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The History of Buddhist Thought c14: Chapter VI. The Background of Buddhism

The History of Buddhist Thought c14

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Chapter VI. The Background of Buddhism

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THE training of the disciple through the stages of morality, concentration, full knowledge, and release shows little of any metaphysical considerations. But such principles are implicit in certain doctrines assumed, doctrines already established in popular beliefs—a theory of the structure of the universe, the belief that the individual transmigrates through it unceasingly unless he wins knowledge, and that his life is happy or wretched in his various existences according to the sum of his previous actions. These are general Indian beliefs which Buddhism accepted, while systematizing and generalizing them, and which are presupposed in all its peculiar dogmas. The fact that these theories underlie the special dogmatic and philosophical superstructure of Buddhism makes it necessary to consider both the antecedents of Buddhism as well as the state of contemporary thought at the time when the new religion was becoming established. The questions are more easily asked than answered, for the evidence at hand is both incomplete and to a great extent indirect.

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For the early relations of Buddhism to Brahminism we have the ancient ritual and speculative works known as the Brāhmaṇas and the Upanishads. But as will be seen, the difficulty is to prove that early Buddhism had any direct contact with these works. The problem is not lessened by the fact that the Brahminism referred to in the Buddhist records belongs to a different region from that described in the ritual works. The first question is the relation of Buddhism to the contemporary rival schools, and for this we are limited, except in the case of Jainism, to Buddhist accounts, which are in all cases legendary. They are stereotyped accounts of doctrines, attributed in some cases to particular leaders, but no more historical than the early legends of Buddha himself. Doubtless there is a historical basis, but we learn little about the holders of these doctrines, the so-called six heretics, beyond the statements of their teaching. These statements, however, have a great importance in the development of Buddhist thought, for each heretic became distinguished as the holder of a characteristic doctrine, the denial of karma, and so on, and these doctrines are the leading ideas against which Buddhism for centuries directed its arguments.

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The views of the six heretics are stated in their most picturesque form in the *Sāmaññaphala-sutta*, the “discourse on the fruit of being an ascetic (*samaṇa* )” in the sense of a Buddhist monk.¹ It consists of a legend recording king Ajātasattu’s visit to Buddha. The king points out that there are all sorts of trades and occupations, and those who follow them have evident “fruit” therefrom. They live with their families and friends in comfort, give gifts to brahmins, and the result is happiness with the prospect of rebirth in heaven. Can Buddha show any such visible fruit for one who is an ascetic? The king admits that he has put the same question to other ascetics and brahmins, and proceeds to give the answers which he has received.

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¹ *Dīgha*, i, 47; the teachings of the first four without names being mentioned are given in *Majjh.*, i, 513, and the other two occur in a further list of four.

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He had first asked Pūraṇa Kassapa, who declared that whatever a man’s actions were, the greatest crimes would not result in guilt or increase of guilt nor meritorious deeds in merit. This is the doctrine of *akiriyavāda* “non-action,” which denies that karma has any results. Such a reply, said Ajātasattu, was like asking for a mango and getting a bread-fruit, and so were all the other replies. Next he asked Makkhalin Gosāla, who described an elaborate and fantastic system of births, conduct, and karma, but denied all responsibility for actions. Everything is fated, and when beings have run through their course of transmigrations they make an end of pain.

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The king next inquired of Ajita Kesakambalin, who was a materialist. There is no karma. “A man consists of the four elements, and when he dies and is cremated the elements return to their places. Both fools and sages with the dissolution of the body are cut off and destroyed, and after death they are not.” This is the doctrine of *ucchedavāda*, “cutting off,” annihilation.

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The fourth sage was Pakudha Kaccāyana, who explained that there were seven indestructible bodies: earth, water, fire, air, happiness, pain, and life or soul. There is no slayer or causer of slaying, no hearer, knower or causer of knowing. One who splits a head with a sword does not kill anyone. He merely makes a hole with a sword between the seven indestructible bodies. The next sage was Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, the Jain, who explained his fourfold vow, but as it is agreed that both text and commentator misunderstand it, it need not be discussed. The last was Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta, who refused to make a positive or negative statement on the above points or on any others.

