________________
Lord Mahāvira's Religious Contemporaries and Sects
187
former the debauchery of the gods is mental unlike the debauchery of the gods of the latter school which is physical. The fourth school held that the soul was eternal but not the body.
The first of the four schools of Extentionists or Antānantikas held that the world was finite, the second that it was infinite, the third that it was infinite sidewise but finite upward and downward, and the fourth that it was neither finite nor infinite.
The four schools of Eel-wrigglers or Amarāvikkhepikas did not give categorical replies to any question but avoided them by ambiguous and equivocating replies, and differed only in respect of the motives for giving such replies.
The two schools of Fortuitous-Originists or Adhichchasamuppannikas held that the soul and the world came into being without a cause. The first came to this conclusion as a result of the remembrance of past lives and the second as a result of logical reasoning.
The thirty-two schools of consciousness-maintainers or Uddhamāghatanikas believed that the soul after death passed into various states of existence, viz., conscious or unconscious, subject to decay or not subject to decay, neither conscious nor unconscious, and all in respect of the forın, finitude, different modes of consciousness, and happiness of the soul.
The seven schools of Annihilationists or Uchchedavādis maintained that the soul is annihilated after death and identified it with the body, essence of the body, mind, infinite space, infinite consciousness, or with the boundless and with that which is beyond ideas.
The five schools of Nirvanists or Ditthadhainmanibbūnažādas believed that a soul was capable of obtaining complete cmancipation in this visiblc world through full cnjoyincni of the pleasures of the senses or through each of the four stages of dliyāna. VEDIC PANTHEON IVD RELIGIOUS PR:1CTICES
People liad not forgotten the Vedic panilicon and religious practices because of the rise of different religious secs and schools during the time or alavira. The Viic rituals viere
