Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c8.24

c8.24

(151A) That the period immediately preceding the rise of Buddhism was one in which there was an interminable variety of views on matters pertaining to metaphysics, morality and religion is clear from the references to them in the Buddhist and Jain texts. The Brahmajāla Sutta (D. I.12-38) refers to fifty-eight schools of thought other than the four schools or types of Sceptics referred to. It is not improbable that some of these are only possible schools not current at the time (*v. supra*, 141) but there are good grounds to think that many of them were actually existing schools in view of the independent literary sources which refer to them. Similarly, the Sūtrakṛtāṅga mentions three hundred and sixty-three schools. This list is artificially made up mainly but not solely on the basis of the categories of Jainism itself¹ but there would be little reason to deny the existence of the four main schools of Kriyāvāda, Akriyāvāda, Ajñānikavāda and Vainayikavāda and probably several subgroups among them. A brief account of the doctrines of some of these schools is given in several contexts of the Sūtrakṛtāṅga (1.1.1.8-18, 1.2.1-28, 1.6.27, 1.12 2-11, 2 1.14-30, 2.2.79) and these accounts do not appear to be in the least artificial.