The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c8.12

c8.12

It may be added that no further light on the date of either Sāmkhya or Yoga can be gained from a notice in the Kauṭilya Arthaśāstra,* which ranks as Ānvīkṣikī, logical sciences, the views of the Lokāyata, the Sāmkhya and the Yoga schools. This enumeration, if it could be established that the work of Kauṭilya was really a work of the beginning of the third century B.C., would not indeed carry the question much beyond the evidence afforded by the epic, but it would afford a more secure basis for considering the value of the epic data, but unfortunately the date of the Arthaśāstra is very uncertain, and may be very much later than the suggested date.† It might possibly be thought that the combination of Sāmkhya and Yoga with the certainly atheistic Lokāyata would permit the conclusion that the Yoga was at one period atheistic, but there seems no possible ground to insist on reading such an implication into the terms, while it may be observed that the Lokāyata can only be called Ānvīkṣikī by a stretch of the imagination, since its first characteristic is its resolute dogmatic refusal to acknowledge the existence of any means of proof save perception.