It is primarily in response to the Buddha's use of expedient means (and the expansion of the Buddhist canonical literature with the advent of Mahāyāna sūtras) that Abhidharma traditions develop the hermeneutics of two truths: depending on scholastic affiliation, doctrinal positions are henceforth classified as either in need of interpretation (neyārtha) or as already possessing the definitive meaning (nītārtha) (see Lopez 1988, and contributions therein).