The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c12.10
The Sāṃkhya System: A History of the Sāṃkhya Philosophy c12.10
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c12.10.1
This is obviously, in some measure at least, the case as regards the criticisms of other philosophies, which make up an essential part of every Indian, as of other, philosophic systems. The appended verses to the Kārikā expressly say that these critiques are omitted, and much of the omission may be supplied in the Sūtra. On the other hand, we cannot say how much : the Sūtra which freely uses the Kārikā also uses phrases borrowed from Śaṃkara, and therefore must be treated as a work the composers of which were quite capable of adding much of their own. As the text stands, practically all the leading philosophical systems receive their share of disapproval. The materialism of the Cārvākas is met by the refutation of their denial of the validity of reasoning by the reference to its self-destructive nature, since no amount of perception will give a doctrine any validity, and by the reply to the favourite argument of the production of intelligence from unintelligent things, on the analogy of intoxicating power from an aggregate of herbs, that the intoxicating power is latent in the ingredients, but there is no trace of souls in the psychic organs. The Jain doctrine of the co-extension of soul with body is refuted by the argument that, as all that is limited is temporary, souls would be temporary also.
c12.10.2
Objections are raised to the Buddhist denial of the soul, to its assertion of the momentary character of the world, and to its belief in the annihilation of personality as final release. The special doctrine of the Vijñānavādins, that nothing exists but consciousness, is refuted as well as the nihilism of the Mādhyamikas. The Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika philosophies are severely criticized: their schemes of categories are rejected as inadequate, their belief in atoms is rejected, and their denial of a primitive material is answered. The doctrine of the eternity of the mind, space, time, the ether and the atoms of the other four elements is denied, as is the atomic size of the mind, on the ground that it must have some dimension in order to act simultaneously with more than one of the senses. The derivation of the senses from the elements is equally contested. Moreover, the doctrine of causality of the Sāṃkhya, which asserts the permanence of the cause in the product is defended against the logicians' view that the product has no existence before its production and after its destruction as such. The category of inherence, Samavāya, supported by these schools is rejected in favour of the simpler view that what it means is really to be expressed by the nature of the object in question. The whole theory of soul as really active is rejected, and with it the theory that release consists in the freeing of the soul from certain characteristics.
c12.10.3
The idea of a personal deity which is accepted in the later, if not in the original form of both these philosophies, is definitely rejected, partly because it is unnecessary and interferes with the effective work of transmigration, and partly because to allow such a deity would be to leave him responsible for the misery in the world. The doctrine that the Veda is a product of a god is naturally also denied, and in its place is developed a doctrine of the recreation of the Veda at each creation of the world as a result of itself alone, in this point departing from the doctrine of the eternity of the Veda adopted by the Mīmāṃsā school, from which also the Sāṃkhya differs in rejecting the additional means of proof, such as analogy, accepted by that system, and its theories of the eternity of sound, and of the essential connection of word and sound. From the Vedānta of Śaṃkara the system differs by opposing bitterly the doctrine of the unity of soul, of the sole existence of the soul, the refusal to accept a primitive material, the doctrine of ignorance and illusion, and the view that the released soul has enjoyment as its characteristic, a view which contradicts the whole theory of the Sāmkhya that isolation alone is the end.
c12.10.4
The Sāmkhya also rejects, in its sister system of Yoga, the doctrine of a personal deity and of the eternity of the Sphoṭa, the concept expressed in the complex of letters of the alphabet which make up a word.* But in rejecting many of the theories of the other schools the Sāmkhya Sūtra shows itself not uninfluenced by one at least of them: the work makes remarkable efforts to prove that its views are in full accord with scripture, to which it attributes conclusive value, and endeavours to show as accordant with the Sāmkhya itself the statements in scripture regarding the personality of God, the unity in the absolute, the joy which is asserted to be part of the nature of the absolute, and the heavenly bliss acknowledged in the Vedānta as a step on the way to final release. Indeed, the text goes so far as to hold that obedience to the traditional rules of action has a good effect towards securing final release, and to talk of the attainment of the nature of the absolute.