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It is probable that all these names are real,¹ but hardly likely that the descriptions of the doctrines give us a fair picture of the state of thought in early Buddhist times. Two of the names are known from Jain works, Nātaputta and Gosāla, and the latter in those works is called an Ājīvika. This name is said to mean one who gets his livelihood from his profession of ascetic, and to be a name given by opponents. Hence it is not certain that the name was applied only to one peculiar sect. The Ājīvikas are mentioned by the Buddhists, but they never apply the name to Gosāla. According to the Jains, Gosāla joined the Jain leader, but quarrelled with him and they separated. For the Buddhists he is the representative teacher of fatalism. The best known of the six is the Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, known to the Jains as Mahāvīra, their last leader. The obscurity of the present passage is the more remarkable as the Jains, known to the Buddhists as Nigaṇṭhas,² are mentioned frequently in the Scriptures, and one of their chief doctrines, kiriyavāda, the doctrine of action, is fairly discussed.

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¹ The six were also well-known to the Sarvāstivādins; Divy, 143; Av-Śat., 134.

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² Skt. nirgrantha "free from bonds"; the name Jain, properly Jaina, "followers of the conqueror," is a derivative from jina "conqueror".

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The rest stand merely as the representatives of certain doctrines, Pūraṇa of the denial of moral action, Ajita of materialism and a denial of the survival of the individual, and Pakudha of another kind of denial of moral action. Sañjaya is a mere caricature of shallow irresolution. No doubt there was materialism at all times. The Hindu philosophical systems mention the Chārvākas as such a school, but all that we know of them is much later than early Buddhism. Among the six the system of Pakudha, with its seven indestructible elements, most resembles a tendency of Indian thought—the attempt to find something ultimately real behind the phenomena rather than in co-ordinating experience and interpreting it as the real. But nothing like this actual system is elsewhere found.¹

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¹ Unless we refer to Empedocles. It is free from the objection which Aristotle brought against the early Greek theorists, that they assumed principles which explained only material existence.

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The conclusion of the dialogue is of peculiar interest. What did the compiler think was the right attitude to take with regard to these questions of moral action and reward, materialism and fatalism? They are not the "undetermined questions" which Buddha refused to answer, yet the rest of the dialogue ignores them. The Buddhist answer to the question of the fruits of samanaship is to ignore all these problems of morals and metaphysics, and to give a description of the career of the disciple—his course of moral training, the system of concentration, and the attainment of full knowledge. It maintains the same position as the previous discourse, the *Brahmajāla-sutta*, which concludes that beyond any speculations are "things profound, hard to see, hard to understand, calm and excellent, beyond the region of logic, subtle, comprehensible only to the wise, which the Tathāgata, having comprehended and realized, proclaims."

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The *Brahmajāla-sutta* itself contains the fullest account of theories supposed to have been held by other schools, and it is in these that attempts have been made to find points of contact with the orthodox philosophical systems. It is called "the net of Brahma" (*brahma-jāla*), and claims to include in its list all possible views. "All those ascetics and brahmins who construct systems about the past or the future, or both, who hold theories about both, and who make various assertions about the past and future, are all caught in this net of sixty-two subjects. There they are, though they plunge and plunge about. There they are caught in the net, though they plunge and plunge about." The apparent elaborateness of the scheme becomes clearer when it is analysed. The views fall into two classes, speculations about the past and about the future:

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I. There are those who hold views about the beginnings of things in eighteen ways:

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(1) Some hold in four ways² that the self or soul (*ātman*) and the universe (*loka*) are eternal.

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² The four ways merely refer to the number of existences remembered, so that it is unnecessary to discuss them separately.

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(2) Some hold in four ways that the self and universe are in some respects eternal and in some not.
(3) Some hold that the universe is finite, or infinite, or finite and infinite, or neither finite nor infinite.
(4) Some wriggle like eels in four ways, and refuse a clear answer.
(5) Some assert in two ways that the self and universe have arisen without a cause.

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II. Some hold views about the future in forty-four ways :

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(1) They hold in sixteen ways that the self exists as conscious after death.
(2) In eight ways that it exists as unconscious after death.
(3) In eight ways that it is neither conscious nor unconscious after death.
(4) They hold in seven ways the annihilation of the individual.
(5) They hold that Nibbāna consists in the enjoyment of this life in five ways, either in the pleasures of sense or in one of the four trances.

