A BUDDHIST MANUAL
Psychological Ethics,
FROM THE PALI
OF THE
DHAMMA-SANGANI
Translated by CAROLINE A. F. RHYS DAVIDS, M.A.
VI.
On the Inquiry into Rupam (Form), and the Buddhist
Theory of Sense.
Taking dhamma , then, to mean phenomena considered
as knowledge—in other words, as actually or potentially
states of consciousness—we may next look more closely
into that which the catechism brings out respecting
rupam (Book II., and § 583) considered as a species of
dhamma . By this procedure we shall best place our-
selves at the threshold, so to speak, of the Buddhist
position, both as to its psychology and its view of things
in general, and be thus better led up to the ethical import
of the questions in the first part.
The entire universe of dh am ma is classed with respect
to rupam in questions 1091, 1092 (Book III.). They are
there shown to be either rupino, having form, or
a-rupino, not having form. The positive category
comprises 'the four great phenomena (four elements) and
all their derivatives.' The negative term refers to what
we should call modes or phases of consciousness, or sub-
jective experience—that is, to *the skandhas of feeling,
perception, syntheses and intellect '
—as well as to '
un-
compounded element.' (The skandhas are also 'elements'
—that is, irreducible but phenomenal factors (see p. 129,
n. 1)—but tliey are compounds.^) Kupam would thus
appear at first sight to be a name for the external world
or for the Extended universe, as contrasted with the
unextended, mental, psychical or subjective universe.
Personally I do not find, so far, that the Eastern and
Western concepts can be so easily made to coincide. It
will be better before, and indeed without as yet, arriving
at any such conclusive judgment, to inquire into the
application made of the term in the Manual generally. "
We find r u p a m used in three, at least, of the various
meanings assigned to it in the lexicons. It occurs first,
and very frequently, as the general name for the objects
of the sense of sight. It may then stand as simply
rupam (§ 617, *
this which is visual form,' as opposed
to § 621, etc., 'this which is "sound," "odour,"' etc.).
More usually it is spoken of as r up ar a mm a nam,
object of sight (p. 1), or as rup ay atanarn, sphere
(province, Gehiet) of sights or of visual form (pp. 172, 183
et seq.). It includes both sensations of colour and lustre and
the complex sensations of form. Used in this connexion,
its specialization is, of course, only due to the psychological
fact that sight is the spokesman and interpreter of all the
senses, so that *
I see '
often stands for '
I perceive or dis-
cern through two or more modes of sensation.'
On this point it is worth while pointing out an interesting
flash of psychological discrimination in the Commentary.
It will be noticed, in the various kinds of rupayatanam
enumerated in § 617 (p. 183, n. 9), that, after pure visual
sensations have been instanced, different magnitudes and
forms are added, such as *
long, short,' etc. On these
1 Cf., e.g., Dhp. A., p. 413: . . . 'all the compounds,
with their divisions of skandhas, elements and spheres.'
Buddhaghosa remarks: *Here, inasmuch as we are able
to tell "long," "short," etc., by touch, while we cannot
so discern "blue," etc., therefore "long," "short" and
the rest are not visual forms except inferentially (literally,
not visual forms without explanation). A, B, placed in
such a relation to C, D, is only by customary usage spoken
of as something seen' (Asl. 316).^ This may not bring
us up to Berkeley, but it is a farther step in that direction
than Aristotle's mere hint—* There is a movement which is
perceptible both by Touch and Sight '
—when he is alluding
to magnitudes, etc., being 'common sensibles,' i.e., per«
ceptible by more than one sense.^ •
To resume: Kupam, in its wider sense (as 'all form'),
may be due to the popular generalization and representa-
tive function of the sense of sight, expressed in Tennyson's
line:
*
For knowledge is of things we see . .
.'
And thus, even as a philosophical concept, it may, loosely
speaking, have stood for 'things seen,' as contrasted with
the unseen world of dhamma arupino. But this is
by no means an adequate rendering of the term in its more
careful and technical use in the second Book of our Manual.
