A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s1.9

c14.s1.9

the strict logical sense of the doctrine of Karman all men's actions were the outcome of actions done in previous births; they were, therefore, wholly uncalculable, for no one could tell what deed in the remotest past might not spring up to work out its inevitable end. Beside this belief, and evidently in full strength in many minds, was the view that all things were brought about by fate, working in a manner wholly unintelligible and beyond all foresight. To these more rational views, which might be combined and even reconciled by exercise of a little ingenuity, was added the acceptance by the Indian mind of the miraculous in the shape of divine intervention, magic, and witchcraft.¹ The scientific attitude of mind which seeks to find natural causes for events of nature is not normal in India, and the conception that nature is not capable of being affected by divine or demoniac instrumentalities would have seemed ludicrous to the vast majority of its people; Buddhists and Jains were as little inclined to abandon popular superstitions as were Brahmins. Nay, all three religions favoured the belief in the habit of sages by asceticism to attain magic powers; the doctrine that these powers can be acquired by regular forms of process is inculcated in their philosophies, and persons who were able to achieve these results were capable of affecting the processes of nature, so that to ascribe similar powers to superhuman beings was perfectly natural. Moreover, the philosophies of every kind taught that there was no progress in our sense in the world; things had happened age after age in precisely the same way; the doctrine of the periodical creation and destruction of the world of the Brahmanical post-Vedic texts is on the same plane as the theory of the Buddhists of the existence of innumerable earlier Buddhas and the long line of Jain Tīrthakaras.