Both catalogues are somewhat artificial, and it is clear that many views are mentioned not because they represent the tenets of real schools but from a desire to condemn all possible errors.  But the list of topics discussed is interesting.  From the Brahmajala Sutta we learn that the problems which agitated ancient Magadha were such as the following:—­is the world eternal or not:  is it infinite or finite:  is there a cause for the origin of things or is it without cause:  does the soul exist after death:  if so, is its existence conscious or unconscious:  is it eternal or does it cease to exist, not necessarily at the end of its present life but after a certain number of lives:  can it enjoy perfect bliss here or elsewhere?  Theories on these and other points are commonly called vada or talk, and those who hold them vadins.  Thus there is the Kala-vada[229] which makes Time the origin and principle of the universe, and the Svabhava-vada which teaches that things come into being of their own accord.  This seems crude when stated with archaic frankness but becomes plausible if paraphrased in modern language as “discontinuous variation and the spontaneous origin of definite species.”  There were also the Niyati-vadins, or fatalists, who believed that all that happens is the result of Niyati or fixed order, and the Yadriccha-vadins who, on the contrary, ascribed everything to chance and apparently denied causation, because the same result follows from different antecedents.  It is noticeable that none of these views imply theism or pantheism but the Buddha directed so persistent a polemic against the doctrine of the Atman that it must have been known in Magadha.  The fundamental principles of the Sankhya were also known, though perhaps not by that name.  It is probably correct to say not that the Buddha borrowed from the Sankhya but that both he and the Sankhya accepted and elaborated in different ways certain current views.

The Pali Suttas[230] mention six agnostic or materialist teachers and give a brief but perhaps not very just compendium of their doctrines.  One of them was the founder of the Jains who, as a sect that has lasted to the present day with a considerable record in art and literature, merit a separate chapter.  Of the remaining five, one, Sanjaya of the Belattha clan, was an agnostic, similar to the people described elsewhere[231] as eel-wrigglers, who in answer to such questions as, is there a result of good and bad actions, decline to say either (a) there is, (b) there is not, (c) there both is and is not, (d) there neither is nor is not.  This form of argument has been adopted by Buddhism for some important questions but Sanjaya and his disciples appear to have applied it indiscriminately and to have concluded that positive assertion is impossible.