For, as may there be seen, much of the content of '
form
'
is explicitly declared to be invisible.^
Kupam occurs next, and, with almost equal frequency,
together with its opposite, a r u p a m , to signify those two
other worlds, realms or planes* of temporal existence,
1 The symbols are my own adaptation, not a literal
rendering. In the account of the 'external senses' or
Indriyas given in the (later) Sankhya text-books. Professor
Garbe points out that the objects of sight are limited to
colour (rupa), exclusive of form (Garbe, 'Die Sankhya
Philosophie,' p. 258).
2 'De Anima,' 11. vi.
3 Cf. §§ 597 et seq,, 657, 658, 751, 752, etc.
4 To the employment of 'universe ' for avacaram
exception may be taken, since the latter term means only
a part of the Oriental cosmos. I admit it calls for apology.
which Buddhism accepted along with other current
mythology, and which, taken together with the lowest, or
sensuous plane of existence, exhaust the possible modes
of re-birth. These avacaras, or loci of form and
non-form, are described in terms of vague localization
(§§ 1280-85), but it is not easy to realize how far existence
of either sort was conceived with anything like precision.
Including the '
upper ' grades of the world of sensuous
existence, they were more popularly known as heaven or
sagga (svarga), i.e., the Bright. Their inhabitants
were devas, distinguished into hosts variously named.
Like the heaven of the West or the Near East, they were
located *
above.' Unlike that heaven, life in them was
temporal, not eternal.
But the Dhamma-sangani throws no new light on the
kind of states they were supposed to be. Nor does
Buddhaghosa here figure as an Eastern Dante, essaying
to body out more fully, either dogmatically or as in a
dream, such ineffable oracles as were hinted at by a Paul
'
caught up to the third heaven . . . whether in the body
or out of the body I cannot tell—God knoweth,' or the
ecstatic visions of a John in lonely exile. The Atthasalini
is not free from divagations on matters of equally secondary
importance to the earnest Buddhist.1 Yet it has nothing
If I have used it throughout Book I., it was because there
the term avacaram seemed more suggestive of the
logician's term 'universe of discourse,' or 'of thought,'
than of any physically conceived actuality. It seemed to
fit De Morgan's definition of '
the universe of a proposi-
tion '—' a collection of all objects which are contemplated
as objects about which assertion or denial may take place,'
the universe of form, for instance, either as a vague, vast
concept '
in ' time and effort, or as a state of mind, a rapt
abstraction—in either case a '
universe of thought ' for the
time being.
1 Cf., e.g., on a similar subject. Sum. 110. He tells us,
it is true (see below, p. 196, n. 4), that the food of the
gods who inhabited the highest sphere of the sensuous
world was of the maximum degree of refinement, leading
to tell of a mode of being endowed with rupa, yet with-
out the kama, or sensuous impulses held to be bound
up with rupa, when the term is used in its wider sense.^
Nor does it enlighten us on the more impalpable denizens
of a plane of being where rupa itself is not, and for
which no terms seem held appropriate save such as express
high fetches of abstract thought.^ We must go back, after
all, to the Nikayas for such brief hints as we can find.
We do hear, at least, in the Digha Nikaya, of beings in one
of the middle circles of the Form heavens termed Eadiant
(Abhassara), as *
made of mind, feeding on joy, radiating
light, traversing the firmament, continuing in beauty.'^
Were it not that we miss here the unending melody
sounding through each circle of the Western poet's
Paradise,* we might well apply this description to Dante's
'
anime liete,' who, like incandescent spheres :
'
Fiammando forte, a guisa di comete,
E come cerchi in tempra d' oriuoli
Si giran.' ...
Liker to those brilliant visions the heavens of Form seem
to have been than to the '
quiet air '
and '
the meadow of
fresh verdure ' on that slope of Limbo where
'
Genti v' eran con occhi tardi e gravi,'
who
perhaps to the inference that in the two superior planes it
was not required.
