The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.2

c11.2

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.