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The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11: VII. The Sāṃkhya Kārikā

The Sāṃkhya System: A History of the Sāṃkhya Philosophy c11

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VII. The Sāṃkhya Kārikā

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WITH the Sāṁkhya Kārikā we emerge from the region of conjecture and doubt, and arrive at the classic statement of the doctrine of the Sāṁkhya philosophy. It is admittedly by far the most brilliant account of the system, and its claim to be the oldest exposition of the doctrine in systematic form is challenged only by Max Müller’s suggestion* that the oldest text-book of the Sāṁkhya is the Tattvasamāsa, a work of wholly unknown date and authorship. The claim runs counter to the title of the work, which shows it to be, like the Kārikās themselves, nothing more than a compendium of the doctrine of the school: the introduction is modern in appearance, and the technical terms which make up the greater portion of the content of the short tract are more numerous and more elaborate than anything found in the Sāṁkhya Kārikā. There is, therefore, the probability that the Tattvasamāsa represents a later period of the school than the Kārikā: certainty, in the absence of any source of information as to the Tattvasamāsa, is not to be attained.

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The date of the work is approximately known. It appears to have been among the works which the Buddhist monk, Paramārtha, took with him to China in 546 A.D., and it is recorded that he made a translation of it and of a commentary on it during the last period of his literary activity, which falls in the years from 557-568, the date of his death.† This translation has fortunately been preserved, and proves the authenticity of the Sanskrit text as it now stands. Further, the Chinese tradition places Vindhyavāsa,* who must clearly have been none other than the author of the Kārikā, before Vasubandhu, a famous authority on Buddhist philosophy who is declared to have composed a work for the express purpose of refuting the doctrines of the Kārikā. There is no ground to doubt the correctness of the tradition, but the date of Vasubandhu is doubtful. It was placed by Takakusu in the last three-quarters of the fifth century A.D., from which it followed that the date of Īśvarakṛṣṇa must be fixed at about 450 A.D. But the date of Vasubandhu has been placed, on grounds of Chinese evidence which must be accorded great weight, by N. Péri† as at least a century earlier, and the period of Īśvarakṛṣṇa thus is thrown back into the fourth century A.D., where his activity finds an appropriate setting in the great revival of Indian studies under the Gupta dynasty, in the period which saw the bloom of the Kāvya and the drama.

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∗ Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, pp. 318, 319; see below, p. 89. † See Takakusu, Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient, iv., 1ff.

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† Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient, xi, 356ff. Cf. O. Franke, J.R.A.S., 1914, pp. 398-401; Takakusu, ibid, p. 113.

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More difficult is the question of the date of the commentary of Gauḍapāda, which has been handed down with the Kārikā, and which is certainly of considerable importance in determining precisely the meaning of the principles summarized in the sixty-nine Āryā stanzas of the Kārikā. The date of Gauḍapāda is uncertain: if he could safely be identfied with the author of the Kārikā on the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, who seems to have been a predecessor of Śaṃkara, then he could be assigned to the first half of the eighth century A.D. But the contrast between the philosophical views of the two works is so great that identity of authorship can hardly be presumed on no better evidence than identity of name. Another date would be secured if it could be established that the commentary of Gauḍapāda was the basis of the Chinese commentary which is still preserved. But the researches of Takakusu have definitely established the fact that this commentary differs too greatly from that of Gauḍapāda to have been derived from it, and that both it and the commentary of Gauḍapāda must go back ultimately to a common source. This conclusion is incidentally confirmed by the evidence of the very full account of the Kārikā given by Albiruni (1030 A.D.), who actually mentions a Gauḍa as authority. His statements, however, cannot be derived entirely* from the work of Gauḍapāda, and it is clear that he used two different authorities. Who the author of this older commentary was is uncertain: there is a Chinese tradition that it was Vasubandhu himself, but this suggestion is supported by no evidence, and can easily be explained away as a misunderstanding of the fact that Vasubandhu wrote a work to refute the Kārikā. There is therefore plausibility in the suggestion† that the author was Īśvarakṛṣṇa himself, especially as the nature of the Kārikā is such as urgently to require an interpretation. If, however, this was the case, before the work was taken to China there had already been appended to it the last verses, which are not recognized by Gauḍapāda, but which are given and explained in the Chinese commentary. It is probable that Gauḍapāda’s commentary was distinctly later than the original of the Chinese version: a terminus ad quem is given by the use of Gauḍapāda by Albiruni in the eleventh century A.D., and by his priority to Vācaspatimiśra, whose commentary on the Kārikā the Sāṃkhyatattvakaumudī, written in the ninth century A.D.,‡ ranks high among the authorities on the Sāṃkhya philosophy, and has been made the subject of several super-commentaries. Later is the commentary of Nārāyaṇatīrtha, which is of little value.

