Stcherbatsky calls a Brahmanical opponent as witness. Jayanta's Nyayamanjari says the Hinayana's annihilation "is even more pitiful than" the Nyaya liberation, since it does not leave "the Soul even a stonelike condition". The witness is hostile, and the page before shows the Nyaya-Vaisesika side conceding that its liberated soul is as lifeless as a stone; annihilation was a shared Indian ideal, not a Buddhist oddity. The chapter then sorts the schools in pairs: old Nyaya is "similar to the Nirvana of the Vaibhasika-Buddhists", and the Mahayana has the "same pantheistic character as the Nirvana of the Vedantists". On this map Buddhism's history is a passage from one Brahmanical model of release to the other, which is Stcherbatsky's thesis, not a neutral finding.
The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
Nor was this analogy between the theories of the Buddhists and the Nayayikas ignored by the latter. We find in the Nyayamanjari of Jayanta (p. 512) the following very characteristic deliverence: «By nirvana and assumes that the Vaise§ikas imagined the Soul as a conscious substance, just as the Sankhyas and the Vedantins did. But consciousness (buddhi) is in that system only a guna of the atman, it appears occasionally through a special contact. The Soul in itself ( svarupavasthaydm ) has neither consciousness, nor feeling.
1 Nyayakandali ,p. 2S6 (Vizian.', cf. Nyayamanjari, p. 510, 1.12—13.
2 Ibid. That the pure essence of a Soul, or of the substance that produces consciousness is itself as lifeless (jada) as a stone seems to be here an extreme consequence drawn by the objector, the comparison with space, as an ubiquitous substance, is more adequate.
3 Cf. Vais. sutra, VII. 1.22; Bbasarvajnas Nyayasara, p. 39 (B. Ind. 1910)
4 Cf. Nyayamanjari, p. 508 f. and Nyayatatparyadlpika, p. 282 (Ibid). Cp. Naigadhlya, XVII. 75, muktaye yah silatvaya idstram uce... Gotamam.
5 Nyayasara, p. 40.
6 Nyayabhasya, p. 30, cf. likewise p. p. 31-34 where the controversy with Vedanta is al¬ ready in full swing.
XIRAANA
XXI. CONCLUSION similar expressions the Buddhists mean an absolute end ( apavarga ) which is either (in Hinayana) the annihilation of the flow of consciousness, or (in Mahayana) a flow of pure (objectless) consciousness. (The first) solution — annihilation — is even more pitiful than (the condition to which Soul is reduced in nirvana) according to the Nayayikas, since it does not leave to the Soul even a stonelike condition. But in one point we agree with the Buddhists, viz. that there is a difference between the essence of the Soul by itself and the form iu which it appears in its reciprocal action with other objects. A constant change of (this substantial) Soul (as maintained by the Buddhists) is absolutely inconceivable, it must be rejected as impos¬ sible, just as (the converse theory of the Buddhist about the sound, viz. that) sound is a substance (sc. atomic).»
The Nirvana of the old 1 Nyaya-Vaisesika school is thus lifeless and similar to the Nirvana of the Vaibhasika-Buddhists. On the other hand the Nirvana of the Mahayanists, to which the Sautrantikas adhered, has the same pantheistic character as the Nirvana of the Vedantists.
XXI. Conclusion
The probable history of the Buddhist conception of the Absolute is, therefore, the following one.
1. In the VI century B. C. there was a great effervescence of philo¬ sophical thought among the non-brahmanical classes of India, and a way out of phenomenal life was ardently sought for, the majority of the solutions having a materialistic tinge. Buddha at that time proposed, or accepted, a system denying the existence of an eternal Soul, and reducing phenomenal existence to a congeries of separate elements evolving gradually towards final extinction.
2. To this ideal of a lifeless Nirvana and an extinct Buddha some
1 In later theistic Nyaya Final Deliverence is reached by the direct contemplation of God, and the condition of the liberated Soul is defined as blissful, cf. Nyaysara, p. 40, and Nyayatatparyadlpika, p. 293. Both the Vaisesika and the Nayayika systems were originally atheistic, cf. H. Jacobi, Die Gottesidee bei den Indern, (Bonn 1923) p. 47 ff. and Faddegon, op.cit.p.165 and 354. That the idea of an eternal God could not easily tally with the system is seen from the embarrasment to decide whether it should be classed as a muktatman or not. The question is solved, in agreement with Yogasutra 1.24, by admitting that the quality of consciousness, ■which is only accidental in Souls, becomes eternal in God, cf. Nyayakandali, p. 58 (Vizian) and Nyayavartika p. 469. Both theistic and atheistic Nayayikas existed at Sriharsa’s time, cp. Naisadhiya XVII, 75 and 77.
schools alone remained faithful. A tendency to convert Buddha into a su¬ perhuman, eternally living, principle manifested itself early among his followers and led to a schism.
• 3. This tendency gradually developed until in the I century A. D. it ended int the production of a luxuriant growth of a new kanonical literature. It then adopted, probably borrowing from some Aupanisada school, the brahmanical idea of a pautheistic Absolute, of a spiritual and monistic cha¬ racter. After this Buddhistic adaptation of the Vedanta the Buddha was converted into a full blown brahman and its personification worshipped under the names of a Cosmical Body ( dharmakaya ), Samantabhadra, Vairoeana and others.