The History of Buddhist Thought c16.24

c16.24

Besides these we have the more usual division according to the five khandhas or skandhas (masses, groups): body, feeling, perception, the aggregates, and consciousness. There is also the term nāma-rūpa, “ name and form,” occurring in the Causal Formula. It is equated to the khandhas by making nāma correspond to the four immaterial khandhas, but in the Sammādiṭṭhi-sutta (Majjh., i, 53), where there is an exposition of the terms of the Causal Formula, nāma is said to consist of feeling, perception, volition (cetanā), contact, and attention, and rūpa to consist of the four great elements and what is included in them. Here we have two more analyses of the individual. Nāma-rūpa is a term found in the Upanishads, but never in the specially Buddhist sense. It is used there with its absolutely literal meaning, as when the rivers are said to lose their name and form on entering the ocean,¹ and then it comes to mean individual existence. Both here and in Buddhism it appears to have been adopted from popular usage. It was the analysis into khandhas which became the established form for the analysis of the individual, and underwent further elaboration and comment. Can it be said to be primitive ? Did Buddha himself express himself in such a way ? Unless we are to suppose that Buddhism was indeed originally nothing more than “ vulgar magic and thaumaturgy coupled with hypnotic practices ”, we should expect to find it constructive on the intellectual as well as the moral side. We do in fact find schemes for practising a way of life. We also find as part of them three or more descriptions of the nature and constitution of man. We are not bound to say that the scheme of the five khandhas was the earliest or was primitive. But when we find several such schemes all agreeing in essentials, and no rival doctrines claiming a place, we are entitled to hold that this way of describing the individual by enumerating all the characteristic features was original. All the different modes may be due to Buddha for, as Mrs. Rhys Davids says, “ he would be simply unable to repeat himself.” This appears to be the case also with the Causal Formula. There are some half-dozen forms of the causal sequence, and it is not till we get to the much elaborated *Saṃyutta-nikāya* that we find the regular twelvefold form treated as a standard. Similarly the five khandhas have become a standard form. The forms which have survived in the description of the monk’s progress through the four trances (p. 47), and in the four contemplations (p. 53) are probably older. They became neglected when with the growth of Abhidhamma such standard lists became compiled and commented on.