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∗ S. K. Belvarker (Bhandarkar Commemoration Volume, pp. 175-178) argues that Vindhyavāsa really wrote a commentary on Īśvarakṛṣṇa's work, but this view is not probable. The fact that the Māṭhara-Vṛtti does not mention Vārṣaganya, who is an important author, cited by Vyāsa, tells against its accuracy rather than against the Chinese tradition.

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According to the Kārikā the end of the Sāṃkhya philosophy is to discover the means of removing the threefold misery of the world, that is, the commentators explain, the sorrows brought on us by ourselves, those brought by others, and those inflicted by fate. The removal of misery cannot be achieved either empirically or by devotion to religious practises. Good fortune on earth is perishable, and moreover it is not positive pleasure but freedom from misery that the wise man seeks. The practice of religion, again, is insufficient; the performance of sacrifice not only involves the slaying of victims which offends against the rule of non-injury, but the rewards of such actions are transitory, and the performer must fall back again, after the enjoyment of the fruit of his deeds in yonder world, into an earthly existence: moreover, the result of such actions leads to positive pleasure,* not to the freedom from pain which is the ideal of the sage.

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∗ As held by Garbe, Sāṃkhya Philosophie, pp. 62-68. † Takakusu, op. cit. p.

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⁵⁸ S. K. Belvarkar (Bhandarkar Commemoration Volume, pp. 171ff) argues that the original of the Chinese version was the Māṭhara-Vṛtti, which he is editing, but this cannot be proved, as derivation from a common source is still equally probable. ‡ Keith, J.R.A.S., 1914, p. 1098.

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The statement of the object of the system is of importance in that it brings out clearly the fundamental pre-suppositions on which the Sāṃkhya, like the other philosophical systems, rests. It is assumed as self-evident that the world is a condition of misery, that the soul is subject to transmigration, and that there is some degree of truth at least in the Vedic tradition. Whatever the origin of the doctrines in question, the first two assumptions are of universal validity for all schools of Indian thought, with the exception of atheistic and materialist Cārvākas, and the Sāṃkhya makes no effort to establish their validity. The third assumption is of much less importance from the philosophical view, for unlike the first two it has no real effect on the substance of the Sāṃkhya philosophy, but for the adherents of the system it had the great advantage of making the school rank as orthodox, and so on a higher plane not merely than the Buddhists or Jains, but even than the sectarian worshippers of Viṣṇu and Śiva.

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The real mode of freedom from the misery of existence lies in the knowledge of the principles of the Sāṃkhya, the evolved, the unevolved, and the knower, but the preliminary question of the mode in which truth is to be attained is not ignored in the *Kārikā*. The three means of proof are expressly asserted to be perception, inference and correct tradition, which are sufficient, on the one hand, to establish every principle, and all of which, on the other hand, are essential to account for existence as known to us. Perception is defined to be mental apprehension of a present object, inference is declared to be threefold and distinguished by the presence of a mark and the bearer of a mark, while correct tradition is equated with the holy scripture, *Śruti*, rightly understood. The use of scripture, however, is restricted to those cases only which cannot be dealt with by the use of the other modes of proof, and the instances in which it has to be resorted to are reduced to such as are beyond perception by the sense and beyond inference by analogy: such cases are the Vedic gods, Mount Meru, and the Uttara Kurus, all things whose truth is vouched for in scripture, but which cannot be known by any other means. The three forms of inference are not described in the *Kārikā*, and the commentaries differ, but the commentary on the *Nyāya Sūtra* (i, 1, 5) explains them as inference from cause to effect, as from the presence of clouds to rain, from the effect to the cause, as from the swelling of the streams in the valleys to rain in the hills, and by analogy, as when we infer from the fact that a man alters his place when he moves that the stars, since they appear in different places, must move also.[*] In these cases in the Indian conception of logic the clouds, the swollen streams, the change of place of the stars are the mark, and the rain to come, the rain in the hills, and the movement of the stars are the bearers of the mark.

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∗ So P. Deussen, *Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie*, I, iii, 415. The commentators hold that envy is produced by the sight of others' greater bliss.

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The absence of any attempt to examine more closely the nature of perception and of inference and their mutual relations is striking, and indicates how firmly fixed was the view of the system that perception gave immediate knowledge of reality, and that inference gave mediate knowledge. The, admission by the side of these two principles, which alone were allowed by the Vaiśeṣika school, of the conception of authority, harmonises with the uncritical attitude of the school to the problem of knowledge, and with its essentially practical end, the removal of misery. The belief in the Vedic tradition from the point of view of purely scientific interest could not be accepted without examination: to the supporters of a system with a definite means of salvation the presence in the midst of their tenets of one which might not bear close examination was indifferent, since it did not vitally affect the main structure of the system.

