enunciated in the Upanisads. The Bṛhadaranyaka says that just as an insect going to the end of a leaf of grass by a new effort collects itself in another so does the soul coming to the end of this life collect itself in another. This life thus presupposes another existence. So far as I remember there has seldom been before or after Buddha any serious attempt to prove or disprove the doctrine of rebirth1. All schools of philosophy except the Cārvākas believed in it and so little is known to us of the Carvāka sūtras that it is difficult to say what they did to refute this doctrine. The Buddha also accepts it as a fact and does not criticize it. This life therefore comes only as one which had an infinite number of lives before, and which except in the case of a few emancipated ones would have an infinite number of them in the future. It was strongly believed by all people, and the Buddha also, when he came to think to what our present birth might be due, had to fall back upon another existence (bhava). If bhava means karma which brings rebirth as Candrakīrtti takes it to mean, then it would mean that the present birth could only take place on account of the works of a previous existence which determined it. Here also we are reminded of the Upanisad note "as a man does so will he be born" (Yat karma kurute tadabhisampadyate, Brh. IV. iv. 5). Candrakirtti's interpretation of "bhava" as Karma (punarbhavajanakam karma) seems to me to suit better than "existence." The word was probably used rather loosely for kammabhava. The word bhava is not found in the earlier Upanisads and was used in the Pali scriptures for the first time as a philosophical term. But on what does this bhava depend? There could not have been a previous existence if people had not betaken themselves to things or works they desired. This betaking oneself to actions or things in accordance with desire is called upādāna. In the Upaniṣads we read, "whatever one betakes himself to, so does he work" (Yatkraturbhavati tatkarmma kurute, Bṛh. IV. iv. 5). As this betaking to the thing depends upon desire (tṛṣṇā), it is said that in order that there may be upādāna there must be taṇhā. In the Upaniṣads also we read "Whatever one desires so does he betake himself to" (sa yathākāmo bhavati tatkraturbhavati). Neither the word upādāna nor tṛṣṇā (the Sanskrit word corresponding

1 The attempts to prove the doctrine of rebirth in the Hindu philosophical works such as the Nyaya, etc., are slight and inadequate.

to tanha) is found in the earlier Upanisads, but the ideas contained in them are similar to the words "kratu" and "kāma." Desire (tanha) is then said to depend on feeling or sense-contact. Sense-contact presupposes the six senses as fields of operation1. These six senses or operating fields would again presuppose the whole psychosis of the man (the body and the mind together) called nāmarūpa. We are familiar with this word in the Upanişads but there it is used in the sense of determinate forms and names as distinguished from the indeterminate indefinable reality?. Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga says that by "Name" are meant the three groups beginning with sensation (i.e. sensation, perception and the predisposition); by "Form" the four elements and form derivative from the four elements3. He further says that name by itself can produce physical changes, such as eating, drinking, making movements or the like. So form also cannot produce any of those changes by itself. But like the cripple and the blind they mutually help one another and effectuate the changes. But there exists no heap or collection of material for the production of Name and Form; "but just as when a lute is played upon, there is no previous store of sound; and when the sound comes into existence it does not come from any such store; and when it ceases, it does not go to any of the cardinal or intermediate points of the compass ;...in exactly the same way all the elements of being both those with form and those without, come into existence after having previously been non-existent and having come into existence pass away." Namarūpa taken in this sense will not mean the whole of mind and body, but only the sense functions and the body which are found to operate in the six doors of sense (salayatana). If we take nāmarūpa in this sense, we can see that it may be said to depend upon the viññāna (consciousness). Consciousness has been compared in the Milinda Pañha with a watchman at the middle of

1 The word ayatana is found in many places in the earlier Upanisads in the sense of "field or place," Chā. 1. 5, Brh. 111. 9. 10, but ṣaḍāyatana does not occur.

* Candrakirtti interprets nāma as Vedanādayo'rūpiņaścatvāraḥ skandhāstatra tatra bhave nāmayantīti nāma. saha rūpaskandhena ca nāma rūpam ceti nāmarūpamucyate. The four skandhas in each specific birth act as name. These together with rūpa make nāmarūpa. M. V. 564.

