Man as Willer

We know that in the Pali and Jain scriptures we find, as we do not find in other early Indian scriptures, the triplet: action of mind, action of word, action of body. We know that the triplet is a feature in the ancient Persian thought which we associate with the work of Zarathustra. And we may or we may not have noted as significant, how three great founders of creeds which were primarily concerned with the importance of man's will and man's actions or conduct, should be credited with the wording of this triplet, while the intermediate development in India of the creeds of the rite and the ritual, the piiest and the sacrifice, leftthe triplet unstressed. When this threefold wording of thought, word, and deed as modes of action (kamma) came into use in Buddhist teaching we do not know. It does not appear everywhere in the Pali scriptures. In many books it scarcely appears at all. It attains its chief prominence in the fourth, or Anguttara Nikāya. But wherever it does occur, it occurs as an unquestioned and accepted way of wording

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