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GENERAL TENDENCIES
103 belief and has in turn been influenced by it leading to the obliteration in great part of the distinction between the two sets of tenets (p. 25). The very early alliance with Vedic teaching of the Upanişadic doctrine, which should have initiated many a 'heretical' view, is also largely responsible for this result.
Though the heretical doctrine represents so important a stream of thought and incidental references to it in philosophical works are far from scanty, no detailed exposition of it is to be found in any part of early Sanskrit literature. It no doubt appears now and then in the Mahābhārata; but owing to the revision which the epic has undergone at the hands of its later editors, it appears re-touched or largely mixed up with the tenets of other faiths. That the doctrine as now found set forth in that work has also come under the review of unsympathetic thinkers and has possibly suffered distortion is clear from its being traced there often to such objectionable sources as demons (asuras). Though thus modified, the Mahābhārata account is the only considerable one from which we have to draw our information about it for the present period. The doctrine seems to have had its own divergences. The Svetāśvatara Upanişad already mentions nearly half a dozena views of the kind, and the epic accounts also suggest a similar diversity in its teaching; but we cannot state the exact scope of any of them. Two of them, however, may here be distinguished for their knowledge will be of service to us in understanding certain aspects of the later history of Indian thought. They are accidentalism, described as Yadrcchā vāda or Animitta-vāda, and 'naturalism' or Svabhāva-vāda. Both are found separately mentioned in the Svetāśvatara Upanišad and later works also make that distinction.3 While the one maintains that the world is chaos and ascribes whatever order is seen in it to mer chance, the other recognizes that things are as their natur makes them.'4 While the former denies causation altogether,
For example, Bali and Prahrāda appearing respectively in xii. 224 and 222 are asuras.
E : i. 2. 3 Cf. Kusumāñjali, i. 5. There is a reference to Animitta-väda in NS. IV. i. 22-24. * Svabhāva-bhāvino bhāvān. Mbh. xii. 222, 27. See also st. 15 ff.