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Some of these views are cosmological and do not need discussion, as they are not characteristic of any particular school. The first doctrine set forth is that the self and the universe are eternal (*sassatavāda*). It takes for granted that the universe passes through ages of disintegration and renewal, a point which the Buddhist does not dispute. An ascetic or brahmin who practises concentration remembers many of his past existences, and comes to the conclusion that “the self and the universe are eternal, barren (i.e. not producing anything new), standing as on a mountain peak, fixed as a firm pillar; and these beings are reborn, transmigrate, arise and pass away, but (self and universe) are eternal.” Here we have the important word *attā* (Skt. *ātman*) “self”¹; no difficulty is made about it. The only question is whether it is eternal or not. We shall later find a different point of view implied in the word *ātmavāda*, the doctrine that a self or soul exists. We do not find it expressly stated that the self is not eternal, but only that a yogi has remembered such an enormous number of his existences that he infers that self and world are eternal. When we come to the doctrine that everything compound is transitory, then we shall find a positive argument against the eternal existence of the soul.

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¹ There is no reason why it should not be called “soul”, except that that word is generally associated with the related doctrines of Christian theology.

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The second class of doctrines deals with the nature of the gods, and while not denying their existence sets out a theory which unceremoniously deprives the conception of deity of any value. The great Brahmā himself is reborn like any other being. He is the first to be born at the beginning of a new age, and imagines himself to be god (issara), as indeed he is for the time being. Other beings are born later, and he imagines that they have come into being at his wish, because he wished for them. And the other beings who meditate about it imagine that he is their maker, and that they themselves are impermanent and short-lived.

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Brahmā is thus held by the theorizer to be eternal and the rest not. Another form of this class is to hold that the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body are impermanent, but that thought, mind, or consciousness is permanent and eternal.

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The next three cases do not call for any remark, as they do not describe any recognizable systems.

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So far the questions have been concerning the origin of the soul. The rest deal with its future destiny. The next two classes are not clear as they stand. It is said that the self if conscious after death may have form, be finite, have one mode of consciousness, be happy or miserable, or it may be without form, etc., and varied in other ways. If the self is unconscious, it may have form or not form, and be varied in eight ways. Buddhaghosa takes these cases to refer to the supposed state of the liberated self as held by certain theorists, and explains some of the alternatives as being held by the Ājīvikas, Jains, and others. The third class is only a logical refinement. The fourth is the annihilation doctrine of Ajita, but it is elaborated by stating that extinction may take place (1) with the death of the body according to the materialistic view, or (2) with the death of a “divine self” in the world of sense, or (3) in the world of form, or (4–7) in one of the stages of the formless world. The last class (Nirvāṇa in this life) looks at first like the doctrine held both by Buddhists and brahmin schools that release may be attained in this life. But here the Nirvāṇa meant is the full enjoyment of the pleasures of sense, not the bliss attained by complete separation from them, or rejecting such sensualism the heretic thinks to find it in one of the four trances.

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The apparent multiplicity of doctrines in the Brahmajāla-sutta is due to their being treated from every point of view, positively, negatively, and both. They are not actually denied, but are treated as containing the whole of what it is possible to assert concerning the self and the universe.

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It cannot be doubted that many of them were never doctrines actually held, but only possibilities added to make the net complete. Still it is remarkable to find that not one of the doctrines mentioned can be certainly identified with those of brahmin schools. An exception possibly exists in the case of the first doctrine mentioned, that self and universe are eternal. Oldenberg held that in this passage the Sāṅkhya dualism of eternal spirit and eternal nature appear to be unmistakable.¹ Sāṅkhya uses the simile of " standing on a mountain peak ", but applies it only to the purusha (ātman), which remains unmoved against the evolution of the universe. He thus has to admit that the Buddhist account is inexact, as it often is in referring to the doctrines of other schools. Another place where he sees a reference to Sāṅkhya is where it is said that the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body are impermanent, but that thought, mind, or consciousness is permanent and eternal. This, too, is inexact, for in Sāṅkhya not only the five senses but also the group to which mind belongs stands on the side of material nature. But even if the references are to Sāṅkhya, they do not show Sāṅkhya influencing Buddhism or imparting its principles. Both passages speak of doctrines that were rejected, and rejected even without being understood. Their importance is rather with regard to the history of Sāṅkhya and the possible changes that it may have undergone before it assumed its classical form.

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¹ Lehre der Upan., p. 295.

