The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.11

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.