1 See pp. 168-170: 'All form is that which is . . .
related, or which belongs to the universe of sense, not to
that of form, or tothat of the formless.'
^ See the four Aruppas, pp. 71-75.
^ D. i. 17. Again we read (D. i. 195), that of the three
possible '
personalities '
of current tradition, one was made
of mind, having form, and a complete organism, and one
was without form and made of consciousness, or perception
(arupi saniiamayo).
* There is no lack of music in some of the lower Indian
heavens. Cf., e.g., M. i. 252, on Sakka the god enjoying the
music in his sensuous paradise. And see Vimana Vatthu,
passim.
*
Parlavan rado, con voci soavi.'
Yet the rare, sweet utterances of these devas of Europe,
discoursing with 'the Master of those who know,' may
better have accorded with the Buddhist conception of
* beings made of mind ' than the choric dances of the
spheres above.
Among these shadowy beings, however, we are far from
the fully bodied out idea of the '
all form '
and the '
skandha
of form '
of the second and third Books of the Manual.
It may be that the worlds of r u p a and a r u p a were so
called in popular tradition because in the former, visible,
and in the latter, invisible, beings resided. But whereas
attributes concerning either are *
sadly to seek,' there is no
lack of information concerning the attributes of form in the
*
sensuous universe '
or kamavacaram. If the list
given of these in the first chapter of Book II. be consulted,
it will be seen that I have not followed the reading of the
P. T. S. edition when it states that all form is kama-
vacaram eva, rupavacaram eva, that is, is both
related to the universe of sense and also to that of form.
The Siamese edition reads kamavacaram eva, na
rupavacaram eva. It may seem at first sight illogical
to say that form is not related to the universe of form.
But the better logic is really on the side of the Siamese.
On page 334 of my translation,^ it is seen that the
avacaras were mutually exclusive as to their contents.
To belong to the universe of form involved exclusion from
that of sense. But in the inquiry into '
all form '
we are
clearly occupied with facts about this present world and
about women and men as we know them—in a word, with
the world of sense. Hence the *
all form '
of Book II. is
clearly not the form of the rupavacaram. It is not
used with the same implications.
Further than this, further than the vague avacara-
geography gathered already from other sources, the Manual
does not bring us, nor the Commentary either.
1
§§ 1281-1284 of the P. T. S.'s edition.
We come then to rupam in the sensuous plane of
being, or at least to such portion of that plane as is con-
cerned with human beings : to sabbam rupam and to
its distribution in each human economy, termed rupak-
khandho. Whether taken generally, or under the
more specialized aspect, there seems to be unanimity of
teaching concerning the various manifestations of it.^
Under it are comprised four ultimate primary, or underiv-
able constituents and twenty-three secondary, dependent or
derived modes. Thus :
Rupam
No upada
(a) The Tangible
(i.e., earthy or
solid,
lambent
or fiery,
gaseous
or aerial
elements,
or great
phenomena),
(b) The Fluid
(or moist)
Element.
Upada
(a) The Five Senses,
(b) The Four Objects of Sense
(excluding Tangibles),
(c) The Three Organic
Faculties.
id) The Two Modes of Intima-
tion,
(e) The Element of Space,
(f) Three Qualities of Form,
(g) Three Phases in the
Evolution of Form,
(h) Impermanence of Form,
(i) Bodily nutriment.
To enter with any fulness of discussion into this classifi-
cation, so rich in interesting suggestions, would occupy
itself a volume. In an introduction of mere notes I will
offer only a few general considerations.
We are probably first impressed by the psychological
aspect taken of a subject that might seem to lend itself to
purely objective consideration. The main constituents of
1 Cf., e.g., S. iii. 59, with Dh. S., § 584, and Vis. Mag.
the material world, classified in the East as we know them
to have been classified, contemporaneously, in the West,
are set down in terms of subjective or conscious experience.