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∗ See Deussen, *Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie*, I, iii. 367-370. The third type is taken more generally as inductive by Vācaspatimiśra and Vijñānabhikṣu, see Garbe, *Sāmkhya Philosophie*, pp. 153-154; Jacobi, *Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen*, 1895, p. 204. Cf. A Bürk, *Vienna Oriental Journal*, XV, 251-264.

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The essentially inferior position as a means of proof, allotted to tradition, is attested by the Sāṃkhya doctrine of causality: despite the numerous passages in the sacred scriptures which might be adduced for the doctrine that non-existence was the source of being, the Sāṃkhya asserts the doctrine that the result really exists beforehand in its cause, just as the clay serves to form a pot, or the threads form a piece of cloth. For this theory five grounds are adduced: the non-existent cannot be the subject of an activity; the product is really nothing else than the material of which it is composed; the product exists before its coming into being in the shape of its material; only a definite product can be produced from each material; and only a specific material can yield a specific result. The last four arguments, which are in effect but two, rest on the perception that in the product the original material is contained, though under change of appearance, and that definite materials give definite and distinct results; the first argument, on the other hand, rests not merely on the fact that the coming into being of any object save from a definite material is not observed, but also on the argument that if a thing does not exist there can be no possibility of its doing anything. Hence it follows that in its ultimate essence causality is reduced to change of appearance in an abiding entity, a conception of great importance for the system.

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From the principle of causality is deduced the fact that the ultimate basis of the empirical universe is the unevolved, Avyakta. Individual things are all limited in magnitude. and this is incompatible with the nature of the source of the universe. All individual things are analogous one to another, and therefore no one can be regarded as the final source of the other. Moreover, as they all come into being from a source, they cannot constitute that source. Further, an effect must differ from its cause, though it must consist of the cause, and therefore the empiric universe cannot itself be the final cause, but must be the product of some ultimate cause. The obvious difficulty that the unevolved cannot be perceived is met with the argument that its fine nature renders it imperceptible, just as other things, of whose existence there is no doubt, cannot be perceived; either because of their too great distance or proximity, through the intervention of a third object, through admixture with similar matter, through the presence of some more powerful sensation, or the blindness or other defect of the senses or the mind of the observer.

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From the nature of the final cause follow the essential differences between the unevolved and the evolved. The products have a cause, on which they depend, and to which they are related: the source is uncaused and independent. They are many in number, and limited in space and name: the source is one, eternal and all-pervasive. They have activities, and parts: the source is immanent in all but has neither activities nor parts. They are the mark: the source is distinguished by them.

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The process of development of the unevolved is through the activity of three constituents out of which it is made up, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. The first of these constituents, or factors, is that in nature which is light, which reveals, which causes pleasure to man: the second is what is impelling and moves, what produces activity in man: the third is what is heavy and restrains, what produces the state of indifference or inactivity in man. The three constituents act essentially in close relation: they overpower and support one another, produce one another and intermingle with one another. They are compared in a homely simile to the constituents of a lamp, that is, it seems, to the flame, oil, and wick, respectively. The origin of the conception seems to be in the main psychologic, but even in the Kārikā it is impossible not to realize the material nature also accorded to the Guṇas. No proof of their existence is offered: it is to be inferred that they were held to be established by observation both of nature and of man.

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From the possession of the three constituents, which is common to both the evolved and the unevolved, follow certain further characteristics of these entities, which form the discrimination between them and the other great principle of the Sāṃkhya, Purusha, or spirit. Unlike spirit, the evolved and the unevolved are without the power of discriminating between themselves and spirit: indeed without spirit they are wholly unconscious; they are objective only while spirit is the subject; they are common to all spirits whereas each spirit is unique; they are either creative, created or both creative and created, while spirit is neither created nor creative. While, however, it is expressly said that these distinctions arise from the possession by the unevolved of the three constituents which are likewise present in the evolved, the mode of the derivation of the characteristics is not given. Nor is this defect remedied in the account given of the arguments for the existence of the spirit as these arguments essentially assume that the nature of the unevolved and the evolved is something independently ascertained.

