Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7: III. The Philosophy of the Great Epic, and the Origin of Sāṃkhya

The Sāṃkhya System: A History of the Sāṃkhya Philosophy c7

Language
English

III. The Philosophy of the Great Epic, and the Origin of Sāṃkhya

c7.2

THE process by which the Bharatan epic grew into the vast text-book of ethics and philosophy as well as of statecraft and strategy must have occupied some centuries, and there is every reason to believe that the philosophical portions were by no means the first to be added. The four main sections of philosophic import are the *Sanatsujāta-parvan* of the fifth book (chapters 40-45), the *Bhagavadgītā* in the sixth book (chapters 25-42), the *Mokṣadharma* in the twelfth book (chapters 174-367), and the *Anugītā* in the fourteenth book (chapters 16-51). Of these the *Bhagavadgītā* is beyond doubt or question the oldest, a fact which is clearly attested by metre and language alike, and even its date is very doubtful. The latest attempt to estimate it is that made by Sir R. G. Bhandarkar,[*] who bases on the fact that the *Bhagavadgītā* does not recognize the Vyūhas of the deity, Saṁkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha, an argument in favour of the *Bhagavadgītā* dating from at least the fourth century B.C. But the argument will not bear investigation, since it rests only on the view that the *Bhagavadgītā* must have accepted and mentioned that portion of the Bhāgavata doctrine, had it been in existence at the time when the *Bhagavadgītā* was finally redacted, and this assumption has not any justification. A very different result would be obtained if we were to accept the theory that the *Bhagavadgītā* shows clear traces of the influence of the Christian Gospels, but that theory rests merely on similarities of thought and language which may have their source merely in the essential similarity of human thought.* Assuming that the *Bhagavadgītā* is of independent Indian origin, Garbe† has endeavoured to show that it was originally a theistic tract, with a philosophical basis in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga system, and in this form belongs to the early part of the second century B.C., while in its present form, in which it has been affected by Vedāntism, it belongs to the second century A.D. But part of his argument rested on the theory that the reputed founder of the Yoga Sūtra, Patañjali, was identical with the grammarian, and therefore belonged to the second century B.C., and with the disappearance of this doctrine‡ his earlier date becomes extremely improbable. We are, therefore, left to conclude that the *Bhagavadgītā* as we have it is probably not later than the second century A.D., though even for that date there is no absolutely cogent proof. In any case, it may be assumed that its material is often older, and the same considerations apply to the other philosophical portions of the *Mahābhārata*.

c7.3

∗ *Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems* (Strassburg, 1913), p. 11.

c7.4

The philosophy presented by the epic in the form which we have it is a conglomerate of very different views, and, what is most important, of very different views repeated in immediate proximity to one another without any apparent sense of their incongruity. There is, however, one decided characteristic which holds good for the epic philosophy, and that is its theistic tinge, which constantly intrudes, and which is natural in an epic which had a far more popular appeal than had the more philosophical speculations which are here and there referred to in it. Hence we need not be surprised that the idealistic interpretation of the Upaniṣads, which seems in all empiric reality nothing but the self-illusion of the Brahman, is represented only in the feeblest degree in the epic, and that there is no passage there which can fairly be set beside the bold declaration of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (iv, 10) that nature is nothing but illusion, Māyā. On the other hand, the epic has often the doctrine of the development of the whole universe as a reality from the Brahman. Thus the self is said (xii, 285, 40) to send out from itself the Guṇas, the constituents of nature, as a spider emits a web, and the same idea of the productive activity of the Brahman is found in other shapes. Characteristic of this strain of thought, and linking it closely with the Brāhmaṇa tradition, is the statement (xii, 311, 3) that from the Brahman was created the god Brahman, who sprang forth from a golden egg, and that this forms the body for all creatures.

c7.5

∗ See Garbe, *Indien und das Christentum* (Tübingen, 1914), pp. 253-258. † *Die Bhagavadgītā* (Leipzig, 1905), pp. 58-64. ‡ See H. Jacobi J.A.O.S., xxxi, 24-29; below, pp. 56, 57.

c7.6

But in addition to this view, in which we have still all derived from one principle, there arises to prominence the view that nature is other than the self, which in this aspect begins to receive frequently the designation of spirit, Puruṣa, though it is still conceived as cosmic. Thus we learn that nature creates, but under the control of spirit (xii, 314, 12), or that spirit impels to activity the creative elements, and is therefore akin to them (xii, 315, 8). The question of the unity of spirit and reality is expressly stated and denied in the Anugītā (xiv, 48, 6), and elsewhere (xii, 222, 15, 16) it is expressly stated that all activity rests in nature, that spirit is never active and that it is merely delusion when spirit considers itself active, and it is made clear that spirit is not one only. The distinction of spirit as inactive and nature as all-productive is recognized in the Bhagavadgītā (vi, 37, 19, 29), and is often emphasized, though in other places the idea is found that while creation and destruction are the work of nature, still nature is really an emanation from the spirit, into which it resolves itself from time to time (xii, 303, 31ff).