The apo-dhatu is not called explicitly the Intangible ;
virtually, however, it and the other three *
Great Pheno-
mena,' or literally '
Great things that have Become,'^ are
regarded from the point of view of how they affect us by
way of sense. We might add, how they affect us most
fundamentally by way of sense. In the selection of Touch
among the senses the Indian tradition joins hands with
Demokritus. But of this no more at present.
Again, in the second table, or secondary forms, the same
standpoint is predominant. We have the action and
re-action of sense-object and sense, the distinctive expres-
sions of sex and of personality generally, and the pheno-
mena of organic life, as '
sensed ' or inferred, compre-
hended under the most general terms. Two modes of form
alone are treated objectively : space and food. And of
these, too, the aspect taken has close reference to the
conscious personality. Akaso is really okaso, room,
or opportunity, for life and movement. Food, though
described as to its varieties in objective terms, is referred
to rather in the abstract sense of nutrition and nutriment
than as nutritive matter. (Cf. p. 203, n. 3.)
1 Better in Greek ra yi^yvofjueva, or in German die vier
grossen Geicordenen. How the Buddhist logic exactly
reconciled the anomaly of apodhatu as underived and
yet as inaccessible to that sense which comes into contact
with the underived is not, in the Manual, clearly made out.
In hot water, as the Cy. says, there is heat, gas, and solid,
and hence we feel it. Yet by the definition there must be
in fluid a something underived from these three elements.
The Buddhist Sensationalism was opposed to the view
taken in the Upanishad, where the senses are derived from
prajna (rendered by Prof. Deussen '
consciousness '), and
again from the World Soul. In the Garbha Up., however,
sight is spoken of as fire. The Buddhist view was subse-
quently again opposed by the Sankhya philosophy, but not
by the Nyaya.
Or we may be more especially struck by the curious
selection and classification exercised in regard to the items
of the catalogue of form.
Now, the compilers of this or of any of the canonical
books were not interested in r u p a m on psychological
grounds as such. Their object was not what we should
term scientific. They were not inquiring into forms, either
as objective existences, or as mental constructions, with
any curiosity respecting the macrocosm, its parts, or its
order. They were not concerned with problems of pri-
mordial vXr), of first causes, or of organic evolution, in the
spirit which has been operative in Western thought from
Thales (claimed by Europe) to Darwin. For them, as for
the leaders of that other rival movement in our own culture,
the tradition of Socrates and Plato, man was, first and last,
the subject supremely worth thinking about. And man
was worth thinking about as a moral being. The physical
universe was the background and accessory, the support and
the 'fuel' (upadanam), of the evolution of the moral
life. It was necessary to man as ethical (at least during
his sojourn on the physical plane), but it was only in so far
as it affected his ethical life that he could profitably study
it. The Buddhist, like the Socratic view, was that of
primitive man—* What is the good of it ?'—transformed and
sublimated by the evolution of the moral ideal. The early
questioning : Is such and such good for life-preservation,
for race-preservation, for fun? or is it bad? or is it in-
determinate ? becomes, in evolved ethics : Does it make for
my perfection, for others' perfection, for noblest enjoyment ?
does it make for the contrary ? does it make for neither ?
And the advance in moral evolution which was attempted
by Buddhist philosophy, coming as it did in an age of
metaphysical dogmatism and withal of scepticism, brought
with it the felt need of looking deeper into those data of
mental procedure on which dogmatic speculation and
ethical convictions were alike founded.1
1 G. Groom Robertson, 'Philosophical Remains,' p. 3.
Viewed in this light, the category of rupam or of
rupakkhandho becomes fairly intelligible, both as to
the selection and classification of subject matter and as to
the standpoint from which it is regarded. As a learner of
ethical doctrine, pursuing either the lower or the higher
ideal, the Buddhist was concerned with the external world
just as far as it directly and inevitably affected his moral
welfare and that of other moral beings, that is to say, of
all conscious animate beings. To this extent did he receive
instruction concerning it.
