A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.19

c18.19

From the beginning of our era down to recent times the Sānkhya doctrines have exercised considerable influence on the religious and philosophical life of India, though to a much less extent than the Vedānta. Some of its individual teachings, such as that of the three *guṇas*, have become the common property of the whole of Sanskrit literature. At the time of the great Vedāntist, Çankara (800 A.D.), the Sānkhya system was held in high honour. The law book of Manu followed this doctrine, though with an admixture of the theistic notions of the Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta systems as well as of popular mythology. The *Mahābhārata*, especially Book XII., is full of Sānkhya doctrines; indeed almost every detail of the teachings of this system is to be found somewhere in the great epic. Its numerous deviations from the regular Sānkhya text-books are only secondary, as Professor Garbe thinks, even though the *Mahābhārata* is our oldest actual source for the system. Nearly half the Purāṇas follow the cosmogony of the Sānkhya, and even those which are Vedāntic are largely influenced by its doctrines. The purity of the Sānkhya notions are, however, everywhere in the Purāṇas obscured by Vedānta doctrines, especially that of cosmical illusion. A peculiarity of the Purāṇic Sāṅkhya is the conception of Spirit or *Purusha* as the male, and Matter or *Prakṛiti* as the female, principle in creation.