c7.7

The result of the development which transfers all activity to nature and denies it to spirit is to make the latter the subject of knowledge only, that is, to make spirit a synonym for the abstraction of subject from object in conciousness, an idea which is, of course, expressed among other conceptions in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (ii, 4, 14; iii, 4, 2; iv, 3, 15). In the Anugītā (xi, 50, 8ff) the distinction of nature and of spirit as object and subject is expressed in the clearest manner, and the subject is declared to be free from any contrasts, without parts, eternal, and essentially unconnected with the three constituents which make up nature. In this passage and elsewhere the spirit is described as the Kṣetra-jña, the knower of the place, as opposed to the Kṣetra, the body, and the relation of the two is described in terms which show that all activity belongs to the empiric self, while the real spirit is a mere spectator (xii, 194). In this aspect spirit is set over against the twenty-four principles of nature as the twenty-fifth, the former being the objects of, the latter the subject of, knowledge (xii, 306, 39, 40). But the relation of these two principles is not detailed: it is a mystery which is therefore expressed in vague terms, such as the binding of spirit in nature, or again it is said in the Anugītā (xiv, 50, 14) that spirit uses nature as a lamp with which it enters the darkness: the two are connected like the fly and the fig leaf, the fish and water. But it is perfectly clear that final release comes through the recognition of the fundamental distinction of the spirit and nature; on this being attained all intermixture with nature ceases for spirit (xii, 307, 20).

c7.8

On the other hand, beside this enumeration of twenty-five principles, which entirely declines to recognize the existence of any personal deity and recognizes a multitude of individual spirits, there stands a view which adds a twenty-sixth principle. When the spirit realizes its distinction from nature, and attains enlightenment, it, as free from the Guṇas, recognizes nature as possessing the Guṇas and unspiritual, and it becomes one with the absolute, thus attaining its own true self, free from empiric reality, unageing and immortal. In this condition, as all duality has disappeared, the spirit ceases to have knowledge, which is essentially a result of multiplicity. From this point of view also it is possible to give an answer to the insistent problem of the number of souls, and to overcome the discrepancy between the views of multiplicity and of unity. The souls so long as they are in union with nature are numerous, but as soon as they realize their distinction from nature, they fall back into the twenty-sixth principle, which is the inner self of all corporeal beings, the onlooker, free from the Guṇas, which can be seen by no one who is connected with the Guṇas (xii, 350, 25, 26; 351, 2-4). The holders of this view represent the Yoga of the epic, as the maintainers of the twenty-five principles alone represent the Sāṃkhya school. The statement is several times made that the two schemes lead to one end and are not fundamentally different, but this claim is made only from the point of view of the Yoga, and its inaccuracy is expressly shown by the discussion in xii, 300, where the differences of the two systems are found to lie in the fact that the Sāṃkhya disowns an Īśvara, while the Yoga accepts one; and the Sāṃkhya relies on reasoning, while the Yoga relies on the direct perception of the devotee. This passage is of importance also in showing the original force of the terms Sāṃkhya and Yoga: the first must refer not merely to the enumeration of principles but to reflective reasoning, while Yoga denotes religious practices, and in special the striving after the ideal of freedom by means of the adoption of various devices to secure mental exaltation and the severance of mind from things of sense.

c7.9

The tendency to obliterate the distinction of Sāṃkhya and Yoga by insisting on their common goal, and to remove the distinction between them and the more orthodox Upaniṣad doctrine by attributing to the Yoga the Brahman as the twenty-sixth principle, is a striking illustration of the tendency of the epic to see in all the philosophic doctrines merely variations of the Brahman doctrine of the Upaniṣads. From the religious side of the epic, the Sāṃkhya system is strangely taken up into the Bhāgavata faith by the equation of the four Vyūhas of the supreme spirit Viṣṇu to four of the principles of the Sāṃkhya philosophy. Thus Vāsudeva is equated to spirit, Saṃkarṣaṇa to the individual soul, Pradyumna to mind, and Aniruddha to individuation. The last three emanate each from his predecessor, and from Aniruddha comes Brahman, and from him the created world. The wise reach the unity with the highest by the way of return through Aniruddha, Pradyumna and Saṃkarṣaṇa to Vāsudeva, and it is expressly stated that the Sāṃkhyas as well as the Bhāgavatas hold this belief. In the Bhagavadgītā itself the unity of Sāṃkhya and Yoga is insisted upon, and the Sāṃkhya doctrine is, at least in the poem as it now stands,* overlaid by the twofold doctrine that both spirit and nature are ultimately derived from the one and the same source, which, from the point of view of the Vedānta, is the Brahman, but from the religious point of view is Kṛṣṇa.

c7.10

In addition to the exposition of the fundamental principle of the Sāṃkhya, the difference between the subject and the object, there is found already in the epic many of the elements which make up the classical system. Nature is repeatedly declared to consist of three constituents, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, which are called Guṇas, a term found in the Upaniṣads not before the late Maitrāyaṇī (iv, 3; v, 2). In the Anugītā stress is laid on the fact that these three constituents are present throughout all things, though in different degree. The three Guṇas are often regarded as the fetters of the souls, since they represent nature, and one division of men given in xii, 348, presents us with the three classes of Sāttvikas in which the quality of goodness prevails, Vyāmiśras in whom the Rajas and Tamas, desire and indifference, elements are mixed with goodness, and the Vaikārikas, in whom the quality of indifference prevails throughout, and who, indeed, with a natural inconsistence from the normal doctrine, are declared to be devoid of any portion of goodness. A doctrine of the classic Sāṃkhya occurs not rarely, according to which the qualities of goodness, desire and indifference are characteristic of the worlds of the gods, of men and of beasts and plants, respectively, and the Anugītā (xiv, 36-38) distinguishes three classes of beings according as through goodness they advance upwards to the world of the gods, or through desire remain in the world of men, or through indifference descend to the world of beasts and plants.

