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The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5: I. The Sāṃkhya in the Upaniṣads

The Sāṃkhya System: A History of the Sāṃkhya Philosophy c5

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I. The Sāṃkhya in the Upaniṣads

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IN all the manifold character of the content of the Upaniṣads it is undoubtedly possible to trace certain leading ideas. The most important of these doctrines is, beyond question, that of the identity of the self, Ātman, of the individual with the Brahman, which is the most universal expression for the absolute in which the universe finds its unity. It is probable enough that these two expressions are not intrinsically related, and that they represent two different streams of thought.* The Brahman is the devotion of the Brāhman priest: it is the sacred hymn to propitiate the gods: it is also the magic spell of the wonder-worker: more generally it is the holy power in the universe at least as much as it is the magic fluid of primitive savagery. Religion and magic, if different in essence and in origin, nevertheless go often in closest alliance, and their unison in the case of the concept Brahman may explain the ease with which that term came to denote the essence of the universe or absolute being. The Ātman, on the other hand, in the Brāhmaṇa texts which lie before the Upaniṣads, has very often the sense of the trunk of the body, as opposed to the hands and feet and other members, and it is perhaps from that fact at least as much as from the fact that it has also the sense of wind that it develops into the meaning of the essential self of man. The identification of the self and the Brahman results in one form of the doctrine of the Upaniṣads, that taught under the name of Yājñavalkya in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* (ii, 4; iv, 5), in the conclusion that the Ātman as the knowing subject is unknowable, and that the world of empiric reality, which seems to be in constant change, is really a mere illusion. This is the highest point reached by the thought of the Upaniṣads, and it is not consistently or regularly maintained. Despite acceptance of the doctrine of the identity of the individual self and the self of the universe, there often appears to be left over as an irreducible element something which is not the self, but which is essentially involved in the constitution of reality. This is implicit in such statements as that the Ātman completely enters into the body, up to the nails even: the all-pervasiveness of the Ātman is not incompatible with the existence of something to be pervaded. In order to remove the difficulty which is felt in the existence of this further element, the conception of creation, which was, of course, familiar from the cosmogonic legends of the Brāhmaṇas, was often resorted to. Thus in the *Chāndogya Upaniṣad* (vi, 2) we learn in detail how the self desired to be many and created brilliance, Tejas, whence arose water and food, and then the self entered into these created things with the living self. This scheme, by which a being first produces a cosmic material and then enters into it as life, is a commonplace in the speculations of the Brāhmaṇas, and it lends itself to a very different development than the theory of illusion. While the latter theory insists on the identity of the individual self with the absolute self, both being one essence surpassing all consciousness, the latter system allows a certain reality to matter, and a still more definite reality to the individual soul, which in course of time develops into the doctrine of qualified duality, Viśiṣṭādvaita, in which there is found a place for the individual soul and matter beside the supreme soul, and which undoubtedly forms the theme of the *Brahma Sūtra* of Bādarāyaṇa. But while this system can be seen in the Upaniṣads, it would be an error to suppose that it is more properly the doctrine of the Upaniṣads than the illusion theory of Śaṃkara:∗ neither system in its completely self-conscious form is to be found in the Upaniṣads, but the germs of both are present, and both in a real sense can claim the authority of the Upaniṣads.

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∗ See H. Oldenberg, *Buddha* (5th ed.), pp. 30-33; P. Deussen (*Philosophy of the Upaniṣads*, p. 39) prefers to treat Brahman as the cosmical and Ātman as the psychical principle of unity. Max Müller (*Six Systems of Indian Philosophy*, pp. 68-93) distinguishes Brahman, speech, and Brahman as that which utters or drives forth or manifests or creates.

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∗ For Bādarāyaṇa's views see Thibaut, *S.B.E.*, xxiv; Sukhtankar, Vienna Oriental Journal, xii, 120 ff.; H. Jacobi, *J.A.O.S.*, xxxiii, 51-54.

