The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.36

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.