c7.11

From nature, in the Sāṃkhya of the epic as in the classical Sāṃkhya, are derived the various portions of the empiric world, but on this subject there prevails in the epic an abundant profusion of views. It is clear that the reflective spirit greatly occupied itself in devising enumerations of the portions of the self: eight was a favourite number, but the elements of the eight differ. Thus in one version they are the five senses, mind, intellect and the spirit, as Kṣetrajña (xii, 248, 17), in another for the spirit, Citta, thought, is substituted, and the spirit is reckoned as a ninth element (xii, 275, 16, 18). Even such an absurdity is achieved as when a complex of fifteen is made up of spirit, nature, intellect, individuation in two forms, as Ahaṃkāra, and Abhimāna, the senses, and their objects, and the whole complex including spirit is derived from nature. In xii, 313, however, we find enumerated, as derived from nature, the five organs of perception, the five organs of action, mind, individuation, and intellect, which in its substance corresponds with the products of the classical Sāṃkhya. A nearer approach to the later doctrine is, however, to be found in the Anugītā (xiv, 40-42), where the order of development and not merely the results is given: from the unevolved is produced the great self, from it individuation, from it the five elements, from them, on the one hand, the qualities of sound, etc., and on the other the five vital airs, while from individuation arise the eleven organs of sense, five of perception, five of action and mind.

c7.12

∗ And perhaps ab initio, see E. W. Hopkins, J.R.A.S., 1905 pp. 384-389.

c7.13

In the epic the three entities, intellect, individuation and mind, have all often a fully cosmic function: they are natural expressions for the activity of a personal creator, whether developed or not from the Brahman, and as we have seen are adopted in this sense by the Bhāgavatas in the series of Saṃkarṣaṇa, Pradyumma and Aniruddha, though in that series mind and Pradyumma rank above individuation and Aniruddha. The distinction, however, between intellect and individuation is a slight one, and is not normally made: rather it is assumed that intellect per se involves individuation, and when both terms occur it must be held that we have a result of a further process of analysis. Beside the cosmic function of these powers they figure largely in epic psychology. The principle of individuation passes for a factor in will, and at other times describes the function of attention: it is even by a false abstraction further subdivided and appears as two species, the other being Abhimāna (xii, 205, 24). The other terms are variously explained, but it is a common idea that data are given by sense, that the mind ponders upon them or raises doubts, and that the intellect decides (xii, 275, 17; 285, 17), while the spirit is a mere spectator, a view which corresponds with the doctrine that spirit is the subject without which all these psychic processes would be blind and unconscious. On the other hand, stress is often (xii, 311; xiv, 22) laid on the fact that the senses require the operation of mind to produce perceptions: without mind there is no result, but equally without the senses mind is empty. It accords well with this view that to mind is attributed the function of dreams. Mind also, in xii, 313, is brought directly into connection with the organs of action, to which it must be conceived as conveying the commands arising from the decisions of intellect, but in xii, 299, 20 the function of acting towards the organs of action as the mind acts to the organs of perception is attributed to strength, Bala, a conception which, however, is not maintained.

c7.14

The intellect is often, as the *Katha Upaniṣad*, compared to a charioteer, whose reins are mind and whose horses the senses. The traveller in the chariot is in the *Anugītā* (xiv, 51, 4) declared to be the Bhūtātman, a conception which corresponds roughly to the psychic apparatus of the classical Sāmkhya which, consisting of mind, individuation, intellect, the ten senses, the fine elements and the subtle portions of the gross elements, accompanies the spirit in all its transmigrations. There is, however, no trace in the epic of a precisely corresponding enumeration of entities as forming part of the Bhūtātman, for the epic often does not recognize the fine elements at all.* Other terms for this migrating apparatus are Liṅga, which, however, also denotes the gross corporeal body, and Retaḥ-śarīra, seed body, which recalls the doctrine of the classical Sāmkhya, that the gross body is producted from the seed of the subtle portions of the gross elements, which form part of the psychic apparatus.

c7.15

∗ See O. Strauss, *Vienna Oriental Journal*, xxvii, 257-275, who, however, overstates the case.

c7.16

The absence of the fine elements, Tanmātras, from the epic, results in a different position in the series of evolution for the gross elements. Occasionally these are derived directly from the absolute being, following the doctrine of the *Taittirīya Upaniṣad* (ii, 1), or from mind, but their normal source is the principle of individuation. From the gross elements spring their Viśeṣas, distinctions, the term given to the specific qualities which they possess. In the classical Sāṃkhya the introduction of the Tanmātras reduces the gross elements to an inferior position: the fine elements are without distinction, Aviśeṣa, probably because each element consists of its own nature alone, while the gross elements now themselves bear the term Viśeṣas apparently because they each contain portions of the others. This theory of the mixing of elements is found in the epic, but there is also found the very different theory by which the elements, as in the *Taittirīya Upaniṣad* arise each from the less complex, the lowest, the ether, with one quality, and the highest, earth, with five.

c7.17

It is characteristic of the close affinity in many respects of the classical Sāṃkhya and the epic philosophy that the vital airs, Prāṇas, are of comparatively little importance in the latter: the former reduces them to the united working of mind and the senses, while on the other hand the Vedānta preserves them as independent elements, and attributes to them the function of preserving the vegetative life. The epic mentions them often enough, but its accounts are too confused to allow of any clear idea of their function or of the value attributed to the five varieties, Prāṇa, Apāna, Samāna, Udāna, and Vyāna. Similarly, the epic makes little of the conception Jiva, soul, which resolves itself either into the Ātman with the psychic organs of the Vedānta, or the spirit with its psychic apparatus in the Sāṃkhya.

