Buddhism in India

Conclusion 273

more ‘material’ in the process), becoming dependent on food, then

on private property, and then from this arises theft, punishment

and the state. What is given here is not a deterministic evolution

from some ‘first cause’ but rather a process of development and

change, with one thing proceeding after another.

The focus on this kind of causality, as central to Buddhism,

might be seen in a text often called the ‘formula of the Dhamma’,

and that is found engraved on stupas and clay tablets all over India,

from Taxila and Kushinagar in the north to Ajanta and Kanheri

(Dutt 1988: 224–25n).

Then the venerable Assaji pronounced to the paribbajaka Sariputta

the following text of the Dhamma: ‘Of all phenomena that proceed

from a cause, the Tathagata has told the cause; and He has explained

their cessation also; this is the doctrine of the great Samana.’And the

paribbajaka Sariputta after having heard this text obtained the pure

and spotless Eye of the Truth: ‘Whatsoever is subject to the condition

of origination is subject also to the condition of cessation.’ (And he

said), ‘If this alone be the Dhamma, now you have reached up to the

state where all sorrow ceases [i.e. nibbana] which has remained

unseen through many eons of the past (Vinaya I, 25, 5–6 the high-

lighted portion is the ‘formula’).

Does this indicate a scientific method? One might argue that it both

does and doesn’t: the passage in question, for example, emphasises

causality, but links this emphasis to an apparent (very unscientific)

reference to the omniscience of the Buddha. Indeed, what the

Buddha taught was not directed to the understanding of the empir-

ical social world or the physical universe—an effort which he rejected

as useless—but to a psychological subjective understanding. In this

sense, Buddhism might be called, not unscientific but pre-scientific.

It also might be noted that within the Buddhist tradition the

earlier versions, and what may be the earliest version of all, of the

paticca samuppadachain leading to sorrows are less idealistic, and

the most ‘materialistic’. This again comes in the Atthakavagga,

where the origin of ‘contentions and disputes, lamentations and

sorrows, selfishness and conceit, arrogance along with slander’ is

asked. The reply is to point to piya(being too endeared to objects

and persons); this in turn arises from chanda(desires), these from

thinking of things as satam/asatan(thinking of things as pleasant

to identify the Buddha’s teaching with idealism when he writes in
The Buddha and His Dhammathat among ‘What He Accepted’ of
dominant Indian philosophical themes was

recognition of the mind as the centre of everything. Mind precedes

things, dominates them, creates them. If mind is comprehended all

things are comprehended. Mind is the leader of all its faculties. Mind is

the chief of all its faculties. The very mind is made up of those faculties.

The first thing to attend to is the culture of the mind (Ambedkar

1992: 104).

In contrast, a recent study by Kancha Ilaiah has emphasised the
this-worldly and rationalistic nature of the Buddha’s political
philosophy. Taking a statement ascribed to the Buddha to the effect
that people will come to an end with death, Ilaiah calls the Buddha
‘a materialist of the ancient period’ but not ‘in a strict Marxist sense’:

It is not possible to compare Buddha with Marx in entirety because

the conditions in which they lived were different, hence one reflected

an under-developed agrarian economy and the other an advanced

capitalist one. But what is common to them both is the materialist

world outlook (Ilaiah 2001: 129).

Ilaiah is correct, but ‘materialism’ is an inadequate term to describe
the Buddha’s teachings. Most versions of materialism, certainly its
Indian forms, assume some kind of underlying substance which has
basic characteristics (swabhava in traditional Indian Samkhya
phraseology) from which the historical world/universe has evolved.
This position was clearly refuted by the Buddha, as we have seen in
the discussion of his rejection of a ‘root cause’ or ‘root sequence’ (or
any form of ‘ground of being’) in the Mulapariyaya Suttaof the
Majjhima Nikaya. Even Marxist forms of ‘historical materialism’ or
‘dialectical materialism’ would fall under his critique: they define
the ultimate ‘root cause’ in more ‘social’ terms (as the forces and
relations of production) but nevertheless argue that there is such an
ultimate cause. Buddhist philosophy rejects this assumption itself.
For Ilaiah also, the ‘materialism’ of the Buddha is exemplified in
the pattica samuppada, or ‘dependent arising’. Ilaiah sees this as
exemplified in the account of the origins of the state in the Aganna
Suttanta(described in Chapter 2) where a process of causal relation-
ship is described in which humans evolve, (becoming more and

272 Buddhism in India