Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/115

 v] Ignorance 99 Avijja and Asava. As to the question how the avijja (ignorance) first started there can be no answer, for we could never say that either ignorance or desire for existence ever has any beginning 1. Its fruition is seen in the cycle of existence and the sorrow that comes in its train, and it comes and goes with them all. Thus as we can never say that it has any beginning, it determines the elements which bring about cycles of existence and is itself determined by certain others. This mutual determination can only take place in and through the changing series of dependent phenomena, for there is nothing which can be said to have any absolute priority in time or stability. It is said that it is through the coming into being of the asavas or depravities that the avijja came into being, and that through the destruction of the depravities (iisava) the avijja was destroyed 2. These asavas are classified in the Dha1Jl1Jlasaizgali as kamasava, bhavasava, ditthasava and avij- jasava. Kamasava means desire, attachment, pleasure, and thirst after the qualities associated with the senses; bhavasava means desire, attachment and will for existence or birth; ditthasava means the holding of heretical views, such as, the world is eternal or non-eternal, or that the world will come to an end or will not come to an end, or that the body and the soul are one or are different; avijjasava means the ignorance of sorrow, its cause, its extinction and its means of extinction. DhalllJllasaizga?li adds four more supplementary ones, viz. ignorance about the nature of anterior mental khandhas, posterior mental khandhas, anterior and posterior together, and their mutual dependence 3. Kamasava and bhavasava can as Buddhaghoa says be counted as one, for they are both but depravities due to attachmf"nt 4 . 1 Warren's Buddhism ill Translatiolls (vlsuddhimagga, chap. XVII.), p. 175- 2 AI. N. I. p. 54. Childers translates "asava" as "depravities" and lIrs Rhys Davids as "intoxicants." The word" asava" in Skr. means" old wine." It is derived from "su" to produce by Buddhaghoa and the meaning that he gives to it is "cira pliriviisika!{hena" {on account of its heing stored up for a long time like wine). They wOTk through the eye and the mind and continue to produce all beings up to Indra. As those wines which are kept long are called "asavas" so these are also called asavas for remaining a long time. The other alternative that Buddhagho!iia gives is that they are called asaya on account of their producing saIpsaradukkha (sorrows of the world), rltthascilini, p. 48. Contrast it with J aina asrava (flowing in of karma matter). Finding it difficult to translate it in one word after Buddhaghoa, I have translated it as "depravities," after Childers. 3 See Dham11lasmigali, p. 195. 4 Buddhagho!iia'S A tthasiililli, p. 37 I.