The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.12

c11.12

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.