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The arguments put forward for the existence of spirit are that the aggregate of nature must exist for the sake of something, that there must be something to be the presiding power for which the evolution of the universe takes place, that there must be a subject to experience the three constituents of the universe, that the development of the world proceeds for the sake of the emancipation of something, and that something must exist with qualities opposed to those of the universe. Further, it is deduced that there must be many spirits, since experience shows us separate birth and death, separate organs and different actions, and, further, spirit must be the reverse of nature, which is essentially one and the same to all. Similarly, by reason of the same contrast, spirit is the subject, not the object, it reaches and possesses freedom because of its power of discerning the difference between itself and nature: it is conscious, as against unconscious nature; it is without participation in activity in any form, and, unlike nature, produces nothing. Nevertheless, the empiric self is explained only by the union of spirit with nature: through this union the fine body which is a product of nature becomes, though itself without consciousness, conscious. On the other hand, though the constituents alone possess activity by reason of the uniting with spirit, spirit, really indifferent, appears as an actor. But the conjunction of the two is essentially not intended to be permanent: it is, in fact, like the union of a blind man with a lame man: spirit joins forces with nature in order that nature may be revealed to spirit, and that spirit may obtain freedom from its connection with nature.

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This conception is the fundamental point of the whole Sāṃkhya system, and its difficulties are obvious. There is no possibility of mediation between the spirit which is removed from all action, and the active but unconscious nature. The famous simile of the blind man who carries on his back the lame man, and thus places his activity under the control of the directing power of the other, suffers from the fundamental difficulty that the two men with which it deals are both possessed of activity and so can co-operate. Spirit cannot act, and on the other hand nature, being unconscious, is not capable of receiving directions from the conscious spirit. Still more serious is the difficulty that, while the aim of the union of the lame and the blind is obviously the serving of a useful purpose, no such purpose can be conceived for the union of spirit and nature. Unconscious nature cannot experience misery: spirit in itself does not experience misery, and the union of the two, which results in the apparent experience of misery by spirit, which wrongly thinks that the misery which it brings to light in nature is misery which it itself endures, thus creates the very misery which it is the object of the union to abolish.

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It is impossible to imagine that so complicated a system could have arisen from independent speculation on the nature of existence. The conception of spirit in the Sāṃkhya is clearly nothing more than the carrying to a further limit of the conception of the self in the teaching of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad. The distinction of the subjective and the objective, and the recognition of the fact that the subject is in a sense opposed to the object, has led to the hypostatization of the subject as a separate entity opposed to all objectivity, and to the doctrine that the subject is somehow dragged into unsatisfactory contact with objectivity, from which is to be set free by recognizing its true nature, and its essential distinction from the object. Starting from the fact of normal consciousness the whole content of consciousness is attributed to nature, the element which makes it conscious to spirit, but, in place of the recognition of the fact that without content there can be no subject, the existence of the subject is asserted as reality, but the content of consciousness is represented as an error due to the failure of spirit to realize its true nature. While, however, the error of hypostatization of a mere aspect of the total process of consciousness is found equally in Yājñavalkya and his followers,[*] the Sāṃkhya makes a departure in two points of fundamental importance from the lines of the earlier philosophy. In both cases the points represent concessions to popular opinion, and in both cases, from the point of view of philosophy, the result is unsatisfactory. In the first place, in accordance with the obvious existence of many men a multitude of souls is allowed as real: in the second place, while, as in the Vedānta, much of the world is admitted to be the product of ideal elements,[†] a certain amount is left which remains, as will be seen, in some sense other than a product of the ideal elements.

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The essential disadvantage of the introduction of these new elements into the system is that the conception of the subject cannot logically be maintained when many subjects are allowed. The epithets given to the subject in the Sāṃkhya are applicable to the abstract conception of the subject as opposed to all its content: there can be no multipli-

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[*] E.g., Max Müller's development, based in part on Kant, in The Silesian Horseherd (London, 1903), with F. B. Jevons's incisive criticism, Hibbert Journal, ii, 403-7.

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[†] Garbe lays stress on the fact that all Prakṛti which he renders Urmaterie and its derivates are natural, not ideal. Būt this seems to go rather far: the product Buddhi and its derivates are rather unconscious mental states, philosophically a doubtful conception, but more satisfactory than the idea of their naturalism. Prakṛti, however, is more than Buddhi and is partly natural.

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cation of this abstract conception as the Sāmkhya asserts. The existence of numerous individuals who are conscious is a totally different thing, for their number and individuality are conditioned by the possession of a different objective content in consciousness, and when this is removed there would remain nothing at all, or at the most the abstract conception of subject, which could not be a multitude of individual spirits. Had the Sāmkhya conception been that of a number of souls as opposed to spirits, no logical objection could be raised to the theory of multiplicity, but the sharp distinction of spirit and nature, and the assertion that there is no real connection between them, deprive spirit of any possible reality.

