The Tattvasiddhi-Śāstra ("The Treatise that Accomplishes Reality"; Chinese: 成實論, Chengshilun; Japanese pronunciation: Jōjitsu-ron, also reconstructed as Satyasiddhi-Śāstra), is an Indian Abhidharma Buddhist text by a figure known as Harivarman (250–350).
The goal of this work was to “eliminate confusion and abandon the later developments, with the hope of returning to the origin”[8] The school affiliation of the author and his text has been debated for hundreds of years, even the early Chinese sources disagree.
[9] Three monks, Zhiyi (531–597), Jizang (549–623) and Jingying, labeled it a Hinayana school; it was Daoxuan (596–667) who first identified it as Sautrāntika.
[3] The Japanese scholars Katsura Shōryu and Fukuhara Ryōgon, in analyzing the doctrinal content, maintain that Harivarman is closest to the Bahuśrutīya school.
[11] Kumārajīva's student Sengrui discovered Harivarman had refused the abhidharma schools' approach to Buddhist seven times in the text, suggesting a strong sectarian division between them and the Sautrāntikas.
[15] A central teaching of the text is that dharmas have no substance or substratum, they appear real but they are "like bubbles or like a circle of fire seen when a rope torch is whirled around very quickly.
"[17] Another important argument covered in the text is on the relationship between mind or consciousness (citta) and mental factors (caitasikas).
Other major expounders of the Tattvasiddhi in China include the group named "Three Great Masters of the Liang dynasty": Sengmin (僧旻, 467–527), Zhizang (智蔵) (458–522) and Fayun (法雲, 467–529), who initially interpreted the sect as Mahayana in outlook.
The three of them also possibly influenced the writing of the Sangyō Gisho, a sutra commentary supposedly authored by Prince Shōtoku.