  The theoretical developments that led to the notion of repository  consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna), which is  associated with the Yogācāra School, are already  foreshadowed in these Abhidharma debates about how best to  account for continuity in the mental stream and the efficacy of  accumulated karmic potential. The notion of repository consciousness  appears perhaps for the first time in Asaṅga’s  encyclopedic work, Stages of the Practice of Yoga  (Yogācārabhūmi, cf. Schmithausen 1987, 12,  18). The new type of consciousness, closely connected with the living body, retains much of the original use of vijñāna  to designate both consciousness and cognition. The function of the  repository consciousness is explained in a seminal Yogācāra work such as the Sutra Explaining the Profound Meaning  (Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, V. 2, Lamotte 1935, 230)  as having the primary function of ‘descending’ in the  mother's womb, ‘appropriating’ the sensory systems and  their respective cognitive support, and thus creating the  predisposition toward mental proliferation (cf. Waldron 2003, 95 and  passim).