Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c18.78

c18.78

Mrs. Rhys Davids.—Mrs. Rhys Davids suggests that the first Buddhists worded the Goal as “Attha”, not Nirvāṇa. The latter indeed is “an end without the man in it; it is negative; it prejudges the as yet inconceivable.” These are precisely the features which ought to have been avoided by a message meant, “not for the monk as such, not for the academic sophist” but for the “manyfolk (Bahu-jana).”⁶⁰ She has, however, only succeeded in showing that Attha was also one of the many earlier words for the Goal, that an exclusively “negativist” interpretation of the goal as conceived in early Buddhism does not do justice to all the evidence, and that the message of Buddha must not be interpreted entirely from the standpoint of the monk as understood in mediaeval Ceylon. These are, of course, valuable contributions.