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These difficulties come out in great prominence in the effort to deduce the evolution of nature for the sake of spirit. From nature arises the great one, often called intellect, Buddhi; then arises individuation, Ahamkāra; thence come the five organs of perception, Buddhindriya; the five organs of action, Karmendriya, and the five fine elements, Tanmātras; from the five elements arise the five gross elements, Mahābhūtas, and from them the world. The series up to the five gross elements, including nature itself, number twenty-four, and with spirit as twenty-fifth make up the principles of the system. The first, nature, is evolvent only: the rest, save the gross elements, are evolved and evolvent, the gross elements are evolved, and spirit is neither evolvent or evolved, but this distinction is of no weight for the system. The series is in all probability of historical origin, as it finds, as we have seen, an analogue in the Katha Upanisad, and perhaps for this reason its deduction is full of difficulty.

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The essential conception is that from unconscious nature there is developed for the sake of spirit a whole universe, that the development takes place for each individual spirit separately, but yet at the same time in such a manner that nature and its evolutes are common to all spirits. The question, how nature, consisting of the equilibrium of the three constituents, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, can be brought into activity at all remains unsolved: it is illustrated by the simile of the unconscious milk which flows to nourish the calf, yet nature is said to proceed for the freedom of spirit as men proceed to bring to cessation their desires. But nature is essentially other than spirit: it is not, as in the Vedānta, a production of ignorance, but is as real as spirit itself, though it is only under the influence of union with spirit that it evolves itself. But for that union the constituents, though credited with the power of action, would not alter from their condition of equilibrium.

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The conception of intellect as the first evolute from nature is doubtless to be traced to the derivation from the Avyakta of the great soul in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (iii, 11). This fact, and its position in the series of evolutes before the principle of individuation, suggest that the primary sense of the expression is cosmic, but the exact force of a cosmic intellect in a system which has not a creator or world-soul is difficult to appreciate, though in the Vedānta it is easy to understand how from the impersonal Brahman can be derived the personal Hiraṇyagarbha who can be regarded as the world-soul. At most the conception aimed at may be that the influence of spirit is to convert the wholly indeterminate nature into a consciousness, which for lack of principle of individuation can only be conceived as a potential consciousness. But this cosmic position of intellect is feebly grasped in the Kārikā, in which on the contrary stress is laid on the intellect as psychological. It is defined as the power of decision, by which it seems to be distinguished from mind, as the power which formulates the possible courses and carries out the decision, while on the intellectual side mind brings up the material for concepts which the intellect formulates.* Viewed in this light, intellect, which like all the products of nature consists of three constituents, in its Sattva aspect is distinguished by the performance of duty, knowledge, freedom from desire, and divine powers: in its aspect as Tamas it is distinguished by the reverse of these qualities, or more correctly it is the Rajas aspect which produces desire. It is clear that considered thus intellect cannot be prior to mind or individuation, and that it performs a twofold and inconsistent part in the scheme.

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∗ Cf. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, I, iii, 436, 439. Garbe (Sāmkhya Philosophie, pp. 252, 253) restricts mind to wish and doubt and to its connection with the organs.

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The principle of individuation can only be understood as the principle through the action of which the several spirits become endowed each with a separate substratum, which results in the appearance of human individuals. It is impossible to interpret the principle of individuation in any real cosmic sense, as if this is done we would find ourselves faced with the conception of a really conscious world spirit, which is not accepted in the *Kārikā*. Psychologically the principle stands midway between intellect and mind: the sensations communicated through mind are referred to the self and result in a perfect concept; the suggestions of action sent up by mind are referred to the self by the action of individuation, and result in the decision of intellect, and the derivation of mind and the senses from individuation, like that of individuation from intellect, is again logically impossible.

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The pyschological character of the principle of individuation is emphasized by the derivation from it in its Sattva aspect of the mind and the five organs of perception and the five organs of action, and from it in its Tamas aspect of the five fine elements, thus developing a further parallelism of the subjective and the objective elements. In each derivation the Rajas aspect plays its part, both as serving to set the other constituents in action and as actually present in the results. The five organs of perception are those of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; the five organs of action are the tongue, feet, hands, and the organs of evacuation and reproduction. Mind is, like these ten, an organ through which external reality is apprehended, but it has the important function of arranging the sense impressions into precepts, of suggesting alternatives, and of carying out the decisions of the will by means of the organs of action. The function of the organs of perception is merely observation, in contrast with the action of the organs of action. Mind with the organs* appears to be considered as producing by their action the five vital airs, which in the Vedānta system are given an independent place as the supporters of the life of nutrition as opposed to the conscious life. The distinction of ten senses is not explained, save by a reference to the diverse development of the constituents.

