The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.14

c5.14

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.