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JAINA DOCTRINE OF KARMAN
[CH.
types of conceptions is quite obvious. There is, however, no doubt that one was developed on the background of Prakrti and the other in consonance with the atomistic conception of the physical world. The Buddha constructed his metaphysics or rather his critique of metaphysics at a period when these various conceptions were fully developed. The conscious (nāma) and the material (rupa) were conceived on the pattern of buddhi and tanmātras (subtle elements) of the SankhyaYoga. They were kept as aloof as the soul and matter of the Jainas or rather as puruşa (the conscious principle) and prakrti of the SankhyaYoga. There were thinkers who accepted the immutable conscious principle of the Sankhya-Yoga but transferred, perhaps for the sake of logical consistency, the function of knowing, feeling, and willing which belonged to the material evolute buddhi, to the conscious principle as its qualities. They further accepted the atomistic conception with important modifications. The Vaiseșika system seems to have originated in the hands of such thinkers. The logical school of Gautama joined the Vaiśesika.
This, in brief, seems to be the historical evolution of the Indian metaphysical thought. It is certainly nothing but a tentative suggestion. In the absence of indubitable records all our speculations into the genesis of philosophical and religious doctrines in the prehistoric past are bound to remain in the plane of conjectural reconstructions. But history is not so very fundamental to the determination of the plausibility or validity of a philosophical conclusion. It is enough if we can show that the conclusion is not incompatible with the given data of experience and the canons of logical thought. In the absence of the latter all the conclusions and doctrines of a school will be convicted of dogmatism. History is important for the satisfaction of our psychological interest how one thought has given rise to another thought or how one school has influenced another school in its development. But the logical and philosophical validity of a doctrine can be established only by means of logical weapons which are eternal and inevitable laws of thought and as such not subject to historical evolution at any rate in respect of their logical cogency. The evolution consists in the explicit formulation of these laws which, with the growth of logical clarity, come to be expressed with progressively greater precision. But we feel that they are our own modes of thought and not imposed upon us from outside. These laws are so fundamental and so primitive and so spontaneous that they are incapable of being repudiated_although their interpretation has been different in conformity with the different philosophical predilections of thinkers.
But this historical speculation may help us to understand the reason why the Sānkhya-Yoga (the Vedāntin also included), the Nyāya
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