Outlines of Indian Philosophy c19.47.3

c19.47.3

It will be seen that the reasoning is based upon the observation of common things emerging from their respective material causes and disappearing into them again. A jar is made out of clay; and, when destroyed, it turns into clay again. Emergence and absorption thus have a terminus, viz. clay here. This process of reasoning is only extended beyond the visible material world to arrive at prakṛti; or, to state the same differently, primary evolution is postulated on the analogy of the secondary. Even supposing that a principle which has a basis in experience may be extended to what transcends experience, it may well be asked what warrant there is for assuming the very principles—mahat, ahaṃ-kāra and tanmātras—and only so many, to account for the bhūtas which alone are given in experience; and it is significant that the basis for this part of the doctrine is stated to be not inference but verbal testimony (āptāgama) or the ipse dixit of the Sāṅkhya-Yoga teachers.³ That the physical world has evolved out of a certain number of elemental principles given in our experience, or perhaps from one, is a doctrine of the Svabhāva-vāda (p. 105); but the further reference to mahat, etc., as intermediate stages in the evolution, which distinguishes the Sāṅkhya-Yoga, suggests that it is to be traced to a different source. We shall see in the sequel what reasons there are for concluding that source to be the Upaniṣads.