like a scientific dictum about the uniformity of nature or cosmic law.  But though the Pitakas imply some such idea, they seem to shrink from stating it clearly.  They do not emphasize the orderly course of nature or exhort men to live in harmony with it.  We are given to understand that the intelligence of those supermen who are called Buddhas sees that the four Truths are a consequence of the nature of the universe but subsequent instruction bids us attend to the truths themselves and not to their connection with the universal scheme.  One reason for this is that Indians were little inclined to think of impersonal laws and forces[457].  The law of karma and the periodic rhythm of growth and decay which the universe obeys are ideas common to Hinduism and Buddhism and not incompatible with the mythology and ritual to which the Buddha objected.  And though the Pitakas insist on the universality of causation, they have no notion of the uniformity of nature in our sense[458].  The Buddhist doctrine of causation states that we cannot obtain emancipation and happiness unless we understand and remove the cause of our distress, but it does not discuss cosmic forces like karma and Maya.  Such discussion the Buddha considered unprofitable[459] and perhaps he may have felt that insistence on cosmic law came dangerously near to fatalism[460].

Though the number of the links may be varied the Buddha attached importance to the method of concatenation and the impersonal formulation of the whole and in one passage[461] he objects to the questions, what are old age and death and who is it that has old age and death.  Though the chain of causation treats of a human life, it never speaks of a person being born or growing old and Buddhaghosa[462] observes that the Wheel of existence is without known beginning, without a personal cause or passive recipient and empty with a twelvefold emptiness.  It has no external cause such as Brahma or any deity “and is also wanting in any ego passively recipient of happiness and misery.”

The twelve Nidanas have passed into Buddhist art as the Wheel of Life.  An ancient example of this has been discovered in the frescoes of Ajanta and modern diagrams, which represent the explanations current in mediaeval India, are still to be found in Tibet and Japan[463].  In the nave of the wheel are three female figures signifying passion, hatred and folly and in the spaces between the spokes are scenes depicting the phases of human life:  round the felly runs a series of pictures representing the twelve links of the chain.  The first two links are represented by a blind man or blind camel and by a potter making pots.  The third, or consciousness, is an ape.  Some have thought that this figure represents the evolution of mind, which begins to show itself in animals and is perfected in man.  It may however refer to a simile found in the Pitakas[464] where the restless, changeable mind is compared to a monkey jumping about in a tree.