to the Puranas. Cambridgeand New York, 1970. See especially pages 22–47.

Dandekar, R. N. “Varun: a, Vasis: t:ha and Bhakti.” In Añjali: Paperson Indology and Buddhism, a Felicitation Volume Presented toOliver Hector de Alwis Wijesekera on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed-ited by J. Tilakasiri, pp. 77–82. Peradeniya, Ceylon, 1970.

Dumézil, Georges. Ouranos-Varuna. Paris, 1934. A comprehen-sive treatise on Varun: a and his Greek counterpart, Ouranos,and the traits they share.

Hiersche, Rolf, “Zur Etymologie des Götternamens Varun: a.”Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung (Berlin) 4(1956): 359–363. Explores Varun: a’s identity from the vari-ous derivations of his name.

Kuiper, F. B. J. “The Bliss of Asa.” Indo-Iranian Journal 8, no. 2(1964): 96–129.

Lüders, Heinrich. Varun: a. 2 vols: Vol. 1, Varun: a und die Wasser.Vol. 2, Varun: a und das Rta. Göttingen, 1951–1959.

Renou, Louis. “Varuna dans l’Atharvaveda.” Paideuma 7 (1960):300–306 (Festgabe für Herman Lommel).

Thieme, Paul. “Patañjali über Varun: a und die sieben Ströme.” InMélanges présentés à Georg Morgenstierne à l’occasion de sonsoixante-dixième anniversaire, pp. 168–173. Wiesbaden,1964.

Thieme, Paul. “Varun: a in the Mahabharata.” In Proceedings of theTwenty-Sixth Congress of Orientalists, edited by R. N. Dande-kar, vol. 3, p. 329. Poona, 1969.

SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI (1987)

VASUBANDHU (fifth or fourth century CE) was an em-inent Indian Buddhist teacher. Said to be a younger brotherof the great Mahayana teacher Asanga, Vasubandhu was firstordained in the Hınayana Sarvastivada school but later con-verted to the Mahayana. Like his brother Asanga, Vasuband-hu became a great exponent of the Yogacara-Vijñanavadateachings. He is believed to be the author of theAbhidharmakosa and many Mahayana treatises.

Various problems continue to vex historians concerningthe biography of Vasubandhu. The Bosoupandou fashi zhuan(Biography of Master Vasubandhu, T.D. no. 2049), translat-ed—or rather, compiled—by Paramartha (499–569), one ofthe main exponents of Yogacara doctrine in China, is pre-served in the Chinese Tripit:aka and is the only complete bi-ography. Apart from this, fragmentary information is foundin various Chinese sources, the most important of which arethe writings of the great Chinese translator Xuanzang (600–

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664). Various histories of Buddhism written by Tibetan his-torians also give accounts of Vasubandhu’s life. But Chineseand Tibetan sources alike disagree with the Biography of Mas-ter Vasubandhu (hereafter Biography) in many places. More-over, two or three persons in Buddhist history bear the nameVasubandhu: According to some texts, a Vasubandhu is thetwenty-first patriarch in the transmission of the Buddha’sDharma; elsewhere, Puguang (one of the direct disciples ofXuanzang) refers to an “ancient Vasubandhu” who belongedto the Sarvastivada school; and both Puguang and Yasomitra,a commentator on the Abhidharmakosa, refer to a third,known as Sthavira-Vasubandhu. The identification of andrelationship between these three persons is still unclear.

BIOGRAPHY. Vasubandhu’s Biography can be divided intothree sections. The first section is introductory. It beginswith a legend of Purus:apura (modern Peshawar), the nativecity of Vasubandhu, and then introduces his family: his fa-ther, the brahman Kausika, and the latter’s three sons,Asanga, Vasubandhu, and Viriñcivatsa. After a brief refer-ence to Viriñcivatsa’s life, an account is given of Asanga’s life,including the famous story of his meeting with the bodhisatt-va Maitreya in the Tusita Heaven.

