were developed or even invented by the Abhidharmikas and these became grounds for the debates among the different early Buddhist schools. Dhamma theory The "base upon which the entire [Abhidhamma] system rests" is the 'dhamma theory' and this theory 'penetrated all the early schools'. For the Abhidharmikas, the ultimate components of existence, the elementary constituents of experience were called dhammas (Pali: dhammas). This concept has been variously translated as "factors" (Collett Cox), "psychic characteristics" (Bronkhorst), "phenomena" (Nyanaponika) and "psycho-physical events" (Ronkin). The early Buddhist scriptures give various lists of the constituents of the person such as the five skandhas, the six or 18 dhatus, and the twelve sense bases. In Abhidhamma literature, these lists of dhammas systematically arranged and they were seen as the ultimate entities or momentary events which make up the fabric of people's experience of reality. The idea was to create an exhaustive list of all possible phenomena that make up the world. The conventional reality of substantial objects and persons is merely a conceptual construct imputed by the mind on a flux of dhammas. However, dhammas are never seen as individually separate entities, but are always dependently conditioned by other dhammas in a stream of momentary constellations of dhammas, constantly coming into being and vanishing, always in flux. Perception and thinking is then seen as a combination of various dhammas. Cittas (awareness events) are never experienced on their own, but are always intentional and hence accompanied by various mental factors (cetasikas), in a constantly flowing stream of experience occurrences. Human experience is thus explained by a series of dynamic processes and their patterns of relationships with each other. Buddhist Abhidhamma philosophers then sought to explain all experience by creating lists and matrices (matikas) of these dhammas, which varied by school. The four categories of dhammas in the Theravada Abhidhamma are: Citta (Mind, Consciousness, awareness) Cetasika (mental factors, mental events, associated mentality), there are 52 types Rūpa — (physical occurrences, material form), 28 types Nibbāna — (Extinction, cessation). This dhamma is unconditioned it neither arises nor ceases due to causal interaction. The Sarvastivada Abhidharma also used these, along with a fifth category: "factors dissociated from thought" (cittaviprayuktasaṃskāra). The Sarvastivadas also included three dharmas in the fourth "unconditioned" category instead of just one, the dharma of space and two states of cessation. The Abhidharma project was thus to provide a completely exhaustive account of every possible type of