Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c8.16

c8.16

(149) Even if Śīlāṅka, writing in the ninth century, has rightly represented the views of the Sceptics, we have no right to assume that in the day of the Pāli Nikāyas they also held the same view. The sophisticated argument based on certain conceptions about the nature of knowledge in order to disprove the possibility of omniscience certainly appears *prima facie* to be late but the general thesis of the Sceptics, that the possibility of knowledge is doubtful since the claims to knowledge were mutually contradictory, may well go back to the period of the earliest Sceptics. Śīlāṅka often quotes this idea sometimes as a maxim of the Sceptics as, for instance, when it is said that 'they posit the theory that since those who claim knowledge make mutually contradictory assertions, they cannot be stating the truth'² and sometimes without specific reference to the Sceptic as for instance when he says that 'since the various theories claiming knowledge (jñānam) have arisen in contradiction to one another, they are not true; therefore, Scepticism is best of all '.³ Śīlāṅka speaks of the kind of investigation (mīmāṁsā-) and reflection (vimarśa-) which leads to Scepticism as follows: 'Is this theory claiming knowledge (kimetad-jñānaṁ) true or false? Scepticism is best since with an excess of knowledge, there is an increase of mistakes (dosātireka-)'.¹