-825  — 
Buddhist  teaching  and  Mrs.  Caroline  Rhys  Davids  rightly  remarks,  «how 
carefully  and  conscientiously  this  antisubstantialist  position  had  been  cherished 
and  upheld».  We  may  add  that  the  whole  of  the  history  of  Buddhist  philosophy 
can  be  described  as  a  series  of  attempts  to  penetrate  more  deeply  into  this  ori- 
ginal intuition  of  Buddha,  what  he  himself  believed  to  be  Iiis  great  discovery. 
When  considering  the  general  lines  of  the  later  evolution  of  Buddhist 
philosophy  one  is  involuntarily  reminded  of  what  has  been  said  by  one  of 
the  leaders  of  modern  thought  with  respect  to  philosophy  in  general.  «The 
more  we  try  to  penetrate  into  the  main  idea  of  a  philosopher ....  we  feel 
that  it  imperceptibly  becomes  transfigurated  at  our  hands».  The  original 
intuition  of  a  philosopher  may  be  very  simple,  but  he  spends  the  whole  of 
his  life  in  bringing  it  into  a  clear  formula.  No  sooner  has  he  expressed 
what  he  had  in  his  mind  as  he  feels  himself  obliged  to  correct  his  formula, 
then  to  correct  this  correction  and  so  on.  «All  the  complexity  of  his  doctrine 
which  thus  is  capable  of  an  infinite  evolution  is  nothing  else  than  an  incon- 
mensurability  between  his  primitive  intuition  and  the  means  to  express  it 
which  ware  at  his  disposab  \  The  oldest  schism  in  the  Congregation  had 
already  a  bearing  upon  these  abstruse  philosophical  questions.  The  Kathä- 
vatthu  begins  its  exposition  of  divergent  views  by  a  long  discussion  of 
the  question  about  the  possible  reality  of  Soul.  The  schools  of  the 
Aryasammitlyas  and  Vatsiputrlyas  were  inclined  to  interpret  the 
doctrine  of  Soullesness  in  a  sense  which  admitted  some,  albeit  very  feeble, 
unity  in  the  elements  of  a  personality.  Their  opponents  the  Sarvästi- 
vädins  denied  even  that.  They  maintained  that  separate  elements  were 
really  existing  in  all  the  three  times,  i.  e.  not  only  were  the  momentary 
flashings  of  some  elements  composing  the  present  moment  really  existing,  but 
the  past  and  future  flashings  were  also  somehow  existent.  Soullessness  for 
them  was  equal  to  the  whole  infinite  mass  of  elements  past,  present  and  future. 
Nägärjuna  made  a  further  step  in  erecting  this  Soullessness  or  Voidness 
into  an  entity  sui  generis.  The  consequence  was  that  the  elements  whose 
interdependence  was  an  acknowledged  fact  were  denied  any  real  substantial 
existence  (nihsvabhava).  This  voidness  developed  (vivarta)  in  an  inconceivable 
manner  into  the  manifoldness  of  phenomenal  life.  A^vaghosa2  conceived 
1  H.  В  ergs  on.  L'intuition  philosophique.  Kevue  de  Metaph.  1911,  p.  810. 
2  The  author  of  MahäyänagraddhotpädaQästra.  The  chronological  argument  which  Prof. 
H.  Jacob r  and  myself  have  drawn  from  the  fact  that  Buddhist  Idealism  is  alluded  to  in  the 
Nyayasutras  must  be  corrected,  since,  as  it  would  seem,  idealistic  views  emerge  in  the  run  of 
Buddhist  philosophy  more  than  once. 
Извѣстія  P.  A,  H.  1919,  5  5  * 
