The History of Buddhist Thought c14.34

c14.34

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.