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On the other hand, it is impossible to find in the Upaniṣads any real basis for the Sāṃkhya system. The Upaniṣads are essentially devoted to the discovery of an absolute, and, diverse as are the forms which the absolute may take, they do not abandon the search, nor do they allow that no such absolute exists. There are, however, elements here and there which mark the growth of ideas which later were thrown into systematic form in the Sāṃkhya, but it is impossible to see in these fragmentary hints any indication that the Sāṃkhya philosophy was then in process of formation. It is, of course, possible, as a matter of abstract argument, to insist that the elements in the Upaniṣads which suggest the later Sāṃkhya views are really borrowings by the Upaniṣads of doctrines already extant in a Sāṃkhya system, but, in the absense of the slightest evidence for the existence of such a system in the Vedic literature, it is methodologically unsound to take this hypothesis as possessing any value, in face of the natural conclusion that we have in the Upaniṣads scattered hints which were later amalgamated into one system. Just like the Vedānta of Śaṃkara, or the Vedānta of Bādarāyaṇa, the Sāṃkhya is a system built on the Upaniṣads: from both of these it differs in that it goes radically and essentially beyond the teaching of the Upaniṣads.

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The cosmogonical form of the doctrine of the self sets at once the absolute into conflict with the individual self, and it undoubtedly tends to minimise the importance of the absolute, since its operation appears to have been exhausted by the action of creation. At the same time, it is clear that the opposition of matter to the individual soul becomes quite a sharp one, for on the cosmogonic or theistic system the primitive matter is indeed produced from the absolute, but equally clearly it exists before the individual soul enters into the sphere of existence. While thus the relation of soul and nature becomes one of opposition under the aegis of an absolute which tends to become more faded, at the same time reflection is more bent on the actual character of the relation of soul and nature, and finds expression in such an utterance as that of the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* (i, 4, 6), where it is expressly stated that food and eater make up the entire universe. This passage is interpreted in the late *Maitrāyaṇi Upaniṣad* as referring to the distinction between spirit, which is subject, and all the rest of nature, including the *Bhūtātman*, the psychic apparatus produced from nature, as the object: it is characteristic of the confused character of this late work that the very next chapters (vi, 11-13) deal with nature as being the product of the supreme Brahman. It would be wrong, therefore, to find in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* any conscious realization of a doctrine which would eliminate the Brahman, but it is clear enough that the path to the elimination of that element was open.

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The denial in the Sāṃkhya of the supreme spirit carries with it curious consequences when added to the extreme development of the doctrine that the spirit is alone the subject. The first product of nature is the intellect, which is called the great one, and which clearly is originally a cosmic function, derived from nature but lighted up by spirit. The natural source of this conception must be found in the idea in the Upaniṣads that the supreme spirit reappears as the firstborn of creation after it has produced the primitive matter. The ultimate origin of the idea can be traced beyond the Upaniṣads to the *Ṛgveda* (x, 121) where the golden germ Hiranyagarbha is produced from the primeval waters, and in the Upaniṣads we find in the *Kauṣitaki* the seer, composed of the Brahman, the great one in the *Kaṭha* (iii, 10, 13; vi, 7), the first great spirit in the *Śvetāśvatara* (ii, 19) who is called Hiranyagarbha in iii, 4; iv, 12; Brahman in vi, 18, and the knower, all-pervading, in vi, 17. Moreover, it is thus that we should, it is clear, understand the seer, Kapila, first engendered, in v, 2. The idea that this verse we are to see the first mention of the founder of the Sāṃkhya as a real person is too fantastic to be seriously upheld, though it is not at all unlikely that the origin of the doctrine of Kapila as the founder of Sāṃkhya is to be traced to this passage.

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Further material for the origin of the series of evolution is also to be found in the Upaniṣads. In the *Kaṭha*, which has every claim to be regarded as an old work,[*] not indeed of the same antiquity as the great prose Upaniṣads like the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka*, *Chāndogya*, *Aitareya*, *Taittirīya*, or *Kauṣītaki*, but at the head of the second stage of poetical Upaniṣads, representing the period of the full development of the philosophy of these texts, there is found (iii, 10-13), after an exhortation to control the unruly steeds of the senses, a description of Yoga, or concentration. In this it is expressly stated that the objects are higher than the senses, mind than the objects, the intellect than mind, the great self than intellect, the unevolved than the great self, and the spirit than the unevolved. The spirit dwells unseen in all beings and is above all. In concentration, therefore, speech with mind is to be restrained in the knowledge-self, that is intellect, that again in the great self, and that in the calm self, that is the unevolved. In a later passage (vi, 7-11) a similar account is given: here the mind stands above the senses, Sattva above the mind, over that the great self, over that the unevolved, over that the spirit which is described by terms applicable in the classical Sāṃkhya, as all-pervading and without any distinctive mark. The highest condition of Yoga is reached when the senses with mind and intellect are brought to a standstill. In the next lines the spirit is described as only to be expressed by the declaration of existence. With this series may be compared the fact that according to the *Chāndogya* (vi, 8, 6) at death speech enters into mind, mind into breath, breath into brilliance and brilliance into the supreme godhead.

