Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c8.99

c8.99

(185) Let us consider the first alternative. We have already seen how Śīlāṅka arranged the only example he seems to have taken from the Sceptics themselves in a four-fold schema (*v. supra*, 157). He may have done this merely to complete his figure of sixty seven ‘categories’ of Sceptics: but the fact that the example he took was not based on Jain concepts and his own admission that this particular example did not admit of more than a four-fold order of predications are possibly pointers to the fact that he was borrowing not only the example but the four-fold formula itself from the Sceptics. The adoption of such different schemas was perhaps characteristic of this period and was probably necessitated by the variety of doctrines, which had to be considered apart (*v. infra*, 573). Dr Basham has some evidence to show that the Ājīvikas under Makkhali Gosāla and the schismatic Jain sect of the Trairāśikas adopted a scheme of classifying propositions into three logical ‘heaps’ (rāśi) or categories (*v. infra*, 217–20). Now there is no known school of Indian thinkers apart from the Buddhist (barring Sañjaya who is known only through the references in Buddhist literature) who adopted a four-fold schema, but the five-fold formula of denial, which according to the accounts given, is common to all the schools of Sceptics, seems to be based on the acceptance of a four-fold form of predication. Let us examine this formula: