Abhidhamma Pitaka

The Abhidhamma Pitaka (abhidhammapiṭaka) is the last of the three pitakas (Pali for "baskets") constituting the Pali Canon, the scriptures of Theravāda Buddhism.

The Abhidhamma Pitaka is a detailed scholastic reworking of material appearing in the Suttas, according to schematic classifications. It does not contain systematic philosophical treatises, but summaries or enumerated lists.

The other two collections are the Sutta Pitaka and the Vinaya Pitaka.

Abhidhamma has been variously described as philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics. L. S. Cousins says that the Abhidhamma methodology looks at things in terms of occasions or events instead of sequences or processes.

Tradition holds that the Buddha thought out the Abhidhamma immediately after his enlightenment then taught it to the gods some years later. Later the Buddha repeated it to Sariputta who then handed it on to his disciples. This tradition is also evident in the Parivara, a very late addition to the Vinaya Pitaka, which mentions in a concluding verse of praise to the Buddha that this best of creatures, the lion, taught the three pitakas..

Scholars, however, generally date the Abhidhamma works to originating some time around the third century BCE, 100 to 200 years after the death of the Buddha. Therefore, the seven Abhidhamma works are generally claimed by scholars not to represent the words of the Buddha himself, but those of disciples and scholars. Dr Rupert Gethin however said that important elements of Abhidhamma methodology probably go back to the Buddha's lifetime.A. K. Warder and Dr Peter Harvey both suggested early dates for the matikas on which most of the Abidhamma books are based. Abhidhamma started out as elaboration of the suttas, but later developed independent doctrines.

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