Vasubandhu’s life comprises the second section. It be-gins by sketching the history of the Sarvastivada school inKashmir and tells of the composition of the Abhidharmatreatises and the great commentary on them, theMahavibhas: a, there. Knowledge of the Mahavibhas: a’s con-tents was jealously kept secret from outsiders, the account al-leges, but somehow it became known in Ayodhya (near mod-ern Faizabad), a city far removed from Kashmir. At the time,Vasubandhu was residing in Ayodhya, then the capital of theGupta dynasty. Vindhyavasin, a Sam: khya teacher and a dis-ciple of Vars:aganya, came to Ayodhya to challenge the Bud-dhists there to a debate while Vasubandhu and his colleagueManoratha were absent. Their fellow teacher Buddha-mitrathus had to meet the challenge alone, but because of his agehe was defeated. This defeat deeply mortified Vasubandhu,who wrote a treatise, Paramarthasaptatika, in order to con-fute Vindhyavasin. It was after this that Vasubandhu com-posed his magnum opus, the Abhidharmakosa (hereafterKosa), in six hundred verses (karikas). The Kosa was an elo-quent summary of the purport of the Mahavibhas: a, and itis reported that the Kashmiri Sarvastivadins rejoiced to seein it all their doctrines so well propounded. Accordingly,they requested a prose commentary (bhas:ya), which Vasu-bandhu wrote. But the Kashmiris soon realized, to their greatdisappointment, that the work in fact refuted manySarvastivada theories and upheld the doctrines of theSautrantika school. With the composition of the Kosa, how-ever, Vasubandhu came to enjoy the patronage and favor oftwo Gupta rulers, Vikramaditya and his heir Baladitya, whocan be identified, respectively, as Skandagupta (r. about455–467) and Narasim: hagupta (r. about 467–473).Vasurata, a grammarian and the husband of the younger sis-ter of Baladitya, challenged him to a debate but was defeated.Then Sam: ghabhadra, a Sarvastivada scholar from Kashmir,

appeared to dispute the Kosa. He composed two treatises,one consisting of 10,000 verses and another of 120,000verses. (According to Xuanzang’s report, it took twelve yearsfor Sam: ghabhadra to finish the two works.) He challengedVasubandhu to a debate, but Vasubandhu refused, saying,“I am already old, so I will let you say what you wish. Longago, this work of mine destroyed the Vaibhas: ika (i.e., theSarvastivada) doctrines. There is no need now of confrontingyou. . . . Wise men will know which of us is right andwhich is wrong.”

The third section of the biography describes Vasuband-hu’s conversion to Mahayana Buddhism. According to thisaccount, Vasubandhu, now proud of the fame he had ac-quired, clung faithfully to the Hınayana doctrine in whichhe was well versed and, having no faith in the Mahayana, de-nied that it was the teaching of the Buddha. His elder broth-er, Asanga, a Mahayanist, feared that Vasubandhu would usehis great intellectual gifts to undermine the Mahayana. Byfeigning illness he was able to summon his younger brotherto Purus:apura, where he lived. There Vasubandhu askedAsanga to explain the Mahayana teaching to him, where-upon he immediately realized the supremacy of Mahayanathought. After further study the depth of his realization cameto equal that of his brother. Deeply ashamed of his formerabuse of the Mahayana, Vasubandhu wished to cut out histongue, but refrained from doing so when Asanga told himto use it for the cause of Mahayana. After Asanga’s death, Va-subandhu composed commentaries on various Mahayanasutras, including the Avatam: saka, Nirvan: a, Saddharma-pun: d: arıka, Prajñaparamita, Vimalakırti, and Srımaladevı.He himself composed a treatise (or treatises) on the “repre-sentation only” (vijñaptimatra) theory and commented onthe Mahayanasam: graha, *Triratna-gotra, *Amr: ta-mukha,and other Mahayana treatises. He died in Ayodhya at the ageof eighty.

