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JOURNAL R. A. 8. (CEYLON), [Vol. VII., Pt, III. 



Equally repelled by the Vedic polity, the reformer and the Jaina 

 rose superior to mere materialism of the Brahmavadins, and 

 sympathised with higher spiritual aspirations and virtue as 

 distinguished from mere ritualism, Philosophically sceptic the 

 Jaina was practically conservative ; rationalistic in his method 

 and aspirations, he adhered to his caste and believed in the 

 philosophy of metempsychosis which the Yedic thinkers had 

 developed. The reformer and the Jaina condemned this life as 

 a perpetual source of pain and misery and aspired after emanci- 

 pation or Nivri-tti, consisting in the eternal enjoyment of positive 

 happiness and in escaping the transmigration of soul from life 

 to life — the inevitable consequence of all activity. 



VIII. The pliilosophieal plexus .—The s activity of the Jamas 

 paved the way of the radical rationalists or Buddhists. The 

 ground-basis of the doctrine of emancipation as propounded by 

 the Upanishad reformer or Vedantist, by the Jaina or the 

 conservative rationalist, and by the Buddhist or radical rational- 

 ist is the same, because the same cause originated these move- 

 ments — the opposition to the conquering supercilious Vedic 

 Aryas, their sacrificial exclusiveness, their prior rights, and 

 their all-engrossing worldliness, and materialism. The Vedantist, 

 the Jaina and the Buddhist are all world-weary, and seek the 

 cessation of all activity, and its fruit — the transmigration of 

 soul. Activity or Karma is a potent cause. It is eternal : it is 

 accumulated : it adheres to the human spirit : it produces all 

 phenomena : it abides in the peri-spirit or the semi-material 

 body which it gathers about itself. It is either increased or 

 decreased in one life. As soon as the body decays, and is 

 destroyed it leaves it and takes another body. This activity or 

 Karma is a subtle entity. It is the cause of all human suffering : 

 so long as a particle of this activity remains, there will Be to 

 that extent human misery, Separation from it is salvation. 

 Thus human activity, human misery, inseparable from it. audits 

 consequence — metempsychosis, explain all phenomena of human 

 life and of its environment. The practice of virtue, the power 

 of contemplation to nullify the habit of belief in material and 

 corporeal existence, and self-abnegation — these are the remedies 