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Further light is thrown on the position by the *Praśna Upaniṣad*, which, though not a work of the same age as the *Kaṭha*, is nevertheless probably the earliest of the later prose Upaniṣads. In the fourth *Praśna* it is explained that in sleep in dreaming the senses enter into mind, and in deep sleep mind also passes into the brilliance, *Tejas*. Then follows an account of how all things are resolved into the

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[*] See H. Oldenberg, *Z.D.M.G.*, xxxvii, 57ff; *Buddha*, p. 60; P. Deussen, *Philosophy of the Upaniṣads*, p. 24.

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imperishable, which has no shadow, blood or body, the order being the five elements, each with its corresponding Mātrā, which appears to denote the corresponding fine element, the five organs of perception with their functions, the five organs of action with their functions, the mind, intellect, individuation, Ahaṃkāra, thought, Citta, brilliance, and breath, and their functions. From the highest self there is here distinguished the Vijñānātman, the individual self, which experiences the impressions of the senses, and so forth. It is perfectly clear that the Praśna is not an exposition of the Sāṃkhya, but the elements of the Sāṃkhya derivation are present. The conception of the fine elements seems to owe its origin to the view expressed in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (vi, 3), according to which the gross elements, corresponding to fire, water and earth, are not in themselves pure, but each is compounded with some portion of the others: the name, Tanmātra, which is later normal, is first given expressly in the Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad (iii, 2).

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A much more developed account of Sāṃkhya type is to be found in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, which is no doubt older than the Praśna, but later than the Kaṭha. The Upaniṣad is definitely deistic, Rudra who bears the epithet but not the name, Śiva, being the object of devotion and belief, but at the same time being regarded as the absolute and supreme spirit, rather than as derived from that spirit. On the other hand, the Upaniṣad contains a series of numbers which are best to be explained as referring to enumerations accepted by the Sāṃkhya school: thus in i, 4, the individual self is compared to a wheel with three tyres, sixteen ends, fifty spokes, twenty counter-spokes and six sets of eight. These are interpreted as the three Guṇas, the set of sixteen consisting of the ten organs, mind and the five elements, the fifty psychic states of the classical Sāṃkhya, the ten senses and their objects, and the six sets of the five elements, mind, individuation and intellect; the eight elements of the body, the eight prefections, the eight psychic states which form in the Sāṃkhya an alternative to the fifty, eight gods and eight virtues. The worth of such identifications must be regarded as uncertain, and no conclusive evidence is afforded by them, as plays on numbers are much affected by the Brahmanical schools. But there is other and much more convincing evidence of the existence of Sāṃkhya views. The individual self, the Vijñānātman or Puruṣa, is described as the power of god enveloped in his own Guṇas, which shows plainly that while the absolute is still the source of all, nevertheless a new element has been introduced in the conception of the Guṇas, through which the absolute becomes the individual soul. A still more distinct proof of the existence of ideas akin to Sāṃkhya is to be seen in iv, 5, in which it is said:

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The one she-goat, red, white, and black,
Produceth many young, like-formed unto her,
The one he-goat in love enjoyeth her,
The other leaveth her whom he hath enjoyed.