The Biography contains legendary or even mythical ele-ments; the time sequence of events is ambiguous and differsgreatly in places from the accounts in Xuanzang’s Xiyu ji. Forexample, the Biography has Vasubandhu composing the Kosaat Ayodhya and states that his conversion takes place atPurus:apura; the Xiyu ji places the composition of the Kosain the suburbs of Purus:apura, and the conversion atAyodhya. According to the Biography, Vasubandhu’s teacherwas called Buddhamitra, who, it relates, was defeated in a de-bate by Vindhyavasin. The Xiyu ji, however, never mentionsBuddhamitra and names Manoratha as the teacher of Vasu-bandhu. In the Biography, Vasubandhu engages in his literaryactivity on behalf of the Mahayana after Asanga’s death.Xuanzang, however, tells a strange story that suggests thatVasubandhu died before Asanga. Paramartha and Xuanzangare the two most credible authorities for Vasubandhu’s life,but serious discrepancies still exist between their accounts.

THE DATE OF VASUBANDHU. Vasubandhu’s life has beenvariously dated at 900, 1,000, and 1,100 years after the Bud-dha’s nirvan: a. The figure 900 appears in the Biography, but

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elsewhere Paramartha is also said to have given another fig-ure, 1,100. The figure 1,000 is found in Xuanzang’s report,but the figure 900 seems also to have been adopted by hisdisciples. Various theories concerning the date have been of-fered by scholars. Noël Péri and Shiio Benkyo give as Vasu-bandhu’s dates the years 270 to 350 CE. Ui Hakuju placeshim in the fourth century (320–400). Takakusu Junjiro andKimura Taiken give 420 to 500, Wogihara Unrai gives 390to 470, and Hikata Ryusho gives 400 to 480, placing himin the fifth century.

In order to resolve these issues, Erich Frauwallner(1951) proposed a new theory whereby two Vasubandhus,Vasubandhu the elder and Vasubandhu the younger, are dis-tinguished. The elder would be the younger brother ofAsanga. It is his activity that, according to this theory, is de-scribed in the first and third sections of the Biography andmay be dated at around 320 to 380. The younger would bethe author of the Kosa. His activity constitutes the secondsection of the Biography. Since he was associated with the twoGupta rulers, he may be dated around 400 to 480. Frauwall-ner supposes that Paramartha confused the two Vasuband-hus and conflated them into a single person. This mistake,he maintains, was inherited by later historians, includingXuanzang.

Frauwallner’s lucid and revolutionary theory has beenendorsed by many scholars. But it does not seem to convinceall. Especially doubtful is his treatment of early Chinese doc-uments, many of which have been claimed by scholars to bespurious. Japanese scholars, who opposed the theory of dat-ing in the fourth century by negating the evidence employedin its support, would reject Vasubandhu the elder for almostthe same reasons. At any rate, Frauwallner’s theory and theissues it raises remain a hypothesis.

LITERARY ACTIVITY. Vasubandhu is renowned as the authorof one thousand works, five hundred in the Hınayana tradi-tion and five hundred Mahayana treatises. However, onlysome forty-seven are extant, nine of which survive in the San-skrit original, twenty-seven in Chinese translation, and thir-ty-three in Tibetan translation.

Among the independent expositions of Vasubandhu’sown philosophy and doctrines, the Abhidharmakosa is themost voluminous. In the countries of “northern” Buddhism,including Tibet, it came to be regarded as a fundamental textto be studied by all students of the tradition. The Karmasidd-hi (Demonstration of Karma) is a short, quasi-Hınayanatreatise colored, as is the Abhidharmakosa, by Sautrantikaleanings. From the Yogacara point of view the most impor-tant of Vasubandhu’s works are the Vim: satika (Twentyverses), Trim: sika (Thirty verses), and Trisvabhavanirdesa(Exposition on the three natures). Although these three textsare all very brief (and the last was totally unknown in China),they form a sort of trinity and represent Vasubandhu’s finalaccomplishment as a Yogacara-Vijñanavada teacher. TheTrim: sika is especially important in that it became the basictext of the Faxiang (Jpn., Hosso) school. The Foxing lun

(Treatise on Buddha nature), although thought to be apocry-phal by not a few scholars, exerted great influence on Sino-Japanese Buddhism by advocating the concept oftathagata-garbha, or Buddha nature. Vasubandhu’s worksalso include books on logic, polemics, and other sciences.