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An extensive influence of Sāṅkhya on Buddhism was held by Jacobi, who derived the Chain of Causation from the series found in the Sāṅkhya system in its classical form.² This system, as is well known, explains the evolution of the universe from a primitive undifferentiated matter called prakṛti (nature). This Nature has three constituents (guṇa) in perfect equilibrium, and it is the upsetting of this equilibrium and the consequent elaboration of the constituents in different proportions which constitute the actual world both material and spiritual. The constituents, which appear in matter as lightness, movement, and heaviness, appear in mental phenomena as goodness, passion, and dullness. Behind all this is the purusha, the permanent ātman.

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² Der Ursprung des Buddhismus aus dem Sāṅkhya-yoga. Nachr. v.d.k. Ges. der Wiss. zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Kl., 1896.

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The first evolute of Nature is *buddhi* (intellect), which becomes individualized as *ahaṃkāra* (egoity). This is said to be parallel to the Buddhist *vijñāna* (consciousness) as cause of *nāma-rūpa* (name and form, individuality). Then, “from egoity proceed the ten organs, *indriya*, with the inner sense *manas*, and the five subtle elements, *tanmātras*.” This is said to be quite similar to the procession of the six sense-organs from name and form. However, the Buddhist sense-organs really are organs, and it is from them that the actual faculties of sense proceed through the mediation of contact. The *indriyas* of Sāṅkhya are faculties, and there are eleven of them, for besides *manas* and the five corresponding to the five sense-organs there are five others corresponding to five external organs (voice, hand, etc.). Further there are the five subtle elements, i.e. the elements each in their purity, from which proceed the five gross elements, the elements as we perceive them in a state of mixture. These are said to correspond to the *dharmas* of the Buddhists, which are actually existing “things”, whether external objects or internal as thoughts and cognitions. The Buddhist *dharmas*, phenomena, Jacobi continues, correspond practically to the outer world, which is contained in the *mahābhūta*, the gross elements of Sāṅkhya-Yoga. According to Sāṅkhya, the gross elements proceed as a particular creation from the *tanmātras*. On the other hand, according to Buddhist doctrine they stand on the same line with them.

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Here we have the fundamental problem for the interpretation of the Chain. The Sāṅkhya series is a cosmogony, explaining the evolution and structure of the universe. Jacobi has never raised the question whether the same interpretation is possible for the Buddhist series. The *dharmas*, the constituents of the universe, do not proceed from any subtle elements, nor are they ever found as a link in the Chain. The Chain is never interpreted as a cosmogony, but only as a series of states of the individual. If it ever was so interpreted, or if that was the original meaning intended, it had been entirely forgotten. But while we find stages and conceptions in the Sāṅkhya series which do not fit into the Buddhist Chain, how are craving, grasping, becoming, birth, and death to be fitted into the Sāṅkhya scheme? They do not fit. Jacobi says that birth and death need no explanations; that in all Indian philosophemes which assume rebirth, birth is a consequence of saṃsāra, and birth has old age and death as result.

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This does not seem to touch the question of explaining them as members of a series. Birth, old age, and death belong to that part of the Formula which is most easily explained as describing the temporal career of an individual, and they do not occur in the ontological Sāṅkhya formula at all. Nor does the terminology make it more probable that one is dependent on the other. Viññāṇa is said to correspond with buddhi, nāma-rūpa with ahaṃkāra, saḷāyatana with the ten indriyas, the manas, and the five tanmātras, tṛṣṇā with abhiniveśa or āśis, upādāna is analogous to dharmādharmau.¹ Prakṛti² and the guṇas, the most fundamental principles of the Sāṅkhya construction, are nowhere found in Buddhism. How far such parallels are convincing may be left to the reader. In any case the Sāṅkhya scheme does not explain how the Buddhists understood their own formula, even if it may have given hints to the elaborator of the twelvefold Chain.

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¹ Jacobi, loc. cit., pp. 49 ff.

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² Buddhaghosa uses it when he speaks of the holders of Sāṅkhya as pakativādins. Vism., 525.

