ful but there were no books and hardly
any centres of learning. Yet there was even more movement than among the
travelling priests of the Kurus and Pancalas, a coming and going, a
trafficking in ideas. Knowledge was to be picked up in the market-places
and highways. Up and down the main roads circulated crowds of highly
intelligent men. They lived upon alms, that is to say, they were fed by
the citizens who favoured their opinions or by those good souls who gave
indiscriminately to all holy men--and in the larger places rest houses
were erected for their comfort. It was natural that the more commanding
and original spirits should collect others round them and form bands,
for though there was public discussion, writing was not used for
religious purposes and he who would study any doctrine had to become the
pupil of a master. The doctrine too involved a discipline, or mode of
life best led in common. Hence these bands easily grew into communities
which we may call orders or sects, if we recognize that their
constitution was more fluid and less formal than is implied by those
words. It is not easy to say how much organization such communities
possessed before the time of the Buddha. His Sangha was the most
successful of them all and doubtless surpassed the others in this as in
other respects. Yet it was modelled on existing institutions and the
Vinaya Pitaka[226] itself represents him as prescribing the observance
of times and seasons, not so much because he thought it necessary as
because the laity suggested that he would do well to follow the practice
of the Titthiya schools. By this phrase we are to understand the
adherents of Makkhali Gosala, Sanjaya Belatthiputta and others. We know
less about these sects than we could wish, but two lists of schools or
theories are preserved, one in the Brahmajala Sutta[227] where the
Buddha himself criticises 62 erroneous views and another in Jain
literature[228], which enumerates no fewer than 363.

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 exis