Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.t1.1.3

c7.s2.t1.1.3

it is hurried on to its goal by fate, decree, nature;”—every being passes through a fixed series of re-births, at the end of which the fool as well as the wise “puts a period to pain.” And the existence of a moral government is also denied; Pûrana Kassapa teaches: “If a man makes a raid on the south bank of the Ganges, kills and lets kill, lays waste and lets lay waste, burns and lets burn, he imputes no guilt to himself; there is no punishment of guilt. If a man crosses to the north bank of the Ganges, distributes and causes to be distributed charity, offers and causes to be offered sacrifices, he does not thereby perform a good work; there is no reward for good works.” And another expression of similar doctrines: “the wise and the fool, when the body is dissolved, are subject to destruction and to annihilation; they are not beyond death.” In disputations before adherents, opponents, and great masses of people, these professional wranglers and “hair-splitters”—this word was even then in use in India—made propaganda for their theories; like their Greek counterparts, though a good deal coarser, they caused swaggering reports of their dialectic invincibility to go before them. Saccaka says: “I know no Samana, and no Brahman, no teacher, no master, no head of a school, even though he calls himself the holy supreme Buddha, who, if he face me in debate, would not totter, tremble, quake, and from whom the sweat would not exude.