The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.3

c11.3

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.