The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c12.10.3

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.