Ajnana

The position

The ajnanins held that the truth about the soul, the afterlife, the existence of other worlds and the fruits of action cannot be known, and that claiming otherwise is presumption. Their response was to refuse assertion in either direction.

This is not the materialist position, which asserts that there is no soul and no afterlife. It is a suspension of judgement, and it was directed as much at the materialists as at the Vedic and other shramana schools.

Arguments

The reasons attributed to them are recognisably epistemological. Metaphysical claims cannot be settled by perception; the teachers who make them contradict one another, which shows that whatever method they use is unreliable; asserting a position invites refutation and produces conflict and vexation; and a claim that cannot be tested confers no benefit.

The last argument is pragmatic rather than logical, and it resembles the reasons the Buddha is reported to have given for setting aside the questions he declined to answer.

Relation to Buddhism

The relation is close and disputed. The Buddha's refusal to answer certain metaphysical questions — whether the world is eternal, whether the liberated person exists after death — resembles the ajnanin position, and some scholars have argued for influence.

The Buddhist texts, however, distinguish the two carefully: the Buddha's silence is presented as a refusal to be drawn into what does not conduce to liberation, not as a claim that nothing can be known, and the sceptics are listed among the rival teachers rather than as forerunners. K. N. Jayatilleke's study of early Buddhist epistemology treats this distinction at length.

Sources

As with the other heterodox currents, no ajnanin text survives. The position is known from the Buddhist Brahmajala and Samannaphala Suttas and from Jain sources, both of which set it out in order to reject it.