The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.7

c5.7

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.