  Speculations on the nature and function of consciousness have a long  and complex history in Indian Buddhism. In the canonical literature  the term that most often translates as consciousness  (vijñāna) is synonymously used for designating  ‘mind’ or the ‘life principle’ in the most  generic sense of those terms. In a technical sense, consciousness  designates either the type of awareness that arises depending on any  of the six sensory domains (āyatana) or awareness as  one of the five aggregates of existence. In addition, consciousness  is also listed as one of the twelve factors or causes  (nidana) in the chain of dependently arising  (pratītyasamutpāda) phenomena. However, it is only in the Abhidharma scholastic that we come across systematic attempts  to understand the dynamic processes of consciousness and cognition.  Indeed, the Abhidharma synthesis may be rightly viewed as a theory of consciousness (cf. Piatigorsky 1984, 8).