The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.9

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.