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• The Ajñānavāda school denies the necessity or importance of knowledge. According to them knowledge is not the highest accomplishment, for where there is knowledge there is contradiction, dispute and discussion. On the other hand, ajñāna or negation of knowledge may be the condition of the absence of pride and ill-will and so removal of bondage. Knowledge produces volition, and the result of volition is karma and therefore bondage, while ajñāna generates absence of volition.
Vinayavāda upholds the supremacy of reverence as the cardinal virtue that leads to perfection.
• In Buddhist literature also there is an elaborate description of contemporary schools. The classification given in the Brahmajäla Sutta in the Dīgha Nikaya divides contemporary philosophical thought into sixty-two schools, like the Eternalists, holding that the soul and the world are both eternal, the semiEternalists, believing that the Brahma is eternal but not individual souls, the Extensionists, who built up their doctrines round the finiteness or infiniteness of the world, and the Eal-Wrigglers, who gave no categorical replies to any questions but specialised in ambiguous and equivocating replies. It may be pointed out that the disputes between the various schools did not always arise on properly religious subjects. At times disputes arose over cosmographic details, as illustrated in Bhagawati Sutra in the story of Prince Siva where the duration of the gods' lives in different hevens became a matter of hot debate.
Buddhists:
. We know that the most important rival creed with which the Jain preachers were faced was that of the Buddhists and that it was at the hands of the Buddhists that the Nirgranthas suffered most in later times. But in the Tain canonical literature there are very scanty · reference to Buddhism, although Buddhist literature
