ence 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

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[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].

All these states rise depending one upon the other (_pa@ticcasamuppanna_)
and when a man says that he perceives the self he only deludes himself,
for he only perceives one or more of these. Th