  A wide gulf separates works such as Vasubandhu's Treasury of Higher Knowledge, a foundational text for most of the philosophical developments of late Indian Buddhism, from the simple and pragmatic teachings of the Buddha. The Abhidharma scholastic evolved from mnemonic lists (mātṛka) that were initially intended to work as summaries of various topics discussed in the canonical texts. These lists were usually structured around five main categories: form or matter (rūpa), mind or consciousness (citta), mental constituents (caitta), conditioned factors dissociated from consciousness (cittaviprayukta saṃskāra), and unconditioned elements (asaṃskṛta) such as cessation or nirvāṇa. In composing his Treasury of Higher Knowledge, Vasubandhu mainly relied on three Abhidharma texts: Dharmaśri's An Epitome of Abhidharma (Abhidharmasāra), Ghoṣaka's The Nectar of Abhidharma (Abhidharmāmṛtaśāstra) and Kātyāyanīputra's Method of Knowing (Jñānaprasthāna) (see Frauwallner 1963, 1971a, 1971b). From these three works Vasubandhu adopted his categorical classification of Abhidharma topics according to the five aggregates. The analytic models of the five categories and the five aggregates represent, thus, “an attempt to record exhaustively all the elements of being and order them systematically” (Frauwallner 1995, 146). Such efforts were not new: indeed, the Buddhist attempt mirrors similar undertakings in the Brahmanical tradition. A good example of such undertakings is the Sāṃkhya scheme of the mental and physical elements and their derivatives. 