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∗ So Śaṃkara, and apparently Gauḍapāda. Vācaspatimiśra attributes the activity to mind, individuation and intellect.

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Mind shares with intellect and individuation the peculiarity that there is no distinction between organ and function, as there is in the case of the other ten senses. In perception all four functions, the senses, mind, individuation, and intellect are active: in other cases only the latter three are employed, but their activity must rest upon the result of previous perception, a memory picture or an idea. The action in both cases may be simultaneous, or step by step, but in the former case the real sense is, it seems, that the process is too swift for the steps to be observed: thus an object is seen by the senses, the sense impression is developed into a percept by mind, related to the self by individuation, and made into a concept by intellect, or suggested decisions are formed by mind, brought into individuation, and the decision is given by intellect, whereupon mind sees to their execution. Thus in its widest sense the organ can be described as thirteen-fold: the three functions, intellect, individuation, and mind form the inner organ, the ten senses the outer organ, through which alone can the inner organ be set in activity, either directly in perception or through the influence of a former perception. The outer organ is thus bound to the present in time, the inner can deal with past and future. The organs are mutually helpful, but their ultimate aim is for the sake of spirit. The senses are the door, while the inner organ is compared to the doorkeeper. Between the organs of perception and of action there is a distinction in the nature of their objects; the former contemplate both the fine and the gross elements, including all the world under the latter head; speech has sound as its object, while the other four organs deal with all the five gross elements and the world derived from them.

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The position of intellect, however, is one of special importance: all the action of the other organs is carried out for the intellect, and it works directly for spirit, producing its experience of all existence on the one hand and on the other other securing the discernment of the subtle distinction between spirit and nature.

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The fine elements are described as without difference in them, while the gross elements which arise from them are expressly described as possessing this quality, from which it would seem that the gross elements are considered, as in the *Chāndogya Upaniṣad* (vi, 4), where, however, there are but three elements in question, to be produced by the intermingling of the fine elements, the elements receiving their special names from the presence in them of the greater amount of the specific element, in accordance with the view of the Vedānta, in which each element consists of a half of one element and one-eighth each of the other four. The alternative view suggested by the *Taittirīya Upaniṣad* (ii, 1) under which the gross elements would arise from the compounding of the fine elements by the process of accumulation, wind, for example, having both the qualities of audibility and tactibility, is adopted by Gauḍapāda and Vācaspatimiśra, but seems to have less probability, since in it ether would have but one quality, audibility, and so could not be contrasted as a gross element with the corresponding fine element.

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Together with the organs the fine elements form part of the Liṅga, the psychic apparatus, which passes from life to life. The Liṅga, however, includes as a necessary part of it the subtle parts of the gross elements, which serve as the seed whence the physical body springs. These subtle portions are as necessary to the psychic apparatus as the canvas to a picture or, by a less appropriate simile, a pillar to a shadow. This psychic apparatus, which is incorporeal, and is prior to the conception of time, accompanies the souls throughout transmigration, from body to body, in accordance with the rule of causality, playing like an actor various parts, a power which it possesses since it shares in the property of all pervadingness which belongs to nature. This conjunction of spirit with the psychic apparatus is the cause of misery, and lasts until the attainment of true insight.

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The gross elements, however, have a further characteristic. They consist of two further portions, those described as born of father and mother, which go to make the body of the psychic apparatus, growing out of the seed in the form of the subtle portions of the gross elements, and the Prabhūtas, which form the mass of inorganic nature. These two elements grow out from the subtle portions, and thus each individual spirit is provided with a complete world of its own arising from itself. At the same time, however, it is expressly indicated that these last two portions of the gross elements fall back at death into the body of nature, and it is clear that the conception of the souls as monads is not carried out to its full extent.* The reason for the breach in the unity of the idea is obvious: it is intended to meet the case of the difficulty which arises as to the existence in the empiric world of other souls in human and other bodies, and of inorganic nature. To consider all these as developed from the fine elements separately for each spirit would seem unnatural, and though, therefore, the gross elements are expressly derived from the fine elements, and though these are derived from the principle of individuation, which cannot be cosmic, none the less these two portions of the gross elements are treated as being the same for all, not merely similar and, therefore, as cosmic. This fact reveals a realistic basis at the bottom of the Sāṃkhya conception, and suggests that nature is to some degree at least directly responsible for inorganic things, and even for the corporeal parts of organic things. Of the latter fourteen classes are enumerated, eight divine, given variously, by Gauḍapāda as Brahman, Prajāpati, Soma, Indra, Gandharvas, Yakṣas, Piśācas, and Rakṣases, five of beasts, given by the same scholiast as wild animals, domesticated animals, birds, reptiles, and plants, and one of men. In the worlds of the gods the constituent Sattva prevails, in that of men Rajas, in the rest Tamas. Of inorganic nature not a hint is given, a fact which suggests that the difficulties of its position were decidedly felt by the author.