c7.18

In the ethics of the epic there prevails even greater variety of doctrine than in the more metaphysical views. The doctrine of transmigration and the theory that all action is strictly conditioned by action in a previous life is mitigated and interfered with* by the doctrine of human action and free-will, and is further complicated by the belief in the saving power of devotion to God, and his power to help. The fate of the souls on death is described more or less closely in accord with the doctrine of the Upaniṣads: there is the way of the gods, which leads to the world of Brahman and to freedom from transmigration; there is the way of the fathers, which is the fruit of good deeds and leads back to rebirth on earth; there is the third place, rebirth as a beast or a plant, and there is also the possibility of punishment in hell. Final release can be obtained either by knowledge in the form of reflection, the Sāṃkhya way which uses the means of perception, inference and scripture, or by the practice of Yoga, which results in an intuitive perception of the final truth. The truth takes two distinct forms: in the one case the end is the recognition of the identity of the individual self and the absolute, which results in the possessor of that knowledge becoming the absolute; for in the strict sense the individual self is, as in the Vedānta, the absolute self, and not a part of it, or at least the individual is merged in the absolute, if, as often may be the case, the feeling is that the individual is for the time at least real, and release is a merger rather than an identification. This state of identification, or merger, is the state of supreme bliss, though past all comprehension and understanding, which is styled Nirvāṇa. On the other hand, there appears often in the closest connection with this view the more properly Sāṃkhya view of the goal being isolation, and the saving knowledge not that of the unity of the individual and the absolute, but the realization of the distinction between self as spirit and nature. The result of this knowledge is the freedom of the spirit from all individuality and all consciousness, the spirit being freed for ever (xiv, 47, 8ff.). This is not merely the aim of the followers of Sāṃkhya, but of the followers of Yoga also, who, despite their acceptance of an Īśvara, devotion to whom by meditation upon him is a powerful assistance to final release, nevertheless in their desire for release aim at the isolation of the souls from nature, not at union with an absolute.

c7.19

∗ See E. W. Hopkins, *J.R.A.S.*, 1906, pp. 581-593.

c7.20

Not only has the epic the terms Sāṃkhya and Yoga both in their more general sense, and also as denoting the systems with twenty-five and twenty-six principles, respectively, but the names of three teachers, who are given in the last verse of the Sāṃkhya Kārikā as the handers down of the system, duly appear in xii, 319, 59 as teachers of the doctrine with a twenty-fifth spiritual principle along with Jaigīṣavya, Asita Devala, Parāśara, Vārṣagaṇya, Bhṛgu, Śuka, Gautama, Ārṣiṣeṇa, Garga, Nārada, Pulastya, Sanatkumāra, Śukra and Kaśyapa. Of the three mentioned here and in the Kārikā, Kapila plays a great figure in the philosophy of the epic: he is authoritative in all philosophic matters, and his tenets are of the most diverse kinds. In the strict sense of the word he is, indeed, the only founder of a system recognized in the epic, the other persons being either gods or his disciples, He himself is identified with Agni, with Śiva and Viṣṇu: he also appears, as in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (v, 2), as identical with Hiraṇyagarbha (xii, 339, 68; 342, 95). Moreover, Āsuri and Pañcaśikha appear also in xii, 218, 14, as teachers of the doctrine of the Brahman. The system of Pañcaśikha* is developed in great detail in xii, 219: not only has it in detail no special connection with the Sāṃkhya, but in its fundamental principles it is not Sāṃkhya at all; on the contrary, while the separate existence for the time being of the individual soul is asserted, it is expressly made clear that it flows as a stream to the ocean, and that at the end it is merged in the great ocean of being and embraced on all sides, losing then consciousness. As the deer leaves its old horn, or the snake its worn-out skin, or the bird the falling tree, so the freed soul abandons its woe, and goes on the perfect way, leaving behind pleasure and pain without even a subtle body. In addition to this exposition of the doctrine of Brahman without illusion, Pañcaśikha differs in his psychology from the orthodox Sāṃkhya: he holds the belief in the existence of power as the sixth organ with the organs of action, corresponding to mind as the sixth of the organs of perception. He also holds that activity is produced by the combined result of knowledge, heat and wind: the first element produces the senses and their objects, separate existence, perception and mind; heat produces gall and other bases; wind produces the two vital breaths. Further, he discusses the question of the nature of deep sleep and the fact that the senses are not then really active. In both these respects, the importance attached to the vital airs and other physical bases, and in the stress laid on the question of the nature of deep sleep, Pañcaśikha is truly Vedāntic and not an upholder of the Sāmkhya.

c7.21

∗ See E. W. Hopkins, Great Epic of India, pp. 149ff.

c7.22

The degree of faith which can be attributed to this account of the views of Pañcaśikha can be judged from the fact that in xii, 321, 96-112 we have a different account of the views of that sage. Here there are thirty principles, with God* superadded. They are the ten senses and mind, power being ignored: intellect, Sattva, individuation, the general disposition, ignorance, the source, the manifestation, the unification of doubles such as pleasantness and unpleasantness, time, the five gross elements, being and not being, cause, seed and power. The source of all these factors is the unevolved, which is evolved by means of these principles, and as evolved is the individual. The way of life to be sought is renunciation. Yet another account of the principles is given in a version ascribed in xii, 274 to Asita Devala, but the details of this version deviate more and more from any normal schedule, the organs of knowledge being reckoned at eight.