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The passage is discussed by Śaṃkara, who seeks to see in the three colours a reference to the three colours mentioned in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (vi, 4) as those of the three elements there mentioned, fire, water, and earth, which are produced from the absolute and which are present in all that exists. This view is so far, it would seem, beyond doubt correct: the resemblance in point of the colours is too striking to be an accident. But the passage must obviously also be admitted to have clear traces of what is later the Sāṃkhya doctrine: the imagery of the many he-goats and the relation of enjoyment, followed by relinquishment, is precisely parallel to the similes which are often used in the classical Sāṃkhya to illustrate the relation of spirit and nature. Moreover the she-goat is named Ajā which denotes also the unborn, a fact which exactly coincides with the Sāṃkhya conception that the first principle nature is not a product. The Sāṃkhya conception of the all-pervading character of the Guṇas, which in diverse measure are present in all the products of nature, is as well suited to the description of the progeny of the goat as the view of the Chāndogya. It is, therefore, only reasonable to assume that we have here a clear hint of the origin of the doctrine of the Guṇas in the threefold material of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, and there is nothing in this passage, nor in the others where the Guṇas are mentioned (i, 3; v, 7; vi, 3, 11, 16), to suggest that the Guṇas are anything other than elements as in the *Chāndogya*. The names Sattva, Rajas and Tamas do not occur until the *Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad* (ii, 5; v, 2). It is not impossible that the subjective side of the Guṇas, which is clearly marked in these names and which certainly prevails in the classical Sāṃkhya, was a development from the conception that the individual self was the result of the envelopment of the absolute in the three Guṇas: though originally referring to material products, still the tendency would be to see in them psychic states.

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It is most probable that in these traces of Sāṃkhya views we are not to see the result of a contamination of Sāṃkhya with a Vedānta philosophy: it is perfectly plain that in iv, 5 we are not dealing with the conscious expression of a view which ignores the absolute; on the contrary in iv, 10 we find the deliberate description of nature as an illusion, and the great lord as an illusion-maker, emphatic denials of the possibility of the separate and real existence of nature as held by the Sāṃkhya school. It is not natural that one who is opposed so essentially to the view that the Sāṃkhya principles are correct should appropriate phrases which seem to accept them, whereas all is natural if we assume that the Upaniṣad represents a definite development of the doctrine of the Absolute based on the older Upaniṣads, from which in due course the Sāṃkhya developed.* With such a view there is nothing inconsistent in iv, 5: the metaphor there used applies perfectly properly to the different condition of two individual souls, the one of which does not realise its true nature as the absolute enveloped in the three Guṇas, while the other recognizes its true nature and throws aside its connection with nature.

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It has, however, been argued from the occurrence of the name, Kapila, in v, 2, and of Sāṃkhya in vi, 13, in connection with Yoga, that the Sāṃkhya-Yoga system was definitely known to the author or redactor of the Upaniṣad. But this is clearly not shown by the facts adduced. Kapila is, as we have seen, not a human personage at all, and the parallel of i, 3, where in place of Sāṃkhya and Yoga are found Dhyāna and Yoga, show clearly that we have here Sāṃkhya in the simple sense of meditation as opposed to devotion in Yoga.

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∗ This is the amount of truth, in the view of A. E. Gough (*Philosophy of the Upaniṣads*, pp. 200, 212), that the Sāṃkhya is originally an enumeration of principles of the Vedānta. No such Sāṃkhya system is recorded, however; as a system Sāṃkhya is atheistic.

