[Footnote 4:  M.  V. p. 5 f.]

93

Samutpada means appearance or arising (pradurbhdava) and pratitya means after getting (prati+i+ya); combining the two we find, arising after getting (something).  The elements, depending on which there is some kind of arising, are called hetu (cause) and paccaya (ground).  These two words however are often used in the same sense and are interchangeable.  But paccaya is also used in a specific sense.  Thus when it is said that avijja is the paccaya of sa@nkhara it is meant that avijja is the ground (_@thiti_) of the origin of the sa@nkharas, is the ground of their movement, of the instrument through which they stand (nimitta@t@thiti), of their ayuhana (conglomeration), of their interconnection, of their intelligibility, of their conjoint arising, of their function as cause and of their function as the ground with reference to those which are determined by them.  Avijja in all these nine ways is the ground of sa@nkhara both in the past and also in the future, though avijja itself is determined in its turn by other grounds [Footnote ref 1].  When we take the betu aspect of the causal chain, we cannot think of anything else but succession, but when we take the paccaya aspect we can have a better vision into the nature of the cause as ground.  Thus when avijja is said to be the ground of the sa@nkharas in the nine ways mentioned above, it seems reasonable to think that the sa@nkharas were in some sense regarded as special manifestations of avijja [Footnote ref 2].  But as this point was not further developed in the early Buddhist texts it would be unwise to proceed further with it.

The Khandhas.

The word khandha (Skr. skandha) means the trunk of a tree and is generally used to mean group or aggregate [Footnote ref 3].  We have seen that Buddha said that there was no atman (soul).  He said that when people held that they found the much spoken of soul, they really only found the five khandhas together or any one of them.  The khandhas are aggregates of bodily and psychical states which are immediate with us and are divided into five

_______________________________________________________

_________

[Footnote 1:  See Pa@tisambhidamagga, vol.  I.p. 50; see also Majjhima Nikaya, I. 67, sa@nkhara...avijjanidana avijjasamudaya avijjajatika avijjapabhava.]

[Footnote 2:  In the Yoga derivation of asmita (egoism), raga (attachment), dve@sa (antipathy) and abhinives’a (self love) from avidya we find also that all the five are regarded as the five special stages of the growth of avidya (pancaparvi avidya).]

[Footnote 3:  The word skandha is used in Chandogya, II. 23 (trayo dharmaskandha@h yajna@h adhyayanam danam) in the sense of branches and in almost the same sense in Maitri, VII.  II.]

94

classes:  (1) rupa (four elements, the body, the senses), sense data, etc., (2) vedana (feeling—­pleasurable, painful and indifferent), (3) sanna (conceptual knowledge), (4) sa@nkhara (synthetic mental states and the synthetic functioning of compound sense-affections, compound feelings and compound concepts), (5) vinnana (consciousness) [Footnote ref 1].