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PROLEGOMENA TO PRAKRITICA et JAINICA
Nirgrantha adherent, and asked whether the world was with or without an end, whether the jīva was with or without an end, etc. Khandaya was terribly upset, we are told, by these questions, could give no answer, kept quiet, and at last went to Mahāvīra for setting at ease his severe discomfiture. All we can inferentially gather from such accounts is that in the opinion of the authors of these narratives the followers of Brahmanism and other schools concerned could not give a satisfactory solution of such vital problems, but we must beware of reading too much in these statements. Probably to set off Khandaya's indifference to high metaphysical curiosity we are told that he was a teacher of, prevented corruption from entering into, retained in his memory, and was well-versed in the four Vedas Rik, Yajus, Sāman, and Atharvan, to which is added Itihāsa as the fifth, Nighaņķu as the sixth, along with the Angas, Upāngas, and the Rahasya, knew the six Angas and the philosophy of the sixty categories, arithmetic, phonetics, ceremonial, grammar, prosody, etymology, and astronomy and in many other branches of knowledge suited for Brahmanic mendicants.49
There is an interesting account of a Brahman priest named Mahessaradatta who was learned in the Vedas, etc., and who in order to enhance the realm and power of his patron king Jiyasattu caused everyday a Brahman boy, a Kşatriya boy, a Vaiśya boy and a Sūdra boy to be seized and their hearts extracted alive with which he performed homa sacrifices to propitiate the gods on behalf
49. Bhag.2.1.90; the same enameration is referred to by a
rubric in 15.541 and 18.10.646; repeated in Vip. S.1.5., Aup. 38, and Kalpa S.10., "The philosophy of the sixty categories' is explained by Abhayadeva as 'the doctrine of Kapila', saşthitantra which means the Samkhya system. The analogous formula of the Buddhists for describing a Brahman, as given in the Ambaţtha S., is pretty much the same with a few minor additions.
