English
' Theory of this calibre was, in Greece, divided between impact (Alkmseon, Empedokles, with respect to sight, Demo- kritus, Plato, who, to impact, adds a commingling of sense and object) and access (efflux and pore theory of Empe- dokles) as the essential part of the process. The Buddhist ^ * Geschichte der Psychologie,' i. 107. liv explanation confines itself to impact.^ But neither East nor West, with the possible exception of Alkmaeon, had yet gripped the notion of a conducting medium. In Aristotle all is changed. ' Eidola ' which collide, and * aporrhoae ' which penetrate, have been thrown aside for an examination into 'metaxu.' And we find the point of view similarly shifted in Buddhaghosa's time, though how long before him this advance had been made we do not know. Nor was there, in the earlier thought of East or West, any clear dualistic distinction drawn between mind and matter, between physical (and physiological) motion or stimulus on the one hand, and consequent or concomitant mental modification on the other, in an act of sense-perception. The Greek explanations are what would now be called materialistic. The Buddhist description may be inter- preted either way. It is true that in the Milinda-panho, written some three or four centuries later than our Manual, the action and reaction of sense and sense-object are com- pared in realistic metaphor to the clash of two cymbals and the butting of two goats.^ But, being metaphorical, this account brings us really no further. The West, while it retained the phraseology characterizing the earlier theory of sense, ceased to imply any direct physical impact or contact when speaking of being * struck ' by sights, sounds, or ideas. How far, and how early, was this also the case in the East ? The very fact that the Buddhist theory, with all its analytical and symmetrical fulness of exposition, yields so very abstract and schematic a result leaves the way open to surmise that, even in the time of our Manual, the process of sense impression was not materialistically conceived.^ ^ Access comes later into prominence with the develop- ment of the * Door-theory.' See following section. 2 *Milindapaiiho,' p. 60. S.B.E., vol. xxxv., pp. 92, 93. Cf. below, p. 5, n. 2. ^ Note 2, p. 175, below, suggests the eye, in the case of sight. If so, in what shape did the object get there ? Iv We are not told, for instance, where the mutual impact takes place, nor ivith what a distant object impinges. And if d h a m m a are conceived, as in the Manual, as actual or potential states of consciousness, and rupam is con- ceived as a species of d h a m m a, it follows that both the rupam, which is * external ' and comes into contact with the rupam which is 'of the self,' and also this latter rupam are regarded in the light of the two mental factors necessary to constitute an act of sensory consciousness, actual or potential. Such may have been the psychological aspect adumbrated, groped after — not to go further — in the Dhamma-sangani itself. That the traditional interpretation of this impact- theory grew psychological with the progress of culture in the schools of Buddhism seems to be indicated by such a comment in the Atthasalini as : ' strikes (impinges) on form is a term for the eye {i.e., the visual sense) being receptive of the object of consciousness.'^ This seems to be a clear attempt to resolve the old metaphor, or, it may be, the old physical concept, into terms of subjective experience. Again, when alluding to the simile of the cymbals and the rams, we are told by Buddhaghosa to interpret ' eye ' by * visual cognition,' and to take the ' concussion ' in the sense of function.^ Once more, he tells us that when feeling arises through contact, the real causal antecedent is mental, though apparently external.^ Without pursuing this problem further, we cannot leave the subject of sense and sensation without a word of com- ment and comparison on the prominence given in the Buddhist theory to the notion of ' contact ' and the sense of touch. As with us, both terms are from the same stem. But p h a s s 0 (contact), on the one hand, is generalized to include all receptive experience, sensory as well as idea- ^ Asl. 309. Cakkhum arammanam sampaticcha- yamanam eva rupamhi patihannati nama. '^ Ihid.lOS: 'kiccatthen' eva. ^ See below, p. 5, n. 2. Ivi tional,^ and to represent the essential antecedent and con- dition of all feeling (or sensation = ve dan a). On the other hand, phusati, photthabbam (to touch, the tangible) are specialized to express the activity of one of the senses. Now, the functioning of the tactile sense (termed body-sensibility or simply body, kayo, pp. 181, 182) is described in precisely the same terms as each of the other four senses. Nevertheless, it is plain, from the sig- nificant application of the term tangible, or object of touch, alluded to already — let alone the use of ' contact ' in a wider sense— that the Buddhists regarded Touch as giving us knowledge of things * without ' in a more fundamental way than the other senses could. By the table of the contents of rupam given above, we have seen that it is only through Touch that a knowledge of the underived elements of the world of sense could be obtained, the fluid or moist element alone excepted. This interesting point in the psychology of early Buddhism may possibly be formulated somewhere in the Abhidhamma Pitaka. I should feel more hopeful in this respect had the compilers been, in the first instance, not ethical thinkers, but impelled by the scientific curiosity of a Demokritus. The latter, as is well known, regarded all sensation as either bare touch or developments of touch — a view borne out to a great extent by modern biological research. This was, perhaps a corol- lary of his atomistic philosophy. Yet that Demokritus was no mere deductive system-spinner, but an inductive observer, is shown in the surviving quotation of his dictum, that we should proceed, in our inferences, ' from phenomena to that which is not manifest.' Now, as the Buddhist view of rupam calls three of the four elements ' underived ' and ' the tangible,' while it calls the senses and all other sense-objects ' derived from that tangible ' and from fluid, one might almost claim that their position with respect to Touch was in effect parallel to that of Demokritus. The Commentary does not assist us to any ^ See below, p. 4, n. 2. Ivii clear conclusion on this matter. But, in addition to the remark quoted above, in which visual magnitudes are pro- nounced to be really tactile sensations, it has one interest- ing illustration of our proverb, ' Seeing is believing, but Touch is the real thing.' It likens the four senses, exclud- ing touch, to four balls of cotton-wool, intervening between hammer and four anvils (i.e., U p a d a r u p a m, or derived form, without and within) and deadening the impact. But in Touch, hammer smites through wool, getting at the bare anvil.^ Further considerations on the Buddhist theory of sense, taking us beyond bare sensation to the working up of such material into concrete acts of perception, I propose to consider briefly in the following section. The remaining heads of the rupa-skandha are very concisely treated in the niddesa answers (pp. 190-197), and, save in the significance of their selection, call for no special treatment. It is not quite clear why senses and sense- objects should be followed by three indriyas — by three only and just these three. The senses themselves are often termed indriyas, and not only in Buddhism. In the indriyas of sex, however, and the phenomena of nutrition, the rupa - skandha, in both the self and other selves, is certainly catalogued under two aspects as general and as impressive as that of sense. In fact, the whole organism as modi- fiable by the 'sabbam rupam' without, may be said to be summed up under these three aspects. They fit fairly well into our division of the receptive side of the organism, considered, psychophysically, as general and special sensibility. From his ethical standpoint the learner did well to take the life in which he shared into account under its impressive aspects of sense, sex and nutrition. And this not only in so far as he was receptive. The very term indriyam, which is best paralleled by the Greek Bvva/jiL(;, or faculty — i.e., * powers in us, and in all other 1 Asl. 263; below, p. 127, n. 1.