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∗ Cf. vv. 22, 39 and 41 of the Kārikā: the subtle portions seem to pick from nature the material for the Mātāpitṛjas. See Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, I, iii, 447, 448, 497; below, p 97. The objections of O. Strauss, Vienna Oriental Journal, xxvii, 262, are not convincing.

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In its passage through the world, from body to body, in the course of time each soul, or spirit with its psychic body, is subject to determination, which cannot be deduced from its own nature as spirit nor from the psychic body, but must be derived directly from nature. This determination is afforded by the Bhāvas, psychic states, which are inseparably bound up with the psychic apparatus: the two go together so long as the spirit is not finally freed from the psychic apparatus. Each individual life starts with a definite equipment of states, and it adds others in its life: apparently those with which it starts exhaust themselves in the course of its life, and when it passes away and in due course a new life begins the new life carries with it the states accumulated in the last existence.

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The direct connection of the states with nature is shown by the fact that the eight enumerated are those which have already been given as the characteristics of the Sattva and Tamas aspects of intellect. They are performance of duty and the reverse, which lead respectively to a higher place in the next life and to degradation; knowledge, which leads to final release; ignorance, which entails continued bondage; indifference to desire, which helps to loosen the bond between spirit and nature;* desire, which leads to rebirth; divine power, which leads to freedom from obstacles, and the possession of the Siddhis, perfections; and lack of divine power which has the reverse effect.

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The Kārikā, however, gives, beside this eightfold division which is frequently referred to, another division of fifty states, divided under four heads. These are the five Viparyayas, erroneous views, the twenty-eight Aśaktis, lack of power; the nine Tuṣṭis, satisfactions; and the eight Siddhis, perfections. The five Viparyayas, which are comparable with the five Kleśas of the Yoga system, Avidyā, Asmitā, Rāga, Dvesha, and Abhiniveśa, are Tamas, darkness; Moha, confusion; Mahāmoha, deep confusion; Tāmisra, gloom; and Andhatāmisra, dark gloom. There are eight kinds of Tamas, explained by the commentators as the error of regarding nature, intellect, individuation or the five fine elements as the soul; eight of Moha, explained as the belief of the gods that their eight perfections are not liable to be lost; ten Mahāmohas, the devotion of the gods and of men to sensations of sound, touch, colour, taste, and smell; eighteen Tāmisras, jealousy arising in connection with the ten objects of sense, and the eight Siddhis, and eighteen Andhatāmisras, the fear of losing these eighteen objects. There are eighteen Aśaktis, eleven of them the weaknesses of the ten senses and mind, and the remaining seventeen the defects of intellect which prevent the attainment of the nine Tuṣṭis and eight Siddhis. The nine Tuṣṭis consist of four internal, the belief in the winning of final release through nature, asceticism, time or good fortune, and the five outer, consisting of the renunciation of the sensations of touch, etc. The eight Siddhis, unlike the other Bhāvas, directly help to final release: they are meditation, study, scripture, the removal of sorrow caused by ourselves, by others or by fate, the winning of friends and Dāna, which would normally be deemed to refer to generosity, but which has been rendered* purification of the mind, since otherwise the Siddhis do not seem to contain anything corresponding to knowledge.

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∗ See Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, I, iii, 451. Absorption in nature is the rendering of the commentators.

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It seems hopeless to try to reconcile these two lists of states: they are too much alike to be regarded as radically different, and the obvious solution of the problem is to assume that they represent a view which was held in the school, and which developed the matter in a different way. It is, however, so strange that Īśvarakṛṣṇa should have introduced the matter without any hint of the relation of the two sets of states—except the wholly misleading one that they are the same thing—that the conjecture is justified that the verses (46-51) which deal with them are a later interpolation, added at or before the time when the last three verses were added and the statement made that the tract numbered seventy verses.

