A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.5.1

c7.5.1

histic period are contemporaneous, and that the one gradually and imperceptibly merges into the other. When the Chhāndogyopanishad said that in the beginning verily Not-Being alone existed, and that it was later that Being was born from it (S. I. a), we have to understand that a reference was made here to a doctrine which was to become full-fledged in the later denial of existence and the maintenance of a void in Buddhistic literature. When in his commentary on the above passage, Śaṅkarāchārya states that this may refer to the doctrine of the Buddhists, who said that “sadabhāva” alone existed before the creation of anything, he is right in referring it to the doctrine of the Buddhists. The metaphysical maintenance of Not-Being has its psychological counterpart in the maintenance of the theory of the denial of Soul. When the Kaṭhopanishad said, that when a man is dead, various people think variously about the spirit that inspired him, some saying that it still lives, others saying that it has ceased to exist (S. I. b), we have in embryo the “anattā-vāda” of the Buddhists, the theory of a denial of Soul, a theory which the Buddhists probably held in common with the Chārvākas with whom there was no soul except the body.