3 Warren's Buddhism in Translations, p. 184. Ibid. p. 185, Visuddhimagga, Ch. XVII.

5 Ibid. pp. 185-186, Visuddhimagga, Ch. xvII.

the cross-roads beholding all that come from any direction1. Buddhaghosa in the Atthasālinī also says that consciousness means that which thinks its object. If we are to define its characteristics we must say that it knows (vijānana), goes in advance (pubbangama), connects (sandhāna), and stands on nāmarūpa (nāmarūpapadaṭṭhānam). When the consciousness gets a door, at a place the objects of sense are discerned (ārammana-vibhāvanaṭṭhāne) and it goes first as the precursor. When a visual object is seen by the eye it is known only by the consciousness, and when the dhammas are made the objects of (mind) mano, it is known only by the consciousness?. Buddhaghosa also refers here to the passage in the Milinda Pañha we have just referred to. He further goes on to say that when states of consciousness rise one after another, they leave no gap between the previous state and the later and consciousness therefore appears as connected. When there are the aggregates of the five khandhas it is lost; but there are the four aggregates as nāmarūpa, it stands on nāma and therefore it is said that it stands on nāmarūpa. He further asks, Is this consciousness the same as the previous consciousness or different from it? He answers that it is the same. Just so, the sun shows itself with all its colours, etc., but he is not different from those in truth; and it is said that just when the sun rises, its collected heat and yellow colour also rise then, but it does not mean that the sun is different from these. So the citta or consciousness takes the phenomena of contact, etc., and cognizes them. So though it is the same as they are yet in a sense it is different from them3.

Το go back to the chain of twelve causes, we find that jāti (birth) is the cause of decay and death, jarāmaraṇa, etc. Jāti is the appearance of the body or the totality of the five skandhas. Coming to bhava which determines jāti, I cannot think of any better rational explanation of bhava, than that I have already

1 Warren's Buddhism in Translations, p. 182. Milinda Pañha (623).

2 Atthasālinī, p. 112.

3 Ibid. p. 113, Yathā hi rūpādīni upādāya paññattā suriyādayo na atthato rūpādihi aññe honti ten' eva yasmin samaye suriyo udeti tasmin samaye tassa tejā-sankhātam rūpam pīti evam vuccamāne pi na rūpādihi añño suriyo nāma atthi. Tathā cittam phassadayo dhamme upādāya paññapiyati. Atthato pan' ettha tehi aññam eva. Tena yasmin samaye cittam uppannam hoti ekamsen eva tasmin samaye phassādihi atthato aññad eva hoti ti.

▲ "Jätirdehajanma pañcaskandhasamudāyaḥ," Govindānanda's Ratnaprabha on Sankara's bhāṣya, 11. ii. 19.

ens.cont.

suggested, namely, the works (karma) which produce the birth'. Upādāna is an advanced tṛṣṇā leading to positive clinging. It is produced by tṛṣṇā (desire) which again is the result of vedanā (pleasure and pain). But this vedana is of course vedana with ignorance (avidyā), for an Arhat may have also vedanā but as he has no avidya, the vedanā cannot produce tṛṣṇā in turn. On its development it immediately passes into upādāna. Vedanā means pleasurable, painful or indifferent feeling. On the one side it leads to tṛṣṇā (desire) and on the other it is produced by sense-contact (sparśa). Prof. De la Vallée Poussin says that Śrīlābha distinguishes three processes in the production of vedanā. Thus first there is the contact between the sense and the object; then there is the knowledge of the object, and then there is the vedanā. Depending on Majjhima Nikāya, iii. 242, Poussin gives the other opinion that just as in the case of two sticks heat takes place simultaneously with rubbing, so here also vedanā takes place simultaneously with sparsa for they are "produits par un même complexe de causes (sāmagrī)3.”

Sparsa is produced by ṣaḍāyatana, ṣaḍāyatana by nāmarūpa, and namarūpa by vijñāna, and is said to descend in the womb of the mother and produce the five skandhas as nāmarūpa, out of which the six senses are specialized.

