on
S'a@nkara's bhasya on the _Brahma sutras_ (II. ii. 19), gives a different
interpretation of Namarupa which may probably refer to the Vijnanavada
view though we have no means at hand to verify it. He says--To think
the momentary as the permanent is Avidya; from there come the samskaras
of attachment, antipathy or anger, and infatuation; from there the first
vijnana or thought of the foetus is produced, from that alayavijnana,
and the four elements (which are objects of name and are hence called nama)
are produced, and from those are produced the white and black, semen
and blood called rupa. Both Vacaspati and Amalananda agree with
Govindananda in holding that nama signifies the semen and the ovum
while rupa means the visible physical body built out of them. Vijnana
entered the womb and on account of it namarupa were produced through
the association of previous karma. See _Vedantakalpataru_, pp 274,
275. On the doctrine of the entrance of vijnana into the womb compare
_D N_ II. 63.]

86

be vinnana. Here it occurred to him that in order that there
might be vinnana there must be the conformations (_sa@nkhara_) [Footnote
ref 1]. But what being there are there the sa@nkharas? Here it occurred
to him that the sa@nkharas can only be if there is ignorance
(_avijja_). If avijja could be stopped then the sa@nkharas will be
stopped, and if the sa@nkharas could be stopped vinnana could be
stopped and so on [Footnote ref 2].

It is indeed difficult to be definite as to what the Buddha
actually wished to mean by this cycle of dependence of existence
sometimes called Bhavacakra (wheel of existence). Decay and
death (_jaramarana_) could not have happened if there was no
birth [Footnote ref 3]. This seems to be clear. But at this point the
difficulty begins. We must remember that the theory of rebirth was

_____________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: It is difficult to say what is the exact sense of the word
here. The Buddha was one of the first few earliest thinkers to introduce
proper philosophical terms and phraseology with a distinct philosophical
method and he had often to use the same word in more or less different
senses. Some of the philosophical terms at least are therefore rather
elastic when compared with the terms of precise and definite meaning
which we find in later Sanskrit thought. Thus in _S N_ III. p. 87,
"_Sankhata@m abdisa@nkharonta_," sa@nkhara means that which synthes