If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions on the true meaning of Nirvâ_n_a are not of modern date, and that, at a very early period, different philosophical schools among the Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of Nirvâ_n_a. There is the school of the Svâbhâvikas, which still exists in Nepal. The Svâbhâvikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself (svabhâvât), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under two forms: in the state of Prav_r_itti, as active, or in the state of Nirv_r_itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else, exist svabhâvât, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of arriving at Nirv_r_itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous with Nirvâ_n_a. But here the Svâbhâvikas branch off into two sects. Some believe that Nirv_r_itti is repose, others that it is annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation (sûnyatâ), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to be shunned.'[83] What was the original meaning of Nirvâ_n_a may perhaps best be seen from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar knows that Nirvâ_n_a means originally the blowing out, the extinction of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could be absorbed. Sânkhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name of an-î_s_vara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title. Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful whether the term Nirvâ_n_a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance; Nirv_r_itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni_hs_reyas, summum bonum. It is used in this sense in the Mahâbhârata, and it is explained in the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in