the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only, and general nothingness, has himself made it clear either that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions, or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused.—­So that—­and this the Sutra means to indicate—­Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness.

33.  On account of the impossibility (of contradictory attributes) in one thing, (the Jaina doctrine is) not (to be accepted).

Having disposed of the Bauddha doctrine we now turn to the system of the Gymnosophists (Jainas).

The Jainas acknowledge seven categories (tattvas), viz. soul (jiva), non-soul (ajiva), the issuing outward (asrava), restraint (sa/m/vara), destruction (nirjara), bondage (bandha), and release (moksha)[412].  Shortly it may be said that they acknowledge two categories, viz. soul and non-soul, since the five other categories may be subsumed under these two.—­They also set forth a set of categories different from the two mentioned.  They teach that there are five so-called astikayas (’existing bodies,’ i.e. categories), viz. the categories of soul (jiva), body (pudgala), merit (dharma), demerit (adharma), and space (aka/s/a).  All these categories they again subdivide in various fanciful ways[413].—­To all things they apply the following method of reasoning, which they call the saptabha@nginaya:  somehow it is; somehow it is not; somehow it is and is not; somehow it is indescribable; somehow it is and is indescribable; somehow it is not and is indescribable; somehow it is and is not and is indescribable.

To this unsettling style of reasoning they submit even such conceptions as that of unity and eternity[414].

This doctrine we meet as follows.—­Your reasoning, we say, is inadmissible ‘on account of the impossibility in one thing.’  That is to say, it is impossible that contradictory attributes such as being and non-being should at the same time belong to one and the same thing; just as observation teaches us that a thing cannot be hot and cold at the same moment.  The seven categories asserted by you must either be so many and such or not be so many and such; the third alternative expressed in the words ‘they either are such or not such’ results in a cognition of indefinite nature which is no more a source of true knowledge than doubt is.  If you should plead that the cognition that a thing is of more than one nature is definite and therefore a source of true knowledge, we deny this.  For the unlimited assertion that all things are of a non-exclusive nature is itself something, falls as such under the alternative predications ‘somehow it is,’ ‘somehow it is not,’ and so ceases to be a definite assertion.  The same happens to the person making the assertion and to the result of the assertion; partly they are, partly they are not.