The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.18

c5.18

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.