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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3: (c) The Origin of the Sāṁkhya and Buddhism

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3

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(c) The Origin of the Sāṁkhya and Buddhism

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The question inevitably arises in what manner these views are to be connected with those of the Upaniṣads,³ and the further problem must be mentioned of the origin of Buddhism, which has been traced to the Sāṁkhya. The Buddhist system differs in one essential from the Sāṁkhya: it abolishes, as does that system, the principle of an absolute, with which the individual souls are identified, and it goes further than that system in seeking to deny the existence of soul. The latter aberration need not, however, be taken very seriously: the Buddhists, being determined believers in transmigration, had to produce an entity⁴ which would transmigrate; the entity provided does not differ, in any very essential way, from the ordinary view in India of a transmigrating soul, and certainly is philosophically inferior to the ordinary conception, unsatisfactory as that in itself is.

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³ Cf. Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 202 ff.; *GN.* 1917, pp. 218 ff.; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, chap. vii.

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⁴ Walleser, *Die philosophische Grundlage des älteren Buddhismus*, pp. 77 ff.; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, chap. ix.

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No Upaniṣad attains the point of view of the Sāṁkhya system, and it is therefore only possible to indicate the mode in which the conception of the absolute tended to fade away and to leave the individual spirits confronted with nature. The essential feature of the Sāṁkhya is the evolutionary series, and the name Sāṁkhya, ‘examination’, ‘calculation’, or ‘description by enumeration of constituents’,⁵ rather than a mere counting, suggests that the philosophy owed its importance to its insistence on the principle of careful examination of the elements of the process of development from the absolute. Now in the Upaniṣads the first case in which the order of evolution from the absolute is stated with precision—even then incomplete—is in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad,⁶ where we find that in the carrying out of meditation, Yoga, in order to reach the absolute, the objects are merged in the senses, the senses in the mind, the mind in the intellect, Buddhi, the intellect in the great self, which is also then merged in the undiscriminated, Avyakta, described as the calm self, and that again in the spirit, Puruṣa, which is the absolute. The similitude of these views to the series of development of the Sāṁkhya is obvious: the separation of the Mahān Ātmā, the great self, and Buddhi is a distinction which it is difficult to appreciate in the Kaṭha and would naturally disappear on further reflection, with the abandonment of a cosmic Ātman, while the interposition of the undiscriminated, which corresponds to the position of the old primitive material or waters of the Brāhmaṇas, between the spirit and the intellect, corresponds also precisely to the position of Prakṛti in the Sāṁkhya system, except for the fact that the Kaṭha is still monistic, and still regards the spirit as an absolute, whence nature is derived, the individual spirit being identified more or less clearly with the highest spirit. But it must have been an obvious, if no less a very important, step when it was decided by some thinker that there was no necessity to imagine the unity of all the spirits in one. *Ex hypothesi* the spirits were all identical with the one spirit, and, therefore, each must have the same creative power to produce the undiscriminated as the supreme spirit. To what end then to feign a supreme spirit? Moreover, from another point of view the postulating of a supreme spirit would appear unsound: the enormous variety of individual experience of life, the plain facts of every-day existence, show that there is not one spirit merely but many.¹ The theory of unity of all spirits is difficult and confusing, and the obvious refuge from these difficulties is to admit that each spirit is a separate entity. The relation of the spirits and Prakṛti would follow at once, when this was accepted: the doctrine of Yājñavalkya was clear that the self was merely the knowing subject: clearly, therefore, as the self was the subject only, Prakṛti cannot be produced from the spirit in any material sense: it is the independent object merely of spirit.²

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⁵ Accepted by Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 351, n. 129.

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⁶ iii. 10–13; vi. 7–11. The alternative view that the Sāṁkhya is of independent origin, based on an independent analysis of consciousness, and that the Kaṭha represents a compromise may be mentioned (cf. Oltramare, *L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 221 ff., for a critique of Garbe's view on this point). But it is not possible to ignore the obvious fact that the Puruṣa of the Sāṁkhya is merely the Ātman made many.

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¹ Cf. Sāṁkhya Kārikā 18.

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² The Ātman in KU. iii. 3 f. is the lord of the chariot, who is essentially a mere spectator, for intellect is the driver, mind the reins, and the senses the horses. The absence of the Ahaṁkāra in KU. can hardly be accidental as Oldenberg (*op. cit.*, p. 231) suggests. For its frequent omission in the epic, see Hopkins, *Great Epic of India*, p. 133.

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It is important to note the real similarity between the self in the view of the Yājñavalkya of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and that of the Sāṁkhya; both are absolutely without quality or activity, completely inactive, the capacity of knowing without content; both, we may fairly say, represent bare abstractions which could never as such be real. If the self of Yājñavalkya is wholly apart from empirical existence and knowledge, the same thing really applies to the spirit of the Sāṁkhya, for it is not really in contact with matter. In the Buddhism of the Sarvāstivādins³ we find the same view of Vijñāna, which remains wholly apart from real connexion with the object, being, like it, merely a momentary flashing wholly transitory and uncaused. Naturally in all three cases some effort must be made to explain the connexion of this subjectivity and the object which makes its potentiality concrete knowledge, and equally naturally at this point in all three systems we have a lacuna, which is filled up by unintelligible assertions, the Buddhists resorting to a relation of Sārūpya, ‘co-ordination’ or ‘co-relation’, which is found also in the Yogabhāṣya¹ of Vyāsa as the mode of bridging over the gulf between knower and knowledge.

