The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.49

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.*