Who was the Eel-Wriggler?

Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta lived during the Buddha’s time. The only records of him exist in the teachings of the Buddha, the Pali Canon, along with scant references to him in the Jain scriptures. At that time, wandering sages would meet each other and exchange ideas, but, for some reason, once a sage became a “recognized” teacher he did not debate other teachers of equal standing, so we have no record of the Buddha engaging the Eel-Wriggler in dialog. The Buddha knew of his teaching, of course, since Sariputta and Moggallana, the two main disciples of the Buddha, had been Sañjaya's students.

The Eel-Wriggler was described as confusing, dull, stupid, and foolish in the Buddhist Suttas where he was mentioned. No one bothered to take him seriously over the past 2500 years, except a few Western scholars in the past century, who only read his philosophy through the lens of Buddhist commentary. The first modern scholar to write about him, Thomas William Rhys Davids, gave him the name “Eel-Wriggler.” As much as that name does a disservice to Sañjaya, it is catchy.

Just like Rhys Davids had to imagine how the 5th Century commentator on the Pali Canon, Buddhaghosa, was baffled by the extremely unusual compound word to describe a philosopher who refuses to state a fixed view on anything, I have had to imagine how Rhys Davids came up with the image of an Eel-Wriggler. Buddhaghosa thought that the word may have referred to a slippery fish, and in the context of the "Discourse on the Net of Views” this kind of philosopher evaded the questions posed to him.

My imaginary scenario goes like this:

We are in Victorian England, along the Thames, where fisherman would go out with their nets and catch perch, pike, chub, carp and other local fish for the table. An old crusty fisherman in galoshes hoists a net of fish onto his wooden boat, and is shocked to find an eel wriggling inside the net. He tries to grab the eel as it wriggles, so he can pull it out of the net, but it is too slippery. The more he tries to grab onto it, the more it slips from his grasp. Rhys Davids, sitting at his desk in his study, pouring over Pali palm-leaf manuscripts he collected in Sri Lanka, lands on the "Amarāvikkhepavāda" commentary of Buddhaghosa, and instantly recalls this image of an eel wriggling. He thinks, “This is just like someone who cannot settle on an answer when asked a simple metaphysical question.” Rhys Davids is then certain that wriggling like an eel in the fisherman’s hand is exactly what Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta must have been doing 2500 years ago.