THE HISTORY OP MANIKKA- VAC AGAR. 135 



He dances in the universe and in the soul. Yoi; ask about the sacred 

 ashes. He weai's them to assuage the sorrows of all souls. This act of His 

 is like the nursing mother's taking medicines herself to heal the maladies 

 of her tender infant. And thou askest why ^ivan shares Umai's form. 

 The answer is that to give mystic wisdom to His worshippers He assumes 

 this mystic twofold form, (^ivan the supreme, who rides upon the 

 mighty biill, commingles with the souls of men like the fragrance* in the 

 flowers ; but this thovi knowest not. He is the First ; He is the Yogi ; 

 He is the Enjoyer ; He is the Formless ; He is the Splendour ; He is the 

 Being of many forms ; He is the Sea of delight. Who knows His crown, 

 who knows the sole of His foot, save that He fills the Golden Hall where 

 virtue rules, and sorrow is not 1 ' This closes the controversy, but the 

 sequel as given in the legend is stranger still. 



When we sum up this controversy it seems as though strict logic had 

 no place in it, and the result is made to depend upon the double miracle,, 

 the infliction of dumbness upon the Buddhist disputants and the restora- 

 tion of speech to the daughter of the Ceylon king. Each party has 

 expounded his tenets and reviled those of his opponent ; but the only 

 thing that looks like real reasoning is Manikka Vagagar's treatment of the 

 Buddhist idea of the Kandas. It has been too much the custom in India 

 to hide poverty of thought under a multitude of high-:-ounding words, 

 and to regard an explanation that is not absolutely absurd as a proof. 

 The Kandas, or aggregates, represent no facts or realities, but imaginaiy 

 states or conditions of finite existence, and, according to the popular view 

 of the case, the whole theory means this : there is an unreal something, 

 not embodied, not permanent, indeed not really existent, to which 

 clings the responsibility of certain deeds, how done, or by whom, or 

 when, is entii'ely uncertain ; and this shadow of being must have an 

 opiiortunity of expiating or working out the results of these deeds, and 

 therefore this Ego, without fixed principle, or substratum of existence, or 

 soul, or body, obtains in this world an embodiment. Of this the first 

 element is (l)/o?'m ; the second is (2) sensation ; the third is (name or) (3) 

 sign (or characteristic qualities) ; the next is the (4) deeds which deter- 

 mine the faculties and dispositions of the mind ; the last is (5) individual 

 consciousness. These elements combine, arrange, and rearrange them- 



* Kandam iu Tamil (S. gandha) means also fragrance. Sweet odours are reckoned 

 to be five, tlie paiicha-Kandliam. It seems that there is an aUusion to this here. 

 The ^ive Kanda (Pali for Sanskrit Skandha) would be unintelligible to Tamil 

 people, and the general idea among the vulgar was that the Buddhists taught that 

 the universe was formed from combinations of odours ! Compare Sarva-dai"9ana- 

 saiigraha, eh. ii, p. 2"2, Kechana Bauddha, etc. 



