Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c8.91

c8.91

(181) Sañjaya's scepticism may have extended to the whole field of knowledge for he too is supposed to have given sceptical answers to all questions put to him. But if we examine the actual list of propositions mentioned (and here a whole list is given unlike in the case of the previous schools), it would be seen that they pertain to metaphysics (the next world, survival, transcendent existence) and morals (the consequences of good and evil). It is therefore not improbable that his scepticism was directed only to those questions, the answers to which were unverifiable and therefore unknowable or as Jacobi says 'transcendent or beyond human experience' (*op. cit.*, p xxvii) In this respect the philosophy of Sañjaya may be compared with that of the positivist branch of the Lokāyata (i e. group (2), *v. supra*, 89, 94), the difference being that these positivists seem to have denied the truth of these propositions or suggested that they do not make sense¹ while Sañjaya seems to grant the possibility of their truth, though denying that we have any means of knowing this If so Sañjaya seems to have examined the truth-value of propositions in the light of relevant evidence. His philosophy, therefore, is as Ui sums it up 'a scepticism on the one hand and a primitive step of criticism of knowledge on the other hand, like the sophists² in the Greek philosophy'.³