"It is a common error to confound quasi-cyclic time with eternal recurrence. It was not generally believed that these cosmic cycles were exact or eternal. The whole possibility of deliverance – moksa, nirvāna – was premised on the idea that these cycles were neither exact nor eternal. (However, the category of cyclic time encourages such an error by suggesting that various types of cyclic time are the same.) In India, this was the traditional view of time and life after death held from before the time of the Buddha. The Lokāyata denied the belief in life after death as a fraud. An interesting feature of this denial is how Pāyāsi sought to establish the non-existence of the soul by performing some 37 experiments with dying men, and condemned felons. It is unlikely that such experiments were ever performed anywhere else."