The records of the Buddhists and Gainas about the philosophical ideas current at the time of the Buddha and Mahavira, meagre though they be, are of the greatest importance to the historian of that epoch. For they show us the ground on which, and the materials with which, a religious reformer had to build his system. The similarity between some of those 'heretical' doctrines on the one side, and Gaina or Buddhist ideas on the other, is very suggestive, and favours the assumption that the Buddha, as well as Mahavira, owed some of his conceptions to these very heretics, and formulated others under the influence of the controversies which were continually going on with them. Thus, I think, that in opposition to the Agnosticism of Sangaya, Mahavira has established the Syadvada. For as the Agnanavada declares that of a thing beyond our experience the existence, or non-existence or simultaneous existence and non-existence, can neither be affirmed nor denied, so in a similar way, but one leading to contrary results, the Syadvada declares that 'you can affirm the existence of a thing from one point of view (syad asti), deny it from another (syad nasti); and affirm both existence and non-existence with reference to it at different times (syad asti nasti). If you should think of affirming existence and non-existence at the same time from the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be spoken of (syad avaktavyah). Similarly, under certain circumstances, the affirmation of existence is not possible

[paragraph continues] (syad asti avaktavyah); of non-existence (syan nasti avaktavyah); and also of both (syad asti nasti avaktavyah) .'

This is the famous Saptabhanginaya of the Gainas. Would any philosopher have enunciated such truisms, unless they served to silence some dangerous opponents? The subtle discussions of the Agnostics had probably bewildered and misled many of their contemporaries. Consequently the Syadvada must have appeared to them as a happy way leading out of the maze of the Agnanavada. It was the weapon with which the Agnostics assailed the enemy, turned against themselves. Who knows how many of their followers went over to Mahavira's creed convinced by the truth of the Saptabhanginaya!