Vasubandhu’s commentaries on sutras and sastras areby no means less important than the above-mentioned inde-pendent treatises. He wrote commentaries on three treatises:the Madhyantavibhaga (Discrimination between the middleand the extremes), Mahayanasutralam: kara (Ornament of theMahayana Sutras), and Dharmadharmatavibhaga (also,-vibhanga; Discrimination between existence and essence).These three treatises are all ascribed to Asanga’s teacherMaitreya and are therefore fundamental texts for theYogacara school. Vasabandhu also composed a commentaryon Asanga’s Mahayanasam: graha (Compendium ofMahayana), the first systematic presentation of theYogacara-Vijñanavada doctrines. His commentary (upadesa)on the Sukhavatıvyuha Sutra is important in that it becamea basic treatise of the Pure Land faith in China and Japan.The Indian Yogacara-Vijñanavada is represented in China bythree schools, all of which developed around Vasubandhu’sworks. The first to appear, the Dilun school (established inthe first half of the sixth century), took his commentary onthe Dasabhumika Sutra as its central text. The second, theShelun school, emerged in the second half of the same centu-ry organized around a Paramartha’s translation of theMahayana-sam: graha. The last to appear, the Faxiang school,founded by Xuanzang and his disciple Kuiji in the seventhcentury, took the Trim: sika as its basic text.

With these works, Vasubandhu proved to be a highlyinfluential Mahayana teacher. He is reverently called a bodhi-sattva, or even “the second Buddha,” in various traditionsfrom India to China. Vasubandhu brought to fruition doc-trinal developments in the Mahayana, especially in theYogacara-Vijñanavada tradition, that had been begun byMaitreya and Asanga and advanced by other unknown teach-ers. He thus marks a culmination in Buddhist history. Beforehim, his school concerned itself chiefly with Buddhist prac-tice (hence the name Yogacara); after him, it emphasized the-oretical problems such as the analysis of consciousness (hencethe name Vijñanavada), so that various ontological, episte-mological, and logical investigations became more and moreconspicuous. Compared with Asanga, who was gifted as a re-ligious leader, Vasubandhu seems more scholarly, abhidhar-mic, and theoretical.

SEE ALSO Asanga; Buddhism, article on Buddhism in India;Buddhism, Schools of, articles on Chinese Buddhism,Mahayana Buddhism; Maitreya; Yogacara.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A bibliography appended to Erich Frauwallner’s On the Date ofthe Buddhist Master of the Law, Vasubandhu (Rome, 1951)is highly helpful in that it exhausts almost all discussions,hence almost all evidences, relevant to Vasubandhu’s date.

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After Frauwallner, there is no independent biographicalstudy on Vasubandhu, except a paper by Hikata Ryusho, “AReconsideration on the Date of Vasubandhu,” Bulletin of theFaculty of the Kyushu University 4 (1956): 53–74, which doesnot refer to Frauwallner and a criticism of Frauwallner’s the-ory by Padmanabh S. Jaini, “On the Theory of Two Vasu-bandhus,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies 21 (1958): 48–53.

Vasubandhu’s thought is the subject of numerous studies. Amongthe most useful are Louis de La Vallée Poussin’sVijñaptimatratasiddhi, la siddhi de Hiuan-tsang, 2 vols.(Paris, 1928–1929); Sylvain Lévi’s Un système de philosophiebouddhique: Materiaux pour l’étude du système Vijñaptimatra(Paris, 1932); and Yuki Reimon’s Seshin Yuishiki no kenkyu(Tokyo, 1955–1956).

There have been several publications of English translations of theFrench translations of Vasubandhu’s work. Among these areAbhidharmakosabhasyam, by Louis De La Vallée Poussin,English translation by Leo Pruden (Berkeley, Calif., 1988–1990), and Karmasiddhiprakarana: The Treatise on Action.,by E. Lamotte, English translation by Leo Pruden (Berkeley,Calif., 1988). Stefan Anacker’s Seven Works of Vasubandhu(Delhi, 1984) includes translations of Vasubandhu’sVadavidhı, Pañcaskandha-prakaran: a, Karmasiddhi-praka-ran: a, Vim: satika, Trim: sika, Madhyantavibhagabhas:ya, andTrisvabhavanirdesa; another important translation is Her-mann Jacobi’s Trim: sikavijñapti des Vasubandhu, mit bhas:yades acarya Sthiramati (Stuttgart, 1932). Louis de La ValléePoussin translated the most influential work of Abhidharmaas L’Abhidharmakosa de Vasubandhu, 6 vols. (1923–1931;reprint, Brussels, 1971). My Chukan to yuishiki (Tokyo,1978) contains articles discussing some philosophical ideasof the Vijñanavada; see also Seshin ronshu (Tokyo, 1976) byKajiyama Yuichi, Aramaki Noritoshi, and me.