In the first place, the great ultimate phenomena of his
physical world were one and the same as the basis of his
own physical being. That had form ; so had this. That
was built up of the four elements ; so was this. That
came into being, persisted, then dissolved ; this was his
destiny, too, as a temporary collocation or body, '
subject
to erasion, abrasion, dissolution and disintegration.' ^ And
all that side of life which we call mind or consciousness,
similarly conceived as collocations or aggregates, was bound
up therein and on that did it depend.
Here, then, was a vital kinship, a common basis of
physical being which it behoved the student of man to
recognise and take into account, so as to hold an intelligent
and consistent attitude towards it. The bhikkhu sekho^
'
who has not attained, who is aspiring after the unsurpass-
able goal,' has to know, inter alia, earth, water, flame, air,
each for what it is, both as external and as part of himself ^
—must know '
unity ' (ekattam) for what it is ; must
indulge in no conceits of fancy (ma manni) about it or
them, and must so regard them that of him it may one
day be said by the masters : Parinnatam tassa!—
*
He knows it thoroughly.'
To this point we shall return. That the elements are
considered under the aspect of their tangibility involves
1 D. i. 76, e.g.
2 The brother in orders undergoing training. M. i. 4.
3 M. i., pp. 185, et seq. ; pp. 421, et seq.
for the Buddhist the further inquiry into the sensitive
agency by which they affect him as tangibles, and so into
the problem of sensation and sense-perception in general.
On this subject the Dhamma-sangani yields a positive and
valuable contribution to our knowledge of the history of
psychology in India in the fourth century b.c. It may
contain no matter additional to that which is reproduced
in Hardy's '
Manual of Buddhism ' (pp. 399-404, 419-423).
But Hardy drew directly from relatively modern sources,
and though it is interesting to see how far and how faith-
fully the original tradition has been kept intact in these
exegetical works, we turn gladly to the stronger attractions
of the first academic formidation of a theory of sense which
ancient India has hitherto preserved for us. There is no
such analysis of sensation—full, sober, positive, so far as
it goes—put forward in any Indian book of an equally
early date. The pre-Buddhistic Upanishads (and those,
too, of later date) yield only poetic adumbrations, sporadic
aphorisms on the work of the senses. The Nyaya doctrine
of pratyaksha or perception, the Jaina Sutras, the
elaboration of the Vedanta and Sankhya doctrines are, of
course, of far later date. It may not, therefore, be uncalled
for if I digress at some length on the Buddhist position in
this matter, and look for parallel theories in the West rather
than in India itself.
The theory of action and reaction between the five
special^ senses and their several objects is given in
pages 172-190 and 197-200 of my translation. It may be
summarized as follows
:
A. The Senses.
First, a general statement relating each sense in turn
{a) to Nature (the four elements), {h) to the individual
1 They are called '
special ' in modern psychology to dis-
tinguish them from organic, general or systemic sense,
which works without specially adapted peripheral organs.
organism, and affirming its invisibility and its power of
impact.
Secondly, an analysis of the sensory process, in each
case, into
(a) A personal agency or apparatus capable of reacting
to an impact not itself
;
(b) An impingeing 'form,' or form producing an impact
of one specific kind ;
(c) Impact between {a) and (6)
;
(d) Eesultant modification of the mental continuum,
viz. : in the first place, contact (of a specific sort) ; then,
hedonistic result, or intellectual result, or, presumably,
both. The modification is twice stated in each case,
emphasis being laid on the mutual impact, first as causing
the modification, then as constituting the object of attention
in the modified consciousness of the person affected.
B. The Sense-objects.
First, a general statement, relating each kind of sense-
object in turn to Nature, describing some of the typical
varieties, and affirming its invisibility, except in the case
of visual objects,^ and its power of producing impact."^
Secondly, an analysis of the sensory process in each
case as under A, but, as it were, from the side of the
sense-object, thus :
(a) A mode of form or sense-object, capable of producing
impact on a special apparatus of the individual organism;
1 This insistence on the invisibility of all the senses, as
well as on that of all sense-objects except sights or visual
forms, is to me only explicable on the ground that rupam
recurring in each question and each answer, and signifying,
whatever else it meant, in popular idiom, things seen, it
was necessary, in philosophic usage, to indicate that the
term, though referring to sense, did not, with one exception,
connote things seen. Thus, even solid and fiery objects
were, qua tangibles, not visible. They were not visible to
the kayo, or skin-sensibility. They spelt visible only to
the eye.
