In an age quite unaware of copyright laws, the term "borrowing" is not a suitable choice. Every age has its own commonwealth of ideas. These are the ideas which are held by all irrespective of other differences. Such ideas are accepted and inherited in the same manner as linguistic usages are accepted and inherited. Individual freedom is one such idea in Western culture. No one feels obliged to express indebtedness for it to some earlier thinker, simply because it is a common property now. In a similar way, the doctrine of moral retribution was a common property in the day of the Buddha. In any case, it is not held by anyone that the Upani.sadic seers originated it, though it was first mentioned by them. According to the well-known B.rhadaara.nyaka Upani.sad passage, this doctrine was not even known to the B.rahmans. Similarly, as Bimala C. Law has pointed out, the Paali texts dearly indicate that "the doctrine was propounded before the advent of the Buddha by an Indian teacher who was a householder." [19] Thus, both the

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18. Op. cit., pp. 170-171.

19. Concepts of Buddhism (Amsterdam: Kern Institute, Leiden, 1937), p. 55 [referring to Majjhima-nikaaya, ed. Trenckner and Chalmers, I: 483].

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Upani.sads and the Paali Canon treat this doctrine as a common property. Where is the question of its being borrowed by one from the other? A closer look will reveal that this doctrine was the outcome of what T. W. Rhys Davids has called "normalism." Since the beginning of philosophizing in India, it has been firmly believed that things happen according to some law (.rta). How could rebirth be possible without such laws? Thus, it is clear that the Buddha's faith in moral retribution in no way makes him indebted to the Upani.sads.

　　 Fourth, we shall discuss a psychological consideration which is relevant to the present issue, though it has yet to be given due importance. Philosophical differences, as has been well said, are temperamental in the last analysis. Broadly speaking, thinking people are either imaginative or matter-of-fact; the terms "tender-minded" and "tough-minded" have been advisedly used for these types. The tender-minded try to solve all the basic problems speculatively, by positing another plane of existence which is free of the evils faced by us. All idealists and religious teachers accepting a personal godhead come under this class. On the contrary, the tough-minded prefer to deal with the hard facts, to analyze actual experiences. The former hardly take any interest in the mundane world, the ordinary, day-to-day, prosaic life. The latter regard all speculation as a waste of time.

　　 It would be both difficult and needless to enumerate all the passages from the Upani.sads and the Paali Canon to show that while the former represent the cream of tender-minded thinking in ancient India, the latter were at the other extreme. The Upani.sads seldom care for actual experiences; their aim is to discover a suprasensuous, supraphenomenal reality, entirely free of change and the laws of the world, which could be the basis as well as the goal of all becoming and with which we could identify ourselves in some way and thus win liberation from this existence. Psychological analyses may not be absent in the Upani.sads, but they hardly form any significant part of them. Early Buddhism, on the contrary, uncompromisingly refuses to transcend the empirical; passages featuring the Buddha making fun of those who talk about things not amenable to experience are legion, and his firm opposition to all speculation is well known. The difference of outlook is too clear to escape the notice of any careful observer. Keeping all this in view, any talk of one school influencing the other or being indebted to the other hardly sounds well founded, however emotionally satisfying it may be to some.

IV
Let us now return to the main question. Undoubtedly, the Upani.sads were pre-Buddhistic, and early Buddhism had some similarities with them. But it is equally clear that the Paali Canon hardly gives us any reason to think

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that the early Buddhists were even properly acquainted with the Upani.sads. The Upani.sads were admittedly esoteric and mystical while the Buddha took pride in not having the "closed fist of the teacher." The two were obviously the products of very different types of temperaments. The question is: Can mere anteriority and similarity to some extent, by themselves and unaided by internal evidence, serve as sufficient ground to think in terms of indebtedness! The answer is too obvious.

　　 If we disabuse our minds of preconceived notions, another possibility emerges in the light of the preceding discussion. The fact that the Paali Canon appears to be ignorant of the philosophy of the Brahmans but not of their ritualistic practices is very suggestive. Probably both the Upani.sads and early Buddhism developed independently of each other as reactions to the same type of situation. Soon after the eclipse of the sacrificial ideas, the need must have been felt for a more philosophical explanation of the value and destiny of human life. The doctrine of moral retribution, the need for liberation from the rounds of rebirths, and such other ideas, were already taking shape, apparently independently of both. They only made use of these ideas in accordance with their different philosophical attitudes, one taking the speculative road and developing a "substance view," while the other dealt with the hard facts on the basis of a "becoming view."