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Jacobi’s conclusions, which were accepted by Pischel³ but rejected by Oldenberg,⁴ have been extended by Dr. Schayer,⁵ who holds that the Chain is a “kosmische Emanationsformel”. He thinks that the Buddhists did not understand their own formula. Native exegesis transforms the meaning into a “primitive Biologie”, and he finds this unsatisfactory, first because it compels us to the nonsensical placing of craving and grasping in the embryo stage, and secondly because to interpret nāma-rūpa as the psycho-physical being does not correspond to its original meaning and is a makeshift of later scholasticism. It will be seen that Dr. Schayer assumes that all the stages from nāma-rūpa to bhava take place in the embryo stage. But this cannot fairly be charged against the Pāli exegetes. They might fairly be blamed for omitting to mention birth after the stage of nāma-rūpa at conception, but the next causal state is held to be the formation of the six sense-organs, and the event of birth is not mentioned. But the exegetes never doubted that it took place. Nāma-rūpa is an upanishadic term, and will be more conveniently considered later.

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³ Leben und Lehre des Buddha; “Wir wissen, dass der theoretische Buddhismus ganz auf dem Sāṃkhya-Yoga beruht,” p. 61.

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⁴ Die Lehre der Upan., p. 357.

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⁵ Vorarbeiten z. Gesch. der mahāyānistischen Erlösungslehren, Untersuch. z. Gesch. des Buddhismus, v, 235.

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There is, however, a further problem concerning the relation of Buddhism to Sānkhya. The system of the Yoga philosophy¹ has most of its leading conceptions identical with Sānkhya. It differs by introducing the concept of a God and by making yoga-practices an essential part of its training. Did Buddhism get its notions of Sānkhya through the Yoga philosophy? The historical facts are very slender. The legend tells us that Buddha before his enlightenment practised yoga under two teachers. It is not likely that exact details have been preserved and, in fact, the legend describes the teaching in purely Buddhistic terms. Āḷāra Kālāma is said to have practised the third Attainment of the state of nothingness, and Uddaka the fourth, the Attainment of the state of neither consciousness nor non-consciousness. This is what we are also told by Aśvaghosha in his life of Buddha,² a poem of the first or second century A.D. Here he follows the canonical account, but he also gives an account of Āḷāra’s philosophy, and this has some resemblance to the Sānkhya philosophy. It is not identical with it, and it cannot be said to be probable that Aśvaghosha had any real knowledge of the philosophy of a teacher who had died some six centuries before, and some time before Buddha began to preach. But the resemblances between the yoga-practices and the terminology of Buddhism and Yoga are unmistakable.

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¹ It is important to distinguish yoga in the sense of yoga-practices from yoga in the sense of the philosophical system which chiefly practised them.

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² Buddhacarita, xii, 17 ff.

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We have found reason for believing that yoga-practices were an essential part of primitive Buddhism, and the Buddhist tradition repeatedly recognizes such practices in other schools. Yet when the actual documents are examined, difficulties arise. The fullest examination has been made by Senart.³ He finds that the most certain parallelisms are crossed by evident discordances. The resemblances suddenly stop short without any evident cause. Similar nomenclatures are worked up differently. Classifications have the same numeration and similar meanings, and yet singly they do not correspond. Two reasons may be adduced to account for this. We do not know what was the actual form of Yoga teaching in vogue when Buddha first learnt it, nor do we know what actual changes he may have made in it for his own purpose.

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³ “Bouddhisme et Yoga” in Revue de l’histoire des religions, 1900, p. 345.

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It is not possible to reach any positive conclusion without separating the borrowing that may have taken place during the constructive period of Buddhism from the borrowings that may have gone on when Yoga and Buddhism were two established systems. In the former case we can admit that yoga-practices are earlier than Buddhism, and that borrowing from some form of Yoga took place. But neither system now exists in its primitive form, and what we find in the actual documents of each system are resemblances in which there is the possibility of borrowing from either side. Such is the case with the four Brahma-vihāras, which appear to be late in Buddhism and a direct borrowing from Yoga. But the latter question is far less important, as it does not affect the question of the fundamentals of either system. The purpose of yoga-practices in each was different, and remained different and independent in each.

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Comparison with Yoga does not appear to throw any more light on the origin of the Causal Formula. While there are resemblances in Buddhist terminology to Yoga terms, the Formula remains with striking unlikenesses both in terminology and purpose to either Sānkhya or Yoga. The one explains the genesis of the individual, and the other is an emanation formula explaining the genesis of the universe. However much the Formula as a scheme of individual genesis shows weaknesses, it shows still more when interpreted as an emanation formula. That the Buddhists ever understood it in this sense is a gratuitous assumption.

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