The Soul Theory of The Buddhists

This small brochure is written by an eminent Russian writer who has written a number of books on Buddhism. One of his best books is the "Conception of Buddhist Nirvana" which is already publi-shed by us. In the Abhidharma-Kosha there is a special chapter devoted to the much controversial question about the Buddhist denial of the existence of soul. The gist is embodied in the following lines worth-nothing.

Mere Elements exist, there is no soul.

The stainless doctrine of the Buddha,
In perfect argument exposed,
The Saint perceives in pure intuition,
Wrong, stubborn dogma he rejects, Professed by Blind heretics,
In perfect Clearness of his Sight,
He calmly wanders through these worlds.
Towards the Life's Repose Eternal, The path is open to the wise,
'T is trodden by saints in thou-sands,
But Simple people nonetheless, Their sight obstructed by delusion,
Do not perceive the glorious path, Cannot conceive that there is no soul.

Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakoa is rightly considered to oe one of the most monumental works on Buddhist philosophy. Vasubandhu flourished in the 5th Century A. D. His work sums up all the important concepts of Buddhist philosophy, particularly the teachings of the Vaibhasika school.

Attached to the last chapter of his work is an appendix entitled, " Astamakosasthnasambaddah pudgalaviniscayah It deals with the Buddhist denial of the existence of soul. An English translation of this part by Professor Th. Stcherbatsky was published under the title "The Soul Theory of the Buddhists" in 1920.

The above had been long out of print. It was reprint-ed by us in 1968. But this too went out of print. The present edition is a revised reprint of the original one. A few linguistic and typographical errors that had appeared in the previous editions have been corrected in the present edition which contains at the end the Pudgala-Vinigcaya of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa. For the accomplishment of this task we arc obliged to Shri Dwarika Dass Shastri of Varanasi.