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So long as the necessary knowledge of the essential distinction of spirit and nature is not attained, the spirit with the psychic apparatus must wander from birth to birth, gathering from nature at each birth the portions of the gross elements described as born of father and mother in order to assume a physical body. All this time nature by evolving for spirit in the hope of enabling it to attain final release is like a dancer who displays herself on the stage and then retires again, her task unaccomplished. But in the end nature succeeds in her object, and like a bashful maiden seen in *déshabillé*, who withdraws for ever from the sight of the man who has seen her, nature, having fulfilled her object, withdraws from spirit for ever, when spirit has realized its essential distinction from nature. Then comes to an end the paradox by which spirit, which has really no connection with nature and is unaffected by the misery inherent in nature, considers itself bound and suffers transmigration, while nature undertakes the changes of evolution for the sake of spirit, since in herself she is not conscious of misery. In truth the spirit is not bound, does not undergo transmigration, and is not released, but these processes are applicable to nature, but only for the sake of spirit.

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∗ By Vācaspatimiśra on Kārikā 51.

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There is only one means by which nature can succeed in freeing spirit from fancied dependence on her, though she makes efforts in diverse ways: of the eight psychic states which are seen in intellect seven merely keep spirit fast in its bonds; with the eighth, knowledge, however, release is achieved. The knowledge which results in liberation is the realization that the spirit is not one or all of the principles, that it has no empiric existence, that nothing belongs to it, and that it does not exist as an empiric individual. The attainment of this knowledge through consideration of the facts of existence results in the cessation of the creative activity of nature: the other seven psychic states come to an end for ever, and spirit, in contentment, gazes as a mere spectator upon nature which no longer binds it. Recognizing that nature is not connected with it, spirit is indifferent to her, nature recognizing that her true character is understood ceases her activity, and though the union of the two remains in existence even after the attainment of true knowledge, there is no possibility of further production. But as the potter's wheel continues to revolve for a time, after he ceases to maintain its motion, by reason of the acquired velocity, so the psychic states which result from the previous life have to be finally exhausted, and not until the impressions, Saṃskāras, thus existing in the mind have been removed, can the complete release be attained in death, when spirit obtains the condition of complete isolation, which is unending, and which is free from any other characteristic.

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Nothing is more convincing proof of the close derivation of the Sāṃkhya from the orthodox doctrine of the Upaniṣads than the terms in which the attainment of release is described. In the system itself the doctrine of the bondage of spirit in nature is essential to explain the misery of existence, but at the same time it is admitted that there is no real bondage. No reason is given for the belief of spirit that it is bound, yet, as the bondage is unreal, it is clear that it must be produced by ignorance, since it is removed by knowledge, but this doctrine is not set out in the Kārikā, which on the contrary consistently treats the union of spirit and nature as a union for the final release of spirit. There is no conception of a development of spirit by its union with its opposite, resulting in a synthesis which is far more rich in content than the two factors involved: on the contrary, the connection of spirit with matter terminates with the withdrawal of spirit into a condition of absolute freedom, which must, however, at the same time be absolute nonentity. In following the doctrine of the Upaniṣads that true knowledge involves the denial of individuality, the Sāṃkhya system leads itself into the difficult position that it thus really denies the reality of its system of many spirits, since there can be no multiplicity without individuality to distinguish the several members of the group of spirits. In the Upaniṣads, on the contrary, the idea is justifiable, since the denial of individuality is due to the fact that all seeming individuals are really merely one single self. In the Upaniṣads, moreover, there is a real possibility of the binding of the self; whether the bonds be real or merely illusory, still in the first case they can be destroyed in the appropriate manner, and in the second the false belief can be removed by knowledge, but the Sāṃkhya denies any real connection whatever, and, while it therefore leaves it to be assumed that the apparent connection is caused by ignorance, it does not, like the Vedānta, elevate that ignorance into a metaphysical entity, thus leaving its existence even on the basis of the system unexplained.

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In the case of any individual self, the connection of spirit and nature rests indeed on the lack of discrimination in a previous existence, which leaves its impression on the mind, and in the next existence leaves the spirit bound, but this does not meet the objection to an infinite regress which in other cases the Sāṃkhya system sharply refuses to allow. The spirit not being really connected with nature, there is no ground on which there can be produced the lack of discrimination of spirit from nature which causes bondage. In the Vedānta of Śaṃkara the finite and the infinite spirit are indeed in reality one, and the distinction between them is due to an illusion, but an illusion is something which can be removed by knowledge: a non-existing connection cannot create a lack of distinction which produces a connection. Or if that view of the Upaniṣads be accepted, in which the existence of individual souls and of the outer world is in some way believed to be real, then freedom may be won by the recognition of the true connection between the individual souls and the absolute through meditation upon, and devotion to, the absolute, or through grace, as in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (ii, 23) and elsewhere.* Equally here is a connection realized between spirit and nature, the absence of which shuts off the Sāṃkhya from any possibility of logical explanation of its main principles.

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∗ See also Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad, iii, 8; Muṇḍaka, iii, 2, 3.

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