Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c14.6

c14.6

(716) We saw that the brahmin thinkers fell into three types on epistemological grounds—the Traditionalists of the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, the Rationalists of the Early Upaniṣads and the ‘Experientialists’ of the Middle and Late Upaniṣads (*v. supra*, 76, 244). Since the Buddha dissociates himself from the first two classes (*v. supra*, 246) we may presume that he identifies himself among others with the brahmin thinkers of the Middle and Late Upanisads. From the time of the Early Upanisads, newly discovered doctrines not found in the traditional Vedic learning, were being taught. Śvetaketu had ‘learned all the Vedas’ (sarvān vedān adhītya ... Ch. 6.1.2) but had to be instructed by Uddālaka with a doctrine ‘whereby what he has not heard (presumably in the Vedic teaching) is heard’ (yenāśrutam śrutam bhavati, Ch. 6.1.3). Such doctrines as well as the doctrines constituting the ‘higher knowledge’ (parā vidyā) of the Middle and Late Upaniṣads (*v. supra*, 75) have to be reckoned among ‘the doctrines not traditionally handed down’ (ananussutesu dhammesu) referred to in the Pāli passage. The brahmin Rationalists have to be excluded from the class of thinkers, with whom the Buddha identifies himself, also for the reason that they did not claim to have a ‘higher knowledge’ (abhiññā) based on any kind of contemplative or meditative experience (dhyāna = P. jhāna, *v. supra*, 31), unlike the Middle and Late Upaniṣadic thinkers.