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Presidential Address
775
him on this or that, he resorts to eel-wriggling, to equivocation, and says: “I do not take it thus, I don't take it the other way. But I advance no different opinion. And I don't deny your position. And I don't say it is neither the one nor the other." The similarity between the doctrine of amarāvikkhepikas and the Syādvāda will appear more striking if I quote another passage in which Gautama Buddha gives examples of the propositions which they laid down regarding certain questions which interested the amarāvikkhepikas most. "Thus they say:--
a (1) There is not another world.
(2) There both is, and is not, another world.
(3) There neither is, nor is not, another world. b (1) There are no such Beings.
(2) There both are, and are not, such beings.
(3) There neither are, nor are not, such beings. c (1) There is fruit, result, of good and bad actions.
(2) There is not. (3) There both is, and is not.
(4) There neither is, nor is not. d (1) A man who has penetrated to the truth
continues to exist after death. (2) He does not. (3) He both does, and does not.
(4) He neither does, nor does not”.
Next we come to Buddhism. Gautama Buddha refused to be a metaphysician, but his followers slipped inevitably into metaphysics, and the numerous schisms, which arose in the Buddhist Church soon after the death of the Master, became crystallised
