The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8.77

v2.c40.s8.77

There is, naturally enough, no trace in the Upaniṣads of any clear appreciation of the distinction between mere sensation and ideas such as Dignāga made distinct in his doctrine of sensation as without operation of abstract thought (*kalpanāpoḍha*) as opposed to definite cognition (*savikalpaka*),¹⁰ though, in a sense, this distinction might be held to be latent in the contrast noted above of the senses and the mind as sources of knowledge. This fact renders it most improbable, *a priori*, that¹¹ ‘from the very beginning Buddhism had established this difference: *vijñāna* and its synonyms, *citta*, *manaḥ*, represent pure sensation, the same as the *kalpanāpoḍha pratyakṣa* of Dignāga, and *sañjñā* corresponds to definite ideas’. The realization of the possibility thus of treating Vijñāna in the scheme of the five Skandhas must have been slow; it is emphatically not reached by the Pāli texts of the Canon,¹ and, like all refined conceptions, can be attributed to early Buddhism only at the expense of historical truth.