The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.47

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.