The History of Buddhist Thought c18.55

c18.55

Oldenberg’s view may be taken as representative of those investigators who would commit the Buddhists, in spite of all their efforts, to a one-sided dogmatism, and make them assert not what they themselves inferred, but what others thought they should do.² But Oldenberg later came to a different conclusion. He pointed out that there is a change of standpoint from the view that the question *ought* not to be answered to the view that it *could* not be answered. (This merely means that different disciples discussed it in different ways.) The nun Khemā (again a disciple is expounding) says that the Lord has not explained it, just as no one can measure the water of the ocean, for, “freed from the designation of body (and the other constituents)