NAGAO GADJIN (1987 AND 2005)

VATICAN COUNCILSThis entry consists of the following articles:

VATICAN IVATICAN II [FIRST EDITION]VATICAN II [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]

VATICAN COUNCILS: VATICAN IWhen Pius IX decided to convoke an ecumenical council,his purpose, clarified by advice solicited from various bishopswhom he regarded as trustworthy, was to complete the workof reacting against naturalism and rationalism. He had beenpursuing this goal since the beginning of his pontificate byendeavoring to establish Catholic life and thought once againon the solid foundation of divine revelation. As a result ofsuggestions from the bishops he had consulted, he added tothis purpose, first, defining the true nature of the relation be-tween church and state while taking into account the newsituation produced by the French Revolution and its conse-quences and, second, adapting church law in ways made nec-essary by the profound changes that had taken place duringthe three centuries since the last ecumenical council.

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSIONS. Despite the reservations ofsome in the Curia Romana, which caused him to delay fortwo years, Pius IX was encouraged by prominent membersof the episcopate to announce his intention of convoking acouncil; on July 29, 1868, he officially summoned all thebishops of Christendom to come to Rome by December 8,1869, along with others who had the right to attend (espe-cially the superiors general of the major religious orders).During the preliminary consultations a number of bishopshad suggested taking advantage of the council to try to renewcontacts with separated Christians. Two apostolic letters,dated September 8 and 13, 1868, invited the Eastern prelatesnot in communion with Rome, the Protestants, and the An-glicans in order that they might be able to take part in thecouncil. But this clumsy approach was considered very in-sulting by those addressed and may be regarded, from an ecu-menical viewpoint, as one of the most distressing examplesof a lost opportunity.

In the Catholic world the announcement of the councilalmost immediately intensified the opposition between cur-rents of thought that had been in confrontation for severalyears: Neo-Gallicans and liberal Catholics, on the one hand,and ultramontanes and opponents of modern freedoms, onthe other. The choice of the consultors who were to preparethe drafts of the conciliar decrees—the group included sixtyRomans and thirty-six from abroad, almost all of themknown for their ultramontane and antiliberal views—disturbed those who had been hoping that the council wouldprovide an opportunity for bishops from the outer reachesof the church to open up the church somewhat to modernaspirations and who thought they could discern a strategy atwork: namely, to prepare for the council in secret, with nochallenges raised by debate and with the curial viewpointalone represented, and then to have the fathers accept with-out discussion a series of ready-made propositions.

The unfortunate “Correspondence from France” thatwas published on February 6, 1869, in La civiltà cattolica,the organ of the Jesuits in Rome, seemed to confirm this ex-pectation by predicting a definition of papal infallibility byproclamation and thus without any possibility of restatementor discussion by the fathers. The reaction was especially in-tense in the Germanic countries. In particular, Ignaz vonDöllinger, the well-known professor at the University of Mu-nich, whose hostility toward the Curia had been on the in-crease for a number of years, published under the pen nameJanus a violent and one-sided polemic against the overem-phasis on papal primacy and Roman centralization. Polemi-cal articles, though more moderate in tone, were also pub-lished in the newspapers of France, where liberal Catholicsregarded as inopportune the definition of papal infallibilityfor which the ultramontanes were calling. The question ofpapal infallibility, which had not come up in the initial pro-gram for the council, suddenly became a major issue duringthe months preceding the opening of the council. A numberof prominent bishops, such as Victor Deschamps, archbish-

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