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Compendium of Phenomena

Dhammasaṅgaṇī

The Dhammasaṅgaṇī (Compendium of Phenomena) is built on the idea of a mātikā, a lists of contents or matrix. A mātikā acts as a simple instance of a template that is applied and transformed in ever more complex forms throughout the work. The Dhammasaṅgaṇī mātikās list sets of phenomena (dhammas). Most of these are doctrinal terms familiar from the suttas, although some are specialized Abhidhamma terms. The Dhammasaṅgaṇī starts with three mātikās. The first classifies dhammas into 22 sets of three (tika), and the next two use sets of two (duka), 100 pairs for Abhidhamma terms, and 42 for Sutta terms. The first of the triple sets is the momentous group: wholesome, unwholesome, and undetermined. This serves as a framework for classifying all the various phenomena. While it seems simple enough, even this detail was controversial, as some schools rejected the existence of the undetermined, or morally neutral, category.