The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.12

c5.12

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: