Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c14.7

c14.7

(717) We have observed that these latter thinkers claimed a kind of knowledge, which was a matter of directly ‘seeing’ or intuiting ultimate reality (*v. supra*, 73) and which was usually described by the word *jñāna* (*v. supra*, 74). In a sense, the emphasis on *jñāna* or knowledge was common to all the Upanisadic thinkers, since knowledge came to be valued as the means of salvation at least from the time of the Āraṇyakas onwards (*v. supra*, 16). Thenceforth, there was a cleavage in the Vedic tradition between the *karmamārga* or ‘the way of ritual’ and the *jñāna-mārga* or ‘the way of knowledge’. Early Buddhism is aware of this distinction, for the Suttanipāta mentions the *yañña-patha* or ‘the way of ritual’ (*yañña-pathe* appamattā, Sn. 1045) as against the *ñāṇa-patha* or ‘the way of knowledge’ (ñāṇa-pathāya sikkhe, Sn. 868). But it is also necessary to emphasize the distinction between the two ways of knowledge recognized within the Upaniṣads—the intellectual or rational knowledge of the Early Upaniṣads and the intuitive knowledge of the Middle and Late Upaniṣads. Of these two, it is the latter way of knowing that Buddhism values.