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The view that the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad does not contain any reference to an atheistic Sāṃkhya, but merely unites ideas which afterwards are developed in that system, is confirmed by the very different appearance of things in the Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad, which does contain very clear evidnce of a developed Sāṃkhya belief, and which on the other hand betrays its modern date* by the use of terms such as sura, vigraha, nirmama, kṣetrajña, nāstikya, and suṣu-mṇā, and even such an expression as sarvopaniṣadvidyā, the science of all the Upaniṣads, though a false appearance of archaism has been lent to it by the fact that it preserves, but not faithfully, the archaisms in euphonic combination of words of the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā with which it is closely connected. The Upaniṣad clearly reflects a period when various forms of heresy—probably in no small measure the Buddhist—had attacked the main outlines of the system of the Upaniṣads, and it endeavours to restate that position with, as is inevitable, many traits borrowed from the doctrines it was refuting, and among these traits are clear marks of the Sāṃkhya. It is characterized by a profound pessimism which is not countenanced by the older Upaniṣads, which lay no stress normally on that doctrine, but which is characteristic at once of Buddhism and of the Sāṃkhya. Like the Śvetāśvatara, it considers that the Brahman is enveloped by Guṇas but these are called the Guṇas of nature and not of itself as in the Śvetāśvatara. Through these Guṇas the Brahman falls into the error of individuation and binds itself by itself, a metaphor which in the Sāṃkhya Kārikā (63) is transferred to nature herself. In this form there arises the Bhūtātman, which resides in the body composed of the fine and the gross elements, the Tanmātras, and the Mahābhūtas, both of which bear the name of Bhūtas. The highest soul, the individual souls, and the Guṇas are compared with the glow, the iron and the smith, who hammers only the iron not the glow pervading it. Here, too, we find the names of the Guṇas as psychic states, and bodily and mental evils are referred to the action of Rajas, desire, and Tamas, indifference. In Section V a creation myth is set out, according to which the highest produces the three Guṇas, Tamas, Rajas and Sattva, and from Sattva, spirit, consisting of pure intellect, possessing the powers of representation, judgment and individuation as its psychic body. In the hymn of Kutsāyana, an otherwise unknown sage, which precedes this myth, we find the identity of all in the Brahman asserted and the first occurrence in literature of the conception that release is both for the sake of spirit and of matter, an idea which in the Sāṃkhya is converted into the view that nature strives as if for her own release for the release of another, that is spirit, though elsewhere where the release of spirit is denied and the real release attributed to nature, a contradiction arising from the fact that in reality there is, and can be, no pain in nature, which is unconscious, and the pain is brought into existence by the union with spirit, whence arises consciousness. In the Upaniṣad, which recognizes a prius to both nature and spirit, the release can be and is for both alike. In vi, 10 there is found expressly stated the doctrine of the distinction of spirit and the objective world: the psychic body is produced from the primeval material, and consists of the elements from the great one, that is intellect, apparently up to the gross elements, unless the reading is slightly altered* and the series brought to a close with the fine elements. It is, however, clearly the case in the classical Sāṃkhya that the subtle portions of the gross elements are included in the psychic apparatus, and this may be the case here also.

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∗ Max Müller (S.B.E., XV, xlvi-lii) argues for an early date, but the evidence against this is conclusively set out by P. Deussen, Sechzig Upaniṣads, pp. 311 seq.

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The other Upaniṣads of this period give us little for the Sāṃkhya doctrine. In the Muṇḍaka, however, we find (i, 1, 8, 9; ii, 1, 2, 3) a development of principles from the all-knower to food, thence to breath, thence to the mind, thence to truth, the worlds, and actions, or from the spirit to the imperishable, thence to breath, thence to mind and the organs of sense, and thence to the elements. This exposition clearly accepts the absolute, and follows the normal triad of absolute, nature and souls, but it differs from the Katha, which it otherwise somewhat closely resembles, by the addition of one principle, breath, in place of the great self and the intellect of that Upaniṣad. It is clear that Prāṇa, breath, plays a cosmic function.

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∗ Deussen, Sechzig Upaniṣads, p. 337, n. 2.

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As the Upaniṣads do not recognize the existence of spirit as individual only, but always admit the existence of a supreme spirit, the essence of the knowledge which is to save men from constant rebirth is the knowledge of the real identity of the supreme and the individual self. The derivative character of the Sāmkhya comes into very clear prominence in its retention of the doctrine of knowledge as the means of saving grace. In the Sāmkhya, as there is no real connection between spirit and nature, it seems wholly impossible to understand how the false conception of such a connection can arise: the spirit is in reality purely subjective, nature is purely objective, and there is no interaction which can explain the existence of ignorance or indeed of knowledge. On the other hand, in the case of the Upaniṣads, whatever degree of reality be allowed to the individual souls of the world, it is essentially the case that there is a source of ignorance: the absolute, either by self-illusion or in fact, develops from itself a world of spirits and matter, and the knowledge which brings salvation is the knowledge that, despite the seeming multiplicity, there is no real difference between the absolute and the self, at any rate in ultimate essence. Ignorance is admitted in the Sāmkhya as a fact, but it is a fact which has no explanation whatever, and therefore its position in the system must be traced to a form of philosophy in which it had a more just claim to existence.

