Outlines of Indian Philosophy c19.8

c19.8

The relation between the Sāṅkhya and the Yoga again is difficult of settlement. It is not even clear that one of them is later than the other, for they may well have been due to differentiations in what was originally a single doctrine. In the form in which the two have come down to us, there is no doubt that the Yoga is later. If the view adopted here, viz. that the doctrine is derived from the Upaniṣads, be right, it appears probable that its starting-point should be sought in a primitive Sāṅkhya-Yoga with belief in a supreme God to whom the individual selves and prakṛti, the source of the physical universe, though distinct are yet subordinate; for such a doctrine is nearer to the teaching of the Upaniṣads than the atheistic Sāṅkhya or the theistic but dualistic Yoga of classical times.¹ We have to assume that under naturalistic influence such as that of the Svabhāva-vāda, the capacity to unfold the universe was transferred completely to prakṛti, rendering the idea of God superfluous; and on that was later grafted a belief in his existence by the exponents of the Yoga² probably as a matter of theological expediency—'to satisfy the theists and to facilitate the propagation of the theory of the universe expounded in Sāṅkhya.'³ This point will become clear when we trace the origin of the doctrine and point out its relation to the Vedānta.