The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.73

v2.c40.s7.t3.73

Prof. Stcherbatsky, however, maintains that the old and the new soul theories were clearly distinguished; thus all Buddhists rejected the doctrine of a self corresponding to the psycho-physical individual, Ātmavāda, but the Vātsīputrīyas and Sammitīyas accepted the theory of the doctrine of permanent soul, Pudgalavāda. This basis of distinction, however, is clearly illegitimate, and is not given by the Buddhist texts; instead the Pudgala is clearly a self corresponding to the psycho-physical individual, since it is maintained that it assumes new elements at birth and throws them off at death,¹ and the other Buddhist schools justly rejected either doctrine, seeing through the subterfuge by which these two schools endeavoured, while evading direct contradiction of the master’s insistence on Anattā, negation of a self, to preserve the existence of something which could transmigrate, thus preserving the reality of the doctrine of moral retribution, which utterly disappears in the ordinary conception of Buddhism.² Nor is there any plausibility in the view that the Kaṭha Upaniṣad already recognizes what Prof. Stcherbatsky—on dubious grounds—claims to be the fundamental doctrine of Buddhism, the existence of Dharmas conceived as a plurality of subtle, ultimate, not further analysable elements of matter, mind, and force. The theory is based on the fact that in that Upaniṣad (iv. 14) we find a condemnation of him who sees Dharmas separately (*pṛthag dharmān paçyati*), which is a very different thing from Stcherbatsky’s rendering ‘maintains the existence of separate elements’. The idea that Dharmas in this passage are ‘elements’ is as implausible as that the term Dharma in i. 21 has this sense; the word seems to mean in both instances something like ‘thing’ as taken by Geiger,³ and this use harmonizes with *dharmya* as opposed to what is subtle (*aṇu*) in ii. 13, a passage ignored by Stcherbatsky. With this rendering disappears wholly the idea that the author of the Kaṭha is directing a polemic against a doctrine which denies both the old and the new theories of the soul, or that Dharma is ‘a catchword referring to a new and foreign doctrine, some *anātma-dharma* theory’. Nor is there the slightest justification for the view that Pāṇini⁴ is aware of Buddhist and Sāṁkhya views of causation, for his explanation of the use of *saṃskṛta* and *upakṛta* or *upaskṛta* corresponds very poorly with this suggestion.