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Another clear proof of derivative nature is the acceptance, without comment, of the doctrine of transmigration and the accompanying doctrine of pessimism. The Upaniṣads do not show the doctrine of transmigration as fully developed: rather, as might be inferred from the fact that transmigration proper is not clearly known to any Brāhmaṇa text, they show only the origin of the system. The credit of first enunciating the doctrine as a great moral truth, that of retribution according to action by rebirth, is assigned to Yājñavalkya, who lays down the principle in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* (iii, 2, 13; iv, 4, 2-6), though even this view has been questioned.* The idea, however, worked up into an elaborate and confused whole, in which the ideas of retribution by rebirth and the older view of punishment in hell and reward in heaven are thrown together, is found definitely in a late portion of that Upaniṣad (vi, 2) and in the *Chāndogya* (v, 3-10). The doctrine is by no means necessarily accepted in all the Upaniṣads of the older type; thus it is doubtful if it appears at all in the older portion of the *Aitareya Āraṇyaka*; on the other hand, it is clearly accepted by the *Kauṣītaki* and by the *Katha*, and is later a commonplace assumption. Its full development and spread must antedate the rise of Buddhism, and it may fairly be argued that the doctrine prevailed among wide circles in India in the north by 550 B.C., and probably half a century earlier. Efforts have been made to find the doctrine in the *Ṛgveda*, but so far without real success.

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The origin of the belief has been attributed to borrowing from aboriginal tribes,† it being a common view in primitive peoples that the spirits of their dead pass into other forms of life. Traces of similar views have also been seen in occasional hints in the *Ṛgveda* of the departure of the elements of the dead to their proper abodes. The real importance of the Indian doctrine, however, is the moral tinge given to it by Yājñavalkya, while its immediate precursor in the Brāhmaṇas is the dread of repeated death, which is expressed in the view that even after death death may await the man who is not proficient in some ritual performance.‡ This conception of Punarmṛtyu, repeated death, for a time evidently played a considerable place in the ideas of the Brāhmaṇas, as is seen by the quite frequent occurrence of the conception in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* and by its mention in the *Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa*, and the turning of a ritual conception into a moral one was as natural as the transfer of the repetition of birth in the world beyond to the birth in this world, which was the one thing wanting to make the conception really a doctrine of transmigration. This step is not certainly taken in any passage of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, though a few passages are open to this interpretation. In making the decisive change it is, of course, perfectly possible that the popular ideas of the spirit of the ancestor taking up its abode in some beast or bird or other form, such as that of a snake, may have helped the conception to take root and become easily appreciated. It is indeed doubtful whether without some such backgrond we could explain the extraordinary success of the doctrine in winning the real and lasting adherence of the great mass of the people of India. None the less, it must remain extraordinary that none of the philosophical systems should have attempted to examine the validity of the belief, a fact which stands in striking contrast with the procedure of Plato, who, in the Phaedo, provides a philosophic background for the conception, which he probably took direct from the popular Pythagorean or Orphic conception of the fate of the soul.

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∗ See F. O. Schrader, *Z.D.M.G.*, lxiv, 333-335. † A. E. Gough, *Philosophy of the Upaniṣads*, pp. 20-25. ‡ See S. Lévi, *La Doctrine du Sacrifice*, pp. 93ff.; P. Oltramare, *L'histoire des Idées Théosophiques*, i, 96 ff.

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The pessimism which is assumed by the Sāṃkhya must likewise be derivative. In the Upaniṣads there is no general pessimism visible in the earlier expositions of doctrine; the marked pessimism of the Maitrāyaṇī is a clear indication of its posteriority to the influence of Buddhism, which had evidently a very considerable part in spreading the doctrine. The underlying view of the Upaniṣads is, indeed, that the Ātman in itself is perfect, and that, accordingly, all else is filled with trouble, as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (iii, 4, 2; 5, 1; 7, 23) expressly says; and with this expression of opinion may be set such remarks as that the knower of the self overcomes sorrow; nor is there any lack of references to old age and trouble. But it is one thing to admit this, and quite another to hold that the general tone of the Upaniṣads is pessimistic; rather the joy of the discovery of the new knowledge is the characteristic of the teachers, while they regard the self as in itself bliss. Since the knowledge of the self is open to all, and since by that knowledge bliss is to be obtained, the older Upaniṣads could not be and are not pessimistic. While, however, the Sāṃkhya shares with them the belief in the possibility of freedom being obtained in the course of man’s lifetime, and thus has a less pessimistic side, it denies that there is bliss in the state of the released spirit, and like Buddhism dwells on the reality of human misery.

