Comment and Discussion

Abstract

Since the time Western scholars came to be interested in the study of Buddhism, we find various views expressed on the nature of early Buddhist thought, especially in comparison with the different trends in Western philosophy. One of the pioneers in this field, Professor T. W. Rhys Davids, whose main studies on Buddhism were confined to the Theravada canon, especially the Pali Nikayas consisting of the discourses attributed to the Buddha himself, pointed out at a very early date the relationship between Buddhism and the positivistic thought of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, where the claims of science received a full recognition.' Following this we find many scholars making random observations on the modernistic trends in Buddhism. For example, H. H. Price, speaking on the appeal of Hinayana Buddhism to the Western mind, wrote: "There are indeed some passages in the early part of the Questions of King Milinda which have a modern ring, and might almost have been written in Cambridge in the 1920's."2 Of the scholars from the Orient, we find Radhakrishnan occasionally referring to the positivistic trends in early Buddhism.3 All of these appear to be cursory glances at the nature of early Buddhism. None of these themes were worked out in full until Professor K. N. Jayatilleke made an exhaustive study of almost all the material, especially that embodied in the Pali Nikayas, to show that early Buddhism compares with modern Empiricism, with the exception that unlike modern Empiricism, Buddhism recognized the validity of the data of extrasensory perception and of the experiential content of mysticism.4 Professor Jayatilleke has examined most of the statements in the Pali canon embodying empiricist ideas, but a very important discourse, which could have been usefully utilized to prove his point of view, appears to have eluded him. It is a discourse included in the Samyutta Nikaya,5 and is called the "Discourse on 'Everything"' (Sabbasutta). Its Agama version is found in the Chinese translation, the Tsa-a-han-ching.6