Anuśaya is one of the most important concepts in the Sarvāstivādin system. Its literal meaning is “that which attaches to （an object）,” and it refers to the defilements that must be abandoned in order to attain awakening. The verb anu-śī-, from which anuśaya is derived, similarly means “to attach oneself to.” At some point in its history, however, the Sarvāstivādins came to interpret anu-śī- to mean “to grow,” as is indicated by the renderings in Tibetan and by Xuanzang, rgyas par ’gyur ba and suízēng 隨増, respectively. Their reason for doing so is uncertain, but scholars seem to agree that Vasubandhu （ca. 4-5th c. CE） uses the verb in that sense in his Abhidharmakośabhāṣya. In this article, I challenge this view by examining the two similes that Vasubandhu gives when explaining the function of anu-śī-. I first argue that he takes the verb anu-śī- to mean “to attach oneself to,” not “to grow.” I then analyze a passage from the Abhidharmadīpa-Vibhāṣāprabhāvṛtti （ca. 6th c. CE）, which criticizes Vasubandhu’s definition of impure factors （sāsrava-dharma）, pointing out that the author of the text assumes that Vasubandhu used the verb anu-śī- in the sense of “growing” and rejects that use of the word. Through this analysis and by using other commentarial sources, I conclude that there already was a strong interpretive tendency in India to take the verb anu-śī- in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya to mean “to grow,” contrary to the author’s own intention, and that Vasubandhu and the unknown author of the Abhidharmadīpa-Vibhāṣāprabhāvṛtti, the two main Sarvāstivādin scholars of a later period, did not follow that interpretation.