c7.23

The question arises whether we can, on the strength of these notices, attribute any serious value to the tradition preserved in the Sāmkhya Kārikā. The answer as regards Kapila and Āsuri can hardly be in the affirmative, in the sense that the notice of the Kārikā receives any support from the epic. If there was ever a sage, Kapila, who expounded philosophy, he had disappeared into a mass of obscure tradition at an early date. Moreover, there is grave doubt to suspect his real existence at all, in view of the fact that he may owe his name merely to the use of Kapila in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (v, 2) as a description of Hiranyagarbha. The likelihood is that the name Kapila is merely that of a divinity which has, for whatever reason, been associated closely with the Sāmkhya philosophy in its atheistic form, though it is essential to note that the association is not epic, in which Kapila is by no means exclusively an expounder of the Sāmkhya, and where there prevails the vague idea that the Sāmkhya is at bottom quite consistent with belief in the Brahman. Āsuri is a mere name, and we cannot possibly accept him as a historical philosopher without more proof. The epic asserts that he taught Pañcaśikha, whence no doubt comes the statement in the Kārikā.

c7.24

∗ See E. W. Hopkins, Great Epic of India, p. 152. F. O. Schrader (Z.D.M.G., lxviii, 106, n. 3) suggests instead nature and spirit, but this seems an error.

c7.25

The case of Pañcaśikha offers more difficulty, and he has often been treated as an authentic teacher: indeed, the Chinese tradition * attributes to him the work known as Ṣaṣṭitantra, though doubtless by an error. There has been seen a certain similarity between the doctrines attributed to Pañcaśikha in the few passages quoted from him in the commentary on the Sāmkhya Sūtra and doctrines expressed in the epic. Thus his view of the infinitely small size of the soul may be compared with the same doctrine expressed in xii, 346, 13-18, and his view of the unenlightened individual with that expressed in xii, 310, but these comparisons do not carry us any further, as they do not by any means connect even the Pañcaśikha of the epic with the reputed Pañcaśikha of the school tradition. The only conclusion available is that the identity of the presumably actual teacher mentioned by the commentators and the epic Pañcaśikha is not proved, and that the latter, at least, certainly did not teach as he is represented any single doctrine, and certainly not a Sāmkhya one. We have, therefore, two possibilities open to us: either we can assume that the name, Pañcaśikha, was that of an ancient sage, perhaps as may be indicated by Buddhist evidence cited below, originally a divine personage, to whom, as to Kapila, for reasons unknown to us, certain doctrines were ascribed, just as, for instance, Sanatkumāra, clearly a divine being, is cited as an authority in the epic, or that the late epic uses the

c7.26

[^ *]: Takakusu, Bulletin d'Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient, iv, 57 sq; Tuxen, Yoga, p. 14.

c7.27

name of an actual teacher of high rank in the Sāmkhya-Yoga school, but simply ascribes to him doctrines at random, indifferent to their inner consistency and still more to their consistency with the views which were actually held by the teacher in question. In the latter case the question arises whether Pañcaśikha can be dated early enough to render plausible his appearance in the epic, which was practically complete by 500 A.D. even as regards the philosophic portions, and which probably contained these sections much earlier than that.

c7.28

The information which has been preserved as to the views of Pañcaśikha is fragmentary, but not unimportant, and the definiteness of some of these opinions suggests a real personality. The same impression of reality is borne out by the fact that Vācaspatimiśra, in his commentary on the Yoga Sūtra, regularly identifies as his views certain remarks quoted as from the teacher by Vyāsa in his commentary, and that views are expressly given as his in the Sāmkhya Sūtra. He appears also, if we may trust Vyāsa and Vācaspatimiśra, to have styled Kapila the Ādividvān and to have asserted that he taught Āsuri, but he does not hint that he himself was the pupil of Āsuri, a fact which discredits the assertion of this fact in verse 70 of the Sāmkhya Kārikā. From the form in which his views have been preserved for us[^ *] it would clearly seem that he wrote a work in prose Sūtras. The account of the three Guṇas attributed to him in the comment on the Sāmkhya Sūtra (i, 127) is perfectly in keeping with the normal Sāmkhya-Yoga view, and his doctrine of the reason of the eternal connection of spirit and nature quoted in the Sūtra (vi, 68) is the obviously correct one that it is due to lack of discrimination, a view much more thorough than the reply of the teachers generally that it was caused by works or that of Sanandana, who is elsewhere unknown, that it was caused by the internal body or psychic apparatus, since clearly the first answer merely gives a proximate cause, and the second not even a cause, but the mere form in which the connection expresses itself. Further, it is certainly in better agreement with the view of

c7.29

[^ *]: See Yoga Sūtra Bhāshya, i, 4; Sāmkhya Sūtra, v, 32; vi, 68. See also Garbe, Festgruss an R. von Roth. pp. 75ff.

c7.30

many spirits in the Sāmkhya that each should be regarded as atomic, as is expressly* recorded in the Yoga Sūtra commentary (i, 36) as the view of Pañcaśikha: failing the recognition that the spirit must be considered as not in space, which is not achieved by any school of Indian philosophy, it is clear that with an infinity of spirits the doctrine of their infinite extent is difficult, and it is probable enough that in this view, which is accepted throughout the rest of the history of the Sāmkhya, there is to be seen a trace of the influence of the Vedānta.