2 See p. 183, n. 1.
(b) The impact of that apparatus
;
(c) The reaction or complementary impact of the sense-
object ;
(d) Eesultant modification of the mental continuum,
viz. : in the first place, contact (of a specific sort) ; then
hedonistic result, or intellectual result, or, presumably,
both. The modification is twice stated, in each case
emphasis being laid on the mutual impact, first as causing
the modification, then as constituting the object of attention
in the modified consciousness thus affected.
If we, for purposes of comparison, consult Greek views
on sense-perception before Aristotle—say, down to b.c. 350
—we shall find nothing to equal this for sobriety, con-
sistency and thoroughness. The surviving fragments of
Empedoklean writings on the subject read beside it like
airy fancies ; nor do the intact utterances of Plato bring us
anything more scientific. Very possibly in Demokritus we
might have found its match, had we more of him than a
few quotations. And there is reason to surmise as much,
or even more, in the case of Alkmseon.
Let me not, however, be understood to be reading into
the Buddhist theory more than is actually there. In its
sober, analytical prose, it is no less archaic, naive, and
inadequate as explanation than any pre-Aristotelian theory
of the Greeks. The comment of Dr. Siebeck on Empedokles
applies equally to it : ^ *
It sufficed him to have indicated
the possibility of the external world penetrating the sense-
organs, as though this were tantamount to an explanation
of sensation. The whole working out of his theory is an
attempt to translate in terms of a detailed and consecutive
physiological process the primitive, naive view of cognition.'
Theory of this calibre was, in Greece, divided between
impact (Alkmseon, Empedokles, with respect to sight, Demo-
kritus, Plato, who, to impact, adds a commingling of sense
and object) and access (efflux and pore theory of Empe-
dokles) as the essential part of the process. The Buddhist
1 *Geschichte der Psychologie,' i. 107.
explanation confines itself to impact.^ But neither East
nor West, with the possible exception of Alkmaeon, had yet
gripped the notion of a conducting medium. In Aristotle
all is changed. ' Eidola '
which collide, and * aporrhoae '
which penetrate, have been thrown aside for an examination
into 'metaxu.' And we find the point of view similarly
shifted in Buddhaghosa's time, though how long before
him this advance had been made we do not know. Nor
was there, in the earlier thought of East or West, any
clear dualistic distinction drawn between mind and matter,
between physical (and physiological) motion or stimulus
on the one hand, and consequent or concomitant mental
modification on the other, in an act of sense-perception.
The Greek explanations are what would now be called
materialistic. The Buddhist description may be inter-
preted either way. It is true that in the Milinda-panho,
written some three or four centuries later than our Manual,
the action and reaction of sense and sense-object are com-
pared in realistic metaphor to the clash of two cymbals
and the butting of two goats.^ But, being metaphorical,
this account brings us really no further. The West, while
it retained the phraseology characterizing the earlier theory
of sense, ceased to imply any direct physical impact or
contact when speaking of being *
struck ' by sights, sounds,
or ideas. How far, and how early, was this also the case
in the East ?
The very fact that the Buddhist theory, with all its
analytical and symmetrical fulness of exposition, yields so
very abstract and schematic a result leaves the way open to
surmise that, even in the time of our Manual, the process
of sense impression was not materialistically conceived.3
1 Access comes later into prominence with the develop-
ment of the *Door-theory.' See following section.
2 *Milindapanho,' p. 60. S.B.E., vol. xxxv., pp. 92, 93.
Cf. below, p. 5, n. 2.
3 Note 2, p. 175, below, suggests the eye, in the case of
sight. If so, in what shape did the object get there ?
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