The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c10: VI. Greek Philosophy and the Sāṃkhya
The Sāṃkhya System: A History of the Sāṃkhya Philosophy c10
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VI. Greek Philosophy and the Sāṃkhya
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FOR the age of the Sāmkhya important information might be obtained if it were possible to trace definite borrowings of Sāmkhya ideas from the side of Greek philosophy. The ’ἄπειρον of Anaximander has been compared with the nature of the Sāmkhya, and the doctrines of the constant flow of things and of the innumerable destructions and renewals of the world found in Heraclitus are no doubt similar to tenets of the Indian system. Empedocles, like the Sāmkhya, asserts the doctrine of the pre-existence of the product in the cause. Anaxagoras is a dualist, Democritus agrees with Empedocles in his doctrine of causality and believes in the purely temporary existence and mortality of the gods. Epicurus uses in support of his atheism the argument of the Sāmkhya, that otherwise the divine nature must be accorded attributes which are inconsistent with its supposed character, and often emphasizes the doctrine of infinite possibilities of production.
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Garbe* adds to these parallels, which he admits not to be conclusive evidence of borrowing, the fact that Persia was a perfectly possible place in which Greek thinkers, of whom travels are often recorded, should acquire knowledge of the Indian views, and supports his opinion that borrowing is probable by the case of Pythagoras, who is supposed to have borrowed from India his theory of transmigration, his conception of a religious community, his distinction of a fine and a gross body of the soul, his distinction of a sensitive organ, θυμός, and of the imperishable soul, φρήν, his doctrine of an intermediate world between earth and sky filled by demons, the doctrine of five elements including ether, the Pythagorean problem, the irrational and other things. Into this question of the relation of Pythagoras to Greek thought and to India it is unnecessary to go, as the Sāṃkhya elements—as contrasted with the elements which are not specifically Sāṃkhya in his teachings—are negligible. Von Schroeder,* indeed, invents an older form of Sāṃkhya, which he understands as denoting reckoning, in which number played a much greater part than in the classical Sāṃkhya; Garbe thinks that Pythagoras may have invented his doctrine of number as the result of his misinterpreting the fact that the Sāṃkhya owed its name to its enumeration of principles, into the view that the Sāṃkhya made number the basis of nature. Both theories are based on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the views of Pythagoras,† and the only possible conclusion is that we have no early Greek evidence for the existence of the Sāṃkhya school.
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∗ Sāmkhya Philosophie, pp. 85-105.
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It is further not necessary seriously to consider the possibilities of borrowing on the part of Plato or of Aristotle, though the influence of the Sāṃkhya has been seen in the case of both. More plausible is the effort to find proof of Sāṃkhya doctrines in Gnosticism, an attempt to which there is not *a priori* any reason to take exception. The actual proofs of such influence adduced are not important: the comparison of soul or spirit to light, which does not occur in the oldest Sāṃkhya authorities, is anticipated by Aristotle, and is Platonic in essence; the contrast of spirit and matter is Platonic. Perhaps more value attaches to such minor points as the Gnostic division of men into three classes, which may be compared with the classification of men according to the predominance in them of the three Guṇas of the Sāṃkhya, and the assigning of personal existence to such functions as intellect and will. But such parallels, whatever they are worth, do not help definitely as to the date of a real Sāṃkhya.
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∗ *Pythagoras und die Inder*, pp. 72-76. † See Keith, *J.R.A.S.*, 1909, pp. 569-606.
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On the other hand, the further effort to find Sāmkhya influences in neo-Platonism must be held to be completely mistaken. Plotinus (209-269 A.D.) held that his object was to free men from misery through his philosophy, that spirit and matter are essentially different, that spirit is really unaffected by misery, which is truly the lot of matter; he compares the soul to light and even to a mirror in which objects are reflected; he admits that in sleep, as the soul remains awake, man can enjoy happiness; he insists on the realization of God in a condition of ecstasy brought about by profound mental concentration. Porphyry (232-304 A.D.) teaches the leadership of spirit over matter, the omnipresence of the soul when freed from matter, and the doctrine that the world has no beginning. He also forbids the slaying of animals and rejects sacrifice. Abammon, a later contemporary, mentions the wonderful powers obtained by the exercise of contemplative ecstasy. But there is nothing here that can possibly be considered as necessarily derived from India. The opposition of matter and spirit, the removal of spirit from the world of reality, and the view that the only power to approach to it is through ecstasy are the outcome of the Greek endeavour to grasp the problem brought into prominence by Plato of the contrast of spirit and matter, and the views of Plotinus are the logical, and indeed inevitable, outcome of that development.* The protest against sacrifice is as old as Greek philosophy, the winning of supernatural powers by ecstasy is a popular conception which appears in Pythagoras and beyond all others in the Bacchic religion. On the other hand, the real extent of knowledge of Indian philosophy available to Plotinus and Porphyry alike seems to have been most severely limited.
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∗ See E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904), who develops in detail the deduction of Plotinus' view from Platonism. The same view is taken by P. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, I, iii, 616.