c7.31

While this doctrine points to the early date of Pañcaśikha in the Sāmkhya school tradition, it would be an error to place his date unduly high, for in the Sāmkhya Sūtra (v, 32) he is cited as giving a definition of Vyāpti, pervasion, which rests on the basis that intellect, etc., and nature, etc., stand to one another in the relation of what is to be supported and the support. This definition shows that Pañcaśikha must have been familar with the terminology of the Nyāya school and, without postulating that he must have known the Nyāya Darśana as preserved to us, it indicates that he does not belong to an early period, for the Nyāya school is certainly, along with the Vaiśeṣika, the latest of the orthodox systems, being barely known even in the latest parts of the great epic. This fact harmonizes well with the fact that his style agrees most closely with that of the writer Śabarasvāmin, whose period has been fixed by Jacobi† as comparatively late, perhaps the fifth century A.D. There is no reason to place Pañcaśikha so late as this: it is most probable that he is older than Īśvarakṛṣṇa, who is not to be dated after 300 A.D. The date of the first century A.D., ascribed conjecturally to Pañcaśikha by Garbe,‡ may therefore be regarded as not excessively early: the evidence for the present hardly carries him beyond the second century A.D. This date would leave it open for his fame to become distorted and for strange doctrines to be ascribed to him in the epic. It is, however, in keeping with his independent position that the epic should ascribe to him the older doctrine that the gross body was composed of all five elements, as against the theory of the Sāṃkhya Sūtra that it was made up of one only, the other four serving merely ancillary purposes.

c7.32

∗ J. H. Woods, Yoga System of Patañjali, p. 74, suggests that Pañcaśikha’s view was not general, but referred only to some particular stage of the self. This is doubtful.

c7.33

† J.A.O.S., xxxi, 24.

c7.34

‡ Sāmkhya Philosophie, p. 34.

c7.35

In the Buddhist texts,* not only late but early, there is mention of a Gandhabba Pañcaśikha as in the vicinity of the Buddha: it would probably be unwise to see in this personage a reflection of the historic Pañcaśikha, as it would be necessary to bring down the affected texts very low, or to see in it an interpolation. The similarity of name is therefore to be regarded as accidental, for it is most improbable that the man should derive his name from the demon.

c7.36

Another teacher of Yoga who is mentioned in the epic is Jaigīṣavya, who, according to the Kūrma Purāṇa, was a fellow pupil of Pañcaśikha. The one certain piece of information regarding him contained in the commentary on the Yoga Sūtra (ii, 54) shows him as a teacher of Yoga doctrine. His reality is, therefore, assured in a very different degree than that of Sana, Sanaka, Sanātana, Sanatkumāra, and Sanatsujāta, who with Voḍhu are given as teachers in the epic. Of these the last only, in whose name a degraded form of Buddha has been seen,† but wholly without ground, appears to have any historical reality: the list of Sāṃkhya teachers to whom an oblation of water is daily offered by the orthodox Brāhman includes his name after Kapila and Āsuri and before Pañcaśikha, while an atharva Pariśiṣṭa places him even before Āsuri. It would be unwise to place any faith on these evidences of chronology, but it is worth noting that the Chinese translation of the commentary on the Sāṃkhya Kārikā‡ suggests a series of teachers in which after Pañcaśikha come Garga, and Ulūka, or perhaps Voḍhu, before Varṣa and Īśvarakṛṣṇa.

c7.37

In the law book of Manu, which is contemporaneous with the main body of the didactic epic, we find the Sāṃkhya

c7.38

[^ *]: H. Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 111. [^ †]: Weber, cited by Garbe, op. cit. p. 35. [^ ‡]: Bulletin d'Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient, iv, 59.

c7.39

doctrine never mentioned by name, but in a number of points there are clear coincidences with the classical Sāṃkhya. Thus the number of forms of proof allowed is three (xii, 105), the three Guṇas are described elaborately (xii, 24-52) and in the first book there is a creation myth which has a tinge of Sāṃkhya views. In it, from a dark incomprehensible world, arose the absolute being Svayambhū, who created the waters, from which sprang a golden egg, in which, as the god Brahman, the creator came into being. Dwelling in the egg for a year, he came out and from its shell he fashioned the heaven and earth, the place between, and the ocean. Then he produced from himself mind, described as being and not being, then individuation, then the great self, all that is made up of the three Guṇas, and the five senses to grasp objects. From fine parts of the five senses and mind, mixed with portions of his own body, he created all other things. The account is clearly by no means definitely Sāṃkhya, nor can it be regarded as of special importance in the history of the system. The text contains many other much more Vedāntic traits, and its importance lies in the fact that it illustrates by no means badly the confused philosophical speculations of these popular texts. The same phenomenon is not rare in the Dharma Sūtras and Smṛtis: that of Viṣṇu, however, contains in chapter 97 a clear distinction between the spirit and the twenty-four other principles, it enumerates the three Guṇas, and some of its verses (xx, 25) show a marked similarity to Gauḍapāda’s commentary on the second verse of the Kārikā.

c7.40

The Purāṇas show also traces of the influence of doctrines similar to those of the epic. The cosmological accounts of these works contain here and there approximations to the evolutionary series of the Sāṃkhya, and they agree with it in the doctrine of the three Guṇas, but this point of view is in them associated to some extent with conceptions taken from the illusionist doctrine of the Vedānta, and far more with the doctrines of the sectarian Vaiṣṇava or Pāśupata schools. Thus in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, while we find both nature and spirit described in terms appropriate to the Sāṃkhya principles, it is declared that Viṣṇu, as supreme spirit, is one not only with spirit but with nature, and with time. The *Matsya Purāṇa* again finds that the three Guṇas in the great principle are identical with Brahman, Viṣṇu and Śiva. Naturally these and similar views* in the Purāṇas give us no information of worth as to the antiquity of the Sāṃkhya system or its primitive character.

