The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c12.16

c12.16

In the relation of the fine and the gross elements to the senses, there is clearly a difference of opinion between the Kārikā and the Sūtra. The former evidently holds the simple view that the senses can perceive the fine elements, and that it is not the gross elements alone which can thus be seen. The Sūtra, on the other hand, restricts to gods and Yogins the power to see the fine elements and accords to the senses the power only of seeing the gross. Moreover, it seems probable that the view of the fine elements taken in the Sūtra was that each of them was only the basis of the senses in question: thus sound represents the base element of sound, but not the sound which is heard, and so forth, this being the explanation of the term Aviśeṣa, without distinctions, which in the Kārikā points rather to the fine elements being each composed of the substance in question alone, and not like the gross elements of portions of all the others. These fine elements are expressly declared not to be indivisible, and are thus distinguished from the atoms of the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika theory, which are rejected by the Sāmkhya on the ground that they could never, in view of their possessing no extension, make up an extended object. Moreover, the distinction between the fine elements and the subtle portions of the gross elements, which belong, with the fine elements, to the psychical apparatus, is maintained in the later texts, in the form of the doctrine of the Ātivāhika body (iii, 12; v, 103). On the other hand, further details are given of the process of growth of the gross body, which is really composed of earth, not of three elements, fire, water, and food, that is earth, as in the view of the Vedānta, nor of four, nor of five as in the popular view, which in the epic is attributed to Pañcaśikha himself. The other four elements aid only in producing the stability of the body: water sustains the blood, fire the heat of the body, air the breath, and ether the windpipe. The breath which in the Kārikā plays a very restricted part, here appears under the influence of the Vedānta as the principle controlling the growth of the body under the guidance of spirit, with which, indeed, it seems to be conceived as united even before the production of the embryo. The kind of body is determined by the power of former action, but not the building up of the body, a point in which the Sāmkhya differs from the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika doctrine. The other organic beings, those of station superior to man, beasts and plants are similarly composed, but plants are, though endowed with bodies, deprived according to the later texts, but not according to the epic, of outer senses, so that spirits in them cannot act, but merely undergo penance for previous actions.