A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s6.5

c33.s6.5

All the early teachers of the Sāṁkhya appear in legendary guise; the reality of Kapila, the alleged founder of the system, has been abandoned by Jacobi; Āsuri is a mere name, and Pañcaçikha, of whom we have views, is quite uncertain in date. The epic presents us with some information as to the Sāṁkhya, though usually it gives a composite philosophy, but our first definite text is the *Sāṁkhyakārikā*³ of Īçvarakṛṣṇa. From Buddhist sources we hear of an older contemporary of Vasubandhu (*c.* 320),⁴ Vārṣagaṇya, who wrote a *Ṣaṣṭitantra* on the Sāṁkhya; his pupil Vindhyavāsa corrected his master’s views in a set of seventy verses known as the Golden Seventy verses, which Vasubandhu criticized in his *Paramārthasaptati*. It is natural to identify Vindhyavāsa with Īçvarakṛṣṇa, and, though the identity is unproven, it is not improbable. Otherwise the only certain fact is that the Kārikā with a commentary was translated into Chinese by Paramārtha in A. D. 557–69, and therefore must have existed earlier. The view that the original of this comment exists in the recently discovered *Māṭhara Vṛtti* is certainly wrong.⁵ We have, however, a derived version of this comment by Gauḍapāda, whose date is uncertain, as is his identity with the author of the *Gauḍapādīya Kārikā* on the Vedānta, who seems a man of much higher calibre. Of greater importance is Vācaspati Miçra's *Sāṁkhyatattvakaumudī*, in which he displays his usual impartiality and capacity of exposition. He cites a *Rājavārttika* of Raṇaraṅgamalla or Bhoja. The Kārikā itself is doubtless indebted to older works for its substance which is expressed in dry Āryā verses which exhibit, however, traces of the distinctive feature of Sāṁkhya exposition, the choice of happy illustrative examples, such as the similitude drawn between nature and the modest maiden who retires once she has been seen by spirit.