c7.41

The question inevitably arises as to the nature of the system of Sāṃkhya taught in the epic. The view adopted by Garbe† is that the Sāṃkhya of the epic is merely a popularizing and contamination of the true Sāṃkhya, which he considers is of too individual a type to have been produced except as the creation of some one mind. As he holds that this ingenious system was in vogue before the rise of the epic, or at least before the epic took its present shape, it is natural that so important a philosophy should have left its traces unmistakeably in the epic, and equally natural that the form in which it appears should be one far removed from the precision and clarity of the true system. To this argument the most serious objection is the fact that there is no real evidence that the Sāṃkhya philosophy existed as a complete whole as early as the period of the epic, say 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., the evidence of the priority of such a system to Buddhism being, as has been seen above, far from cogent. Nor again is there really any sufficient ground to hold that the Sāṃkhya system is the bold and original product of a single mind. On the contrary, the system on close examination can be seen to be a somewhat illogical reduction of principles which are expressed in the Brahman philosophy of the Upaniṣads, and in opposition to the theory of a rapid development must be set the far more probable theory of slow growth, which can be traced through the later Upaniṣads, the *Kaṭha* and the *Śvetāśvatara*, which have clear traces of the doctrine of evolution of principles in the Sāṃkhya manner. Moreover if, as is supposed, the full Sāmkhya system was in existence before the epic, it is decidedly strange that the epic should practically ignore the doctrine of fine elements which that system has so clearly. On the other hand, the terminology applied in the Kārikā to these fine elements, and to the gross elements, the first being described as Viśeṣa, and the latter as Aviśeṣa, is decidedly unnatural and curious and contrasts sharply with the simple description of the gross elements and their characteristics, Viśeṣas, in the epic.

c7.42

∗ Puruṣa and Prakṛti are often identified with the male and female principles: hence Sakti, and Prakṛti become identified, and in the Tantras Prakṛti and Sakti are one and the same, the creative first principle which is exalted even over the supreme deity.

c7.43

† *Sāṃkhya Philosophie*, pp. 47-52.

c7.44

A very different theory of the epic Sāmkhya is presented by Dahlmann.* In his view the epic is not, as is usually supposed, a heroic epic into which there has been put at various times vast masses of didactic and unepic material. From its earliest period the epic was, he holds, not different from what it now is: it was essentially a book of customary law and usage, which the epic tale illustrates. It follows from this view that the epic is held to be of great antiquity, and that in place of seeing in it a heterogeneous mass of contradictory views, we must see in it the expression of one single doctrine. This is the epic Sāmkhya which represents the development of the unsystematic teachings of the early Upaniṣads. It is essentially a science of the Brahman, Brahmavidyā, but it is at the same time based on logic, Ānvīkṣikī, and while it never abandons traditional foundations—only once, and that on the doctrine of Ahimsā, which he supports against tradition, is Kapila pronounced the holder of an unorthodox view in the epic—still it freely uses the processes of reasoning. Its special aim is the investigation and setting forth of the number of principles involved and their evolution from the absolute. It is atheistic merely in the sense that it denies any personal deity such as that accepted by the Yoga, but not in the sense that it denies the absolute and impersonal Brahman, which on the contrary it unquestionably recognizes, and in which the individual soul finds Nirvāṇa. But beside the absolute it recognizes the existence of a material nature, which is the source of the manifold character of the empiric self, since through it the absolute becomes multiplied, and it sets itself to define in detail nature and its workings. It is merely in its substance a clearing up of the doctrines which are contained in the older Upaniṣads, such as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya: these texts lay great stress on the fact that there is one self or absolute, and that all else is not true reality, and that it is a mistake which leads to transmigration to believe that the empiric is the true reality. But these Upaniṣads do not deal distinctly with the nature of the empiric reality: the question whether it is merely an illusion is not discussed and the doctrine of mere illusion is not set out, though no doubt the extreme stress laid on the unreality of the world of experience, from the point of view of true reality, tends to render the growth of this doctrine not unnatural. Ultimately the epic Sāṃkhya with its logical theory of the Brahman becomes, on the one hand, the classical Sāṃkhya which has learned to do without the Brahman, and on the other hand, by the laying of increased stress on the unreality of the world is developed the illusion theory of Śaṃkara. Dahlmann traces the origin of the theory not merely back to the older Upaniṣads: he sees in the hymn of the Ṛgveda, x, 129, the creation of the universe from an indefinite substance described as water by an absolute already existing, and he considers that the fact that the Ātman is called the twenty-fifth in the Śatapatha and Śāṅkhāyana Brāhmaṇas is a foreshadowing of the twenty-four principles of the Sāṃkhya other than the self, while the three Guṇas he finds adumbrated in the Atharvaveda, where (x, 8, 43) mention is made of the nine-doored lotus with three coverings in which there is a soul, a theory which has, as we have seen, no probability.

c7.45

∗ Nirvāṇa (1897) and Sāmkhya Philosophie (1902). Cf. A. E. Gough, Philosophy of the Upaniṣads, pp. 200ff; S. K. Belvarkar Bhandarkar Commemoration Volume, pp. 181-184.

c7.46

It is clear that the theory of Dahlmann is extremely ingenious, and it is of minor importance that the efforts to trace the twenty-fifth principle as Ātman is probably based on the mistaken rendering of Ātman as self instead of trunk of the body, as opposed to the hands, feet, fingers and toes, which are the other twenty-four principles. It is a different thing to conjecture that this fondness for the number twenty-five which is often seen in the Brāhmaṇas, where Prajāpati is described as twenty-five fold, is not one of the sources of the doctrine that there are twenty-five principles. But the attempt to hold that the epic is a unity and that it teaches a unitarian philosophy is one which offends every canon of criticism and commonsense, and the main doctrine that the atheistic Sāmkhya is really a doctrine which accepts the Brahman, but denies the personal deity of the Yoga, is a *tour de force*. The epic, which certainly is devoted to the doctrine of the Brahman and to the reverence of great personal deities, on the other hand, certainly tends to regard the Sāmkhya system as a sort of Brahmaism, but it is perfectly obvious from the epic that the system itself was not one of this kind at all. The truth of the matter is much better expressed by Hopkins,* who finds in the epic the traces of at least six systems, Vedic orthodoxy, Brahmaism, *i.e.*, the doctrine of the Brahman but without the illusion theory, rarely the doctrine of the Brahman with the illusion theory, the Sāmkhya, the Yoga, and the Pāśupatas and Bhāgavatas, sectarian worshippers of Śiva and Viṣṇu respectively, who adopt in their systems a good deal of Sāmkhya-Yoga philosophy.

