[Footnote 4:  “Jatirdehajanma pancaskandhasamudaya@h,” Govindananda’s Ratnaprabha on S’a@nkara’s bha@sya, II. ii. 19.]

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suggested, namely, the works (karma) which produce the birth [Footnote ref 1].  Upadana is an advanced t@r@s@na leading to positive clinging [Footnote ref 2].  It is produced by t@r@s@na (desire) which again is the result of vedana (pleasure and pain).  But this vedana is of course vedana with ignorance (avidya), for an Arhat may have also vedana but as he has no avidya, the vedana cannot produce t@r@s@na in turn.  On its development it immediately passes into upadana.  Vedana means pleasurable, painful or indifferent feeling.  On the one side it leads to t@r@s@na (desire) and on the other it is produced by sense-contact (spars’a).  Prof.  De la Vallee Poussin says that S’rilabha distinguishes three processes in the production of vedana.  Thus first there is the contact between the sense and the object; then there is the knowledge of the object, and then there is the vedana.  Depending on Majjhima Nikaya, iii. 242, Poussin gives the other opinion that just as in the case of two sticks heat takes place simultaneously with rubbing, so here also vedana takes place simultaneously with spars’a for they are “produits par un meme complexe de causes (samagri) [Footnote ref 3].”

Spars’a is produced by @sa@dayatana, @sa@dayatana by namarupa, and namarupa by vijnana, and is said to descend in the womb of the mother and produce the five skandhas as namarupa, out of which the six senses are specialized.

Vijnana in this connection probably means the principle or germ of consciousness in the womb of the mother upholding the five elements of the new body there.  It is the product of the past karmas (sa@nkhara) of the dying man and of his past consciousness too.

We sometimes find that the Buddhists believed that the last thoughts of the dying man determined the nature of his next

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[Footnote 1:  Govindananda in his Ratnaprabha on S’a@nkara’s bha@sya, II. ii. 19, explains “bhava” as that from which anything becomes, as merit and demerit (dharmadi).  See also Vibhanga, p. 137 and Warren’s Buddhism in Translations, p. 201.  Mr Aung says in Abhidhammatthasa@ngaha, p. 189, that bhavo includes kammabhavo (the active side of an existence) and upapattibhavo (the passive side).  And the commentators say that bhava is a contraction of “kammabhava” or Karma-becoming i.e. karmic activity.]

[Footnote 2:  Prof.  De la Vallee Poussin in his Theoric des Douze Causes, p. 26, says that S’alistambhasutra explains the word “upadana” as “t@r@s@navaipulya” or hyper-t@r@s@na and Candrakirtti also gives the same meaning, M.  V. (B.T.S.p. 210).  Govmdananda explains “upadana” as prav@rtti (movement) generated by t@r@s@na (desire), i.e. the active tendency in pursuance of desire.  But if upadana means “support” it would denote all the five skandhas.  Thus Madhyamaka v@rtti says upadanam pancaskandhalak@sa@nam...pancopadanaskandhakhyam upadanam.  M.V. XXVII. 6.]