Vijñāna in this connection probably means the principle or germ of consciousness in the womb of the mother upholding the five elements of the new body there. It is the product of the past karmas (sankhāra) of the dying man and of his past consciousness too.

We sometimes find that the Buddhists believed that the last thoughts of the dying man determined the nature of his next

1 Govindananda in his Ratnaprabhā on Śankara's bhāṣya, II. ii. 19, explains "bhava” as that from which anything becomes, as merit and demerit (dharmādi). See also Vibhanga, p. 137 and Warren's Buddhism in Translations, p. 201. Mr Aung says in Abhidhammatthasangaha, p. 189, that bhavo includes kammabhavo (the active side of an existence) and upapattibhavo (the passive side). And the commentators say that bhava is a contraction of “kammabhava" or Karma-becoming i.e. karmic activity. 2 Prof. De la Vallée Poussin in his Théorie des Douse Causes, p. 26, says that Sālistambhasutra explains the word "upādāna" as 'tṛṣṇāvaipulya" or hyper-tṛṣṇā and Candrakirtti also gives the same meaning, M. V. (B. T. S. p. 210). Govindānanda explains “upādāna” as pravṛtti (movement) generated by tṛṣṇā (desire), i.e. the active tendency in pursuance of desire. But if upādāna means "support" it would denote all the five skandhas. Thus Madhyamaka vṛtti says upādānam pañcaskandhalakṣaṇam..... pañcopādānaskandhākhyam upādānam. M. V. xxvII. 6.

3 Poussin's Théorie des Douze Causes, p. 23.

birth'. The manner in which the vijñāna produced in the womb is determined by the past vijñāna of the previous existence is according to some authorities of the nature of a reflected image, like the transmission of learning from the teacher to the disciple, like the lighting of a lamp from another lamp or like the impress of a stamp on wax. As all the skandhas are changing in life, so death also is but a similar change; there is no great break, but the same uniform sort of destruction and coming into being. New skandhas are produced as simultaneously as the two scale pans of a balance rise up and fall, in the same manner as a lamp is lighted or an image is reflected. At the death of the man the

vijñāna resulting from his previous karmas and vijñānas enters genes.

into the womb of that mother (animal, man or the gods) in which the next skandhas are to be matured. This vijñāna thus forms the principle of the new life. It is in this vijñāna that name (nama) and form (rūpa) become associated.

The vijñāna is indeed a direct product of the samskāras and the sort of birth in which vijñāna should bring down (nāmayati) the new existence (upapatti) is determined by the samskāras2, for in reality the happening of death (maraṇabhava) and the instillation of the vijñāna as the beginning of the new life (upapattibhava) cannot be simultaneous, but the latter succeeds just at the next moment, and it is to signify this close succession that they are said to be simultaneous. If the vijñāna had not entered the womb then no nāmarūpa could have appeared3.

This chain of twelve causes extends over three lives. Thus avidyā and samskāra of the past life produce the vijñāna, nāma1 The deities of the gardens, the woods, the trees and the plants, finding the master of the house, Citta, ill said "make your resolution, 'May I be a cakravartti king in a next existence," Samyutta, IV. 303.

2 "sa cedānandavijñānam mātuḥkukṣim nāvakrāmeta, na tat kalalam kalalatvāya sannivartteta,” M. V. 552. Compare Caraka, Śārīra, III. 5-8, where he speaks of a "upapāduka sattva” which connects the soul with body and by the absence of which the character is changed, the senses become affected and life ceases, when it is in a pure condition one can remember even the previous births; character, purity, antipathy, memory, fear, energy, all mental qualities are produced out of it. Just as a chariot is made by the combination of many elements, so is the foetus.

3 Madhyamaka vṛtti (B.T. S. 202-203). Poussin quotes from Digha, 11. 63, “si le vijñāna ne descendait pas dans le sein maternel la namarupa s'y constituerait-il ?" Govindānanda on Sankara's commentary on the Brahma-sūtras (11. ii. 19) says that the first consciousness (vijñāna) of the foetus is produced by the samskāras of the previous birth, and from that the four elements (which he calls nāma) and from that the white and red, semen and ovum, and the first stage of the foetus (kalala-budbudāvasthā) is produced.