Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c7.9

c7.9

(85) It is perhaps not without significance that the second school of Materialists (i.e. according to the interpretation of Śīlāṅka¹) mentioned in the Sūtrakṛtāṅga (2.1.10=SBB. 2.1.22, Vol 45, p. 343) makes use of Uddālaka's *a priori* premiss that 'Being cannot come out of Non-Being' (katham asataḥ saj jāyeta, Ch 6.2 2) when it says, sato natthi vināso asato natthi sambhavo, which Jacobi translates, 'what is, does not perish, from nothing nothing comes' and which literally means, 'there is no destruction of Being, there is no origination of Non-Being'. If so Uddālaka would be the father of Indian Materialism, in the sense in which all Materialism, according to Burnet,² is said to depend on the theory of Parmenides, who was the first philosopher of Being in Greek thought to make use of this premiss