6. Influence of the five heretical teachers on 
Jainism and Buddhism. 
By Bimata CuHaran Law, M.A., M.R.AS. 
In view of the scanty documents available it is still an open 
question as to whether an extensive research can be instituted 
with regard to the influence of the doctrines of the five heretical 
teachers on the development of Jainism and Buddhism. So far 
as I can recollect Prof. Max Muller was the first to attempt to 
assign a definite position to them in the history of the six sys- 
tems of Indian philosophy. With all deference to that great 
scholar, I must say that he has hardly succeeded in establishing 
the precise relation in which these teachers stand either to the 
h 
teachers (including Mahavira) appears in Rockhill’s Life of the 
uddha ' drawn from the Tibetan translation of the Samafinia- 
phala Sutta. Mr. Rockhill gives in his Appendix extracts from 
the Jaina Bhagavati XV. on the intercourse between Mahavira 
(Nigantha Nathaputta) and Gosala Mankhaliputta, and also an 
account of the doctrines of the six heretical teachers according 
teachers. ‘The records of the Buddhists and Jainas about 
the philosophic ideas current at the time of the Buddha and 
the Mahavira, meagre though they be, are of the greatest 
importance to the historian of that epoch. For they show us 
the ground on which and the materials with which, the great 
religious reformers had'to build their systems The considerable 
similarity between some of these,heretical doctrines on the one 
side and Jaina or Buddhist ideas on the other, is very sugges- 
tive, and it favours the assumption that the Buddha as well as 
Mahavira owed some of their conceptions to these very heretics.” 
Alluding to these significant words of Prof. Jacobi, Dr. Rhys 
Davids remarks, “the philosophical and religious speculations 
contained in them (that is, the Buddhist and Jaina records) may 
not have originality, or intrinsic value, either of the Vedanta 
| pp. 100-105. 