c7.47

The rejection of Dahlmann’s theory of the existence in the epic of a Sāmkhya which acknowledged the absolute instead of reducing all to spirits and nature, as being totally unhistorical, leaves open the question whether such a doctrine is the basis of the Sāmkhya of the epic in the sense that that system is a development from a philosophy which recognized the absolute. The alternative to this theory is the view that the Sāmkhya is a conception based entirely on the view of the difference between subject and object, and that this conception was formed independently of the existing Ātman-Brahman philosophy, or at least in conscious reaction from it. Stress has been laid by Garbe† on the un-Brahmanic character of the Sāmkhya philosophy, and he has attributed it in large measure to the influence of the Kṣatriyas. The force of this argument is greatly diminished by the fact that Garbe is also inclined to attribute the Brahman doctrine in large measure to the same influence, in which case it seems impossible to treat the Sāmkhya as markedly opposed in its basis to the Brahman doctrine. In any case, the arguments for the un-Brahmanic character of the Sāmkhya are wholly devoid of weight. The homeland of the Sāmkhya is placed in the east by Garbe, on the ground that Buddhism, which was in his opinion derived from the Sāmkhya, flourished in the east, and the east was certainly less completely subjected to the influence of Brahmanism than the western middle country. The argument, however, is subject to the grave defects that the dependence on the Sāmkhya of Buddhism is not proved, and that, if it were proved, the fact would merely show that the Sāmkhya at the time of the rise of Buddhism was of great importance in the east: it could never show that it was first produced in the east. Nor can any weight be allowed to the argument that in Kapilavastu, the birthplace of the Buddha, we are to see the name of the town of Kapila the founder of the Sāmkhya philosophy. That Kapilavastu really meant the town of Kapila, and is not a name drawn from the description of the place, as suggested by Oldenberg*, is very doubtful, and even if the name referred to a Kapila, that this Kapila was the Sāmkhya sage is an idea which is not hinted at in the Brahmanical tradition, which says nothing of a town connected with and named after him.

c7.48

∗ Hopkins, *Great Epic of India*, p. 81. † *Sāmkhya Philosophie*, pp. 3ff. So J. S. Speyer, *Die indische Theosophie*, pp. 64, 107.

c7.49

Other arguments for the un-Brahmanic character of the Sāmkhya adduced by Garbe are the facts that the Sāmkhya and Yoga, Pāśupata and Pāñcarātra and the Veda are set side by side as different systems in xii, 349, 67, and that the Sāmkhya and Yoga are mentioned (ibid. 76) as two eternal systems beside all the Vedas. This, however, merely proves that these systems differed from the Vedic tradition, not that they were opposed to that tradition or that the supporters of the views of these philosophies were un-Brahmanical. Kapila, as we have already seen, appears but once in conflict with the Vedas, when he condemns sacrifice of animals, and the text plainly supports the sage in his battle for Ahimsā. Moreover, the Sāmkhya never abandons the right to appeal for proof to scripture, and in fact there are numerous appeals to scripture in the later Sāṃkhya texts, while the brief Kārikā expressly recognizes it with perception and inference as the three modes of proof. It is true that the use of scripture made by the Sāṃkhya is a more limited one than that of the later Vedānta, but the essence of the Sāṃkhya is its rationalism, and that rationalism could not develop in Brahmanical circles is an assertion for which no proof either is or can be adduced. The extraordinarily ingenious and elaborate system of the sacrifice, as thought out by the philosophers who produced the Brāhmaṇas, is a clear proof of the interest in reasoning taken by the Brāhmans.*

c7.50

∗ *Buddha*, p. 111.

c7.51

While there are no arguments of any value which can be adduced for the view that the Sāṃkhya is a product of un-Brahmanical circles, there is every evidence that the system is a natural growth from the philosophy of the Upaniṣads. We have seen that the Upaniṣads, in their later period of development beginning with the Kaṭha, show traces of the doctrines which we find in the Sāṃkhya, such as the evolution of principles, and the drawing up of classes of principles. The Upaniṣads, however, differ essentially from the Sāṃkhya in the fact that they definitely accept either the doctrine of the absolute in its pure form, as does the Kaṭha, or the doctrine in a theistic form, as does the Śvetāśvatara. There is, in detail, in the Sāṃkhya little that cannot be found in the Upaniṣads in some place or other: not only the doctrine of the Guṇas but also that of the Tanmātras can be found there, and the work of the Sāṃkhya in large measure evidently takes the form of systematizing and developing of ideas which were not the creation of the Sāṃkhya, but which required to be put into a definite system. Indeed, in one sense, the Sāṃkhya must be treated as one of the early attempts to systematize and reduce to order the somewhat confused mass of speculation found in the Upaniṣads, the characteristic feature of the systematization being the attention paid to order and the principle of development.

First 50 of 55 passages. Read on

Linked texts (22)