Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s8.1

c10.s8.1

The insistence of the Buddha on the doctrine of the act (*karman*) can clearly be explained as an outcome of his revolt against the pure materialism of teachers like Ajita or the negation of any true human activity as insisted upon by Pūraṇa Kassapa, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Makkhali Gosāla, despite their divergent views on other points. It is more difficult to ascertain the degree of originality in this assertion of the doctrine of the rewards and penalties of action, for the references to the doctrine in the Upaniṣads are scanty, enlightenment being the main object of these treatises.² But we know that the Jaṭilas were authorized to be admitted to the Buddhist order without the normal novitiate of three months because of their belief in the doctrine, and the success of the teaching of the Buddha in this regard is infinitely more probable if it were already a widely accepted doctrine of the ascetics and nobles than if the conception were wholly new. Nor is the presentation of the doctrine in our texts favourable to the view that it was new; the stress laid on the chain of causation rather than on the mere fact of Karman hints at the originality, such as it is, of the chain, not of the fact of Karman.