The History of Buddhist Thought c14.38

c14.38

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.