Lecture On Jainism

Author(s): Lala Banarasidas
Publisher: Anuvrat Samiti

Page 41

wild mass of guesses at truth was floating in the air, and there was no controlling authority whatever, not even, as far as we know, any binding public opinion to produce anything like order in it. Hence we have as little right to maintain that Buddha borrowed from Kapila as that Kapila borrowed from Buddha. No one would say that the Hindus borrowed the idea of building slips from the Phænicians or that of building the stupas from the Egyptians. In India we move in a world different from that which we are accustomed to in Greece, Rome, or Modern Europe, ani we need not rush at unce to the conclusion that because similar opinions prevail in Buddhism and in the Samkhya philosophy of Kapila, therefore, the former must have borrowed from the latter, or, as some hold, the latter from the former."
" It cannot be urged too strongly that there existed in India, a large common fund of philosophical thought, which like language, belonged to no one in particular, but was like the air breathed by every living and thinking man. Thus only can it be explained that we find a number of ideas in all, nearly all, the systems of Indian philosophy which ull philosophers seem to take simply for granted, and which belong to no one in particular."
" Besides this conviction that suffering can be removed by an insight into its nature and origin there are some other ideas which must be traced back to that rich treasury of thought which was opened to every thinking man in India. These common ideas