The History of Buddhist Thought c16.51

c16.51

The individual is then analysed according to the constituents of which he is compounded and which sustain him. There are said to be the four foods (*āhāra*): material food, contact, cogitation (*manosañcetana*), and consciousness. These are all produced by craving, craving by feeling, feeling by contact, contact by the six sense-organs, the six sense-organs by name and form, name and form by (birth-) consciousness, consciousness by the aggregates, and the aggregates by ignorance. Here the origin of the living individual as actually constituted of foods or sustenances is explained. It is followed by still another variant of the Causal Formula, in which the origin of the individual from the stage of birth-consciousness is traced as against the view that consciousness persists as such through all stages. Birth-consciousness is identified with the embryo (*gabbha*). When three conditions are present there is entry or descent of the embryo: when mother and father come together, when the mother is of child-bearing age, and when the gandhabba (the being to be reborn) is present. When the boy is born¹ he develops his faculties, he experiences feeling through each of the senses, he delights in them, and delight (*nandī*) arises. This delight in the senses is grasping, on account of grasping becoming, on account of becoming birth, on account of birth old age and death arise. Even so is the origin of all this mass of pain. This is still another form of the Causal Formula, and one which shows that it was understood as stages of the individual. Craving (*taṇhā*) is not mentioned, but delight (*nandī*), a word sometimes treated as a synonym of craving, takes its place. It is hardly likely that this could have arisen after the form with twelve links had become fixed.