Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakosabhasya (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya).
Passages on motion, momentariness and the contact of atoms.

Text: GRETIL plain-text transformation of sa_vasubandhu-abhidharmakozabhASya.xml,
based on the edition of P. Pradhan; bracketed [page|line] references are Pradhan's.
URL: https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/corpustei/transformations/plaintext/sa_vasubandhu-abhidharmakozabhASya.txt
Licence of the electronic edition: GRETIL, Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. The treatise itself is ancient and in
the public domain; this file quotes a short excerpt with attribution.

Author date: c. 350-450 CE on the usual range, complicated by the
'two Vasubandhus' question raised by Frauwallner. Retrieved and verified
2026-09-18.

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There is no motion, because the conditioned is momentary (ad IV.2, Pradhan 192-193)
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  [192|25-192|26] prasyandamānasya hi kāyakarma no 'prasyandamānasyeti / [192|26] ta ucyante [193|01] na gatiryasmātsaṃskṛtaṃ kṣaṇikaṃ [193|02] ko 'yaṃ kṣaṇo nāma / ātmalābho 'nantravināśī / so 'syāstīti kṣaṇikam / [193|03] daṇḍakavat / sarva hi saṃskṛtamātmalābhā dūrdhvaṃ na bhavatīti yatraiva jātaṃ tatraiva dhvasyate / [193|04] tasyāyuktā deśāntarasaṃkrāntiḥ / tasmānna gatiḥ kāyakarma /

  Translation (working, for orientation only):
    Others say [bodily action] is motion, for there is bodily action of one who is
    moving, not of one who is not moving. To them it is said: there is no motion,
    because the conditioned is momentary. What is this 'moment'? Acquisition of
    being that perishes immediately after; what has that is 'momentary', as in the
    formation of dandika. For everything conditioned does not exist beyond its
    acquisition of being, so it is destroyed in the very place where it arose. Its
    passage to another place is therefore impossible. Hence bodily action is not
    motion.

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Do atoms touch? (ad I.43, Pradhan 33)
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  [033|02] yadi paramāṇavaḥ spṛśeyuruttarakṣaṇāvasthānaṃ syāditi bhadantavasumitraḥ / [033|03] na spṛśanti / nirantare tu spṛṣṭasaṃjñeti bhadantaḥ / bhadantamataṃ caiṣṭavyam / [033|04] anyathā hi sāntarāṇāṃ paramāṇūnāṃ śūnyeṣvantareṣu gatiḥ kena pratibadhyeta / [033|04-033|05] yataḥ sapratighā iṣyante / [033|05] naca paramāṇubhyo 'nye saṃghātā iti / [033|05-033|06] ta eva te saṃghātāḥ paramāṇavaḥ spṛśyante yathā rūpyante / [033|06-033|07] yadi ca paramāṇordigbhāgabhedaḥ kalpyate spṛṣṭasyāspṛṣṭasya vā sāvayavatvaprasaṅgaḥ / [033|07] no cet spṛṣṭasyāpyaprasaṅgaḥ //

  Translation (working, for orientation only):
    If atoms touched, they would persist into a later moment, says the Venerable
    Vasumitra. They do not touch; but where there is no interval there is the
    designation 'touching', says the Bhadanta, and the Bhadanta's view is to be
    accepted. For otherwise, atoms having intervals between them, by what would
    motion through the empty intervals be obstructed, given that they are held to
    be resistant? And aggregates are nothing other than the atoms; those same
    aggregates are the atoms, touched as they are shaped. And if a division of the
    atom into directional parts is imagined, then whether it is touched or
    untouched it follows that it has parts; if not, that does not follow even for
    what is touched.

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