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Efforts have been made to find references to distinctively Sāṃkhya doctrines in older Upaniṣads, such as the Chāndogya and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka. In the latter text (iv, 4, 8) the term Liṅga appears beside mind, and the suggestion to treat it as meaning psychic apparatus* presents itself, but it is much more likely that the sense is simply “bearing a characteristic mark.” In iv, 4, 13, a verse found also in Īśā Upaniṣad 12, Śaṃkara sees a reference to the Sāṃkhya doctrine in the term Asambhūti which he renders as Prakṛti, but this view has in itself no probability, and the commentator, Uvaṭa, declares that the polemic against the believers in Asambhūti, destruction, is directed against the materialists. The statement in i, 4, 15, of the Upaniṣad, that in the beginning the universe was undiscriminated, and was later discriminated by name and form, is a repetition of a very old concept, which has had its share in moulding the Sāṃkhya concept of Prakṛti, but it is not specifically Sāṃkhya. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad in vii, 25,1 has the word Ahaṃkāra, but uses it merely as a synonym for the self, Ātman, and in vii, 26, 2, the term Sattva has not yet the technical sense of one of the three constituents of nature which belongs to it in the Sāṃkhya. Nor in iii, 19 is there anything specifically Sāṃkhya: that paragraph is a legend of the origin of being from non-being, the coming into existence of an egg, the two halves of which are sky and earth, and from which the sun arises. This form of creation myth is of importance for the creation legends seen in Manu and the Purāṇas, but its relation to Sāṃkhya is merely the vague one that it contemplates a process of production, though the idea of not being as prior to being is completely contrary to the developed Sāṃkhya view, which does not regard Prakṛti, when unevolved, as not-being, because it is nothing definite. The conception of the Upaniṣad version with that of the cosmogonic hymn, Ṛgveda. x, 129, is obvious, but here also we have only an idea which later is in part adopted by the Sāṃkhya, that of an unformed primitive matter. More importance attaches to a passage in the Atharvaveda (x, 8, 43)

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∗ This doctrine is not clearly known to any Upaniṣad before the Maitrāyaṇī (vi, 10); Kaṭha (vi, 8) and Śvetāśvatara (vi, 9) may refer to it.

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The lotus flower of nine doors,
Covered with three strands,
What prodigy there is within it,
That the Brahman-knowers know.

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The human body with its nine orifices is clearly meant by the flower with nine doors, but the three strands present difficulties. The meaning "quality" is not proved for early Vedic literature, occurring first in the Sūtras, and the sense must therefore be assumed to be constituent or something similar, the reference being probably to the hair, skin and nails. If the reference is to be taken as to the constituents in the sense of the Guṇas of the Sāṃkhya philosophy,[*] it is clear that the expression is inaccurate, since the three constituents make up nature, and the passage would say that the body was covered with nature, instead of consisting of nature. An attempt[†] to find in the same hymn (x, 8, 39, 40) a reference to the doctrine of the ages of the world, there being periodic destruction and reproduction, cannot be regarded as proved, though in any case it would not be of any value as proof of the existence of the Sāṃkhya, since the idea is common to all the systems.

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† See H. Jacobi, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1895, p. 210. For the alleged mention in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, see Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, ii, 193.

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In the later Upaniṣads, such as the Nṛsiṃhatāpanīya, Garbha, Cūlikā, and others, clear references to Sāṃkhya doctrines occur, but the dates of these Upaniṣads are far too uncertain, and probably late, to throw any light on the question of the origin or of the doctrines of the Sāṃkhya.

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∗ See Whitney's note with Lanman's correction. The Guna theory is accepted by P. Oltramare, L'histoire des Idées Théosophiques, i, 240, 241. Cf. below, p. 48.

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