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³ Cf. Stcherbatsky, *The Central Conception of Buddhism*, pp. 63 f.; Garbe, *Sâṁkhya-Philosophie*², pp. 358 ff.

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¹ i. 4; ii. 23.

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If we seek to find in the older Upaniṣads a more direct connexion with the doctrines of the Sāṁkhya than the conception of the self in Yājñavalkya, then the most obvious parallel, in addition to the scheme of evolution in the Kaṭha, is the passage in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad² in which a list of ten senses is opposed to a corresponding number of objects, and the presence of intellect, Prajñā, is said to be essential for every kind of sense-knowledge, including the activity of mind in respect of thought and desire. We have here the prototype of the curious feature in the Sāṁkhya of the senses and mind as alike only potential until reflected in some manner in Puruṣa. The more common idea of the senses being powerless without mind lies doubtless at the back of this more advanced conception, a fact which illustrates the remarkable dependence of the Sāṁkhya on older ideas.

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² iii. 5 ff. See below, § 8.

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A certain degree of parallelism to the Kaṭha evolution series is present in doctrine of the mode in which on death according to the Chāndogya Upaniṣad speech (the eye, the ear, and the other organs are presumably here typified by speech) enters the mind, the mind the breath, the breath the brilliance of fire (the other two elements of the Chāndogya, water and earth, may be included), and that the supreme deity. In deep sleep, again, we have a series in the Praçna Upaniṣad³ where we may understand that the five gross, the five subtle, elements, the organs of sense, all enter the mind, it the intellect, it individuation,⁴ it thought, it brilliance, it breath, and it the self, but this latter passage is too vague to be of much importance save as showing how prevalent were these efforts to find the order of evolution.

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³ iv. 7.

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⁴ According to Oldenberg (*Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 226, n. 1) it means ‘ “das Ichmachen,” d. h. das Ichsagen und Betätigen der Ichheit,’ rather than ‘der Ichmacher’. The genesis of this entity may be connected with the speculations of the Upaniṣads on deep sleep, in which individuality disappears; Heimann, *Die Tiefschlafspekulation der alten Upaniṣaden* (1922), pp. 13 f.

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In the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad⁵ we find an expression of the order of development commencing from the absolute, as all-knowing, the second element being food, an expression perhaps for the undiscriminated, the coming breath, which may correspond with Hiraṇyagarbha, mind, truth, the worlds, and actions. The more precise similarity of the doctrine of the Muṇḍaka⁶ to that of the Kaṭha is maintained by Hertel,⁷ who has endeavoured to reconstruct an original text of this Upaniṣad by conjecture from that which, as he holds, based on a single manuscript which was far from correct, has been preserved to us by Çaṅkara. Reconstructions of this kind seldom permit of any satisfactory result to others than their author, and there is always the fundamental difficulty, apart from minor points, whether the incoherence of thought which gives rise to the reconstruction is not, as most probably in the case of the Bhagavadgītā, due to the author, and not the result of interpolation. If, however, we omit the whole of ii. 2, and iii. 1. 4–10 and 2. 3 and 9, we obtain the doctrine that, as in the Skambha hymn of the Atharvaveda,¹ which affords part of the material of the Upaniṣad, the highest thing in the world is regarded as personal, from which there emanates the Brahman and whatever else exists. On this view the ultimate fate of the soul on its return is not absorption in the Brahman but union with Puruṣa, the world of Brahman serving merely as the place of those who fully perform the sacrificial ritual in the mode approved by the Muṇḍaka. The other portions, however, of the text, which cannot with any assurance be ascribed to working over, definitely identify the highest principle with the Brahman, adopting the regular identification of the Brahman and the Ātman, and treating the final result to be aimed at as the recognition of the identity of the Brahman and the Ātman. Moreover, even in the verses which are spared by Hertel, we find hints contradicting his theory of a simple doctrine; thus in i. 1. 7 all is stated to arise from the imperishable (*akṣara*), while in ii. 1. 2 we find the personal highest being declared to be above the imperishable, and in ii. 1. 10 the Brahman and Puruṣa are directly identified, unless we hold with Hertel that there is a lacuna in the text for which we have no other ground. It is significant also that the interpolator has to be credited with iii. 2. 3, which adopts the Kaṭha² doctrine of salvation by the favour of the lord, so that we have to assume that, on the one hand, he altered the personal aspect of the Upaniṣad by insisting on the primacy of the impersonal Brahman, while, on the other, he deliberately added one of the most personal touches in the shape of the doctrine of grace. This is plainly incredible, and we may safely assume that, while the author worked on an older idea of a personal *prius* as in the Atharvaveda, and accepted the doctrine of grace from the Kaṭha, he himself adopted the Brahman standpoint.³

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⁵ i. 1. 8, 9; ii. 1. 2, 3.

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⁶ vi. 10.

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⁷ *Muṇḍaka-Upaniṣad* (1924).

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¹ x. 7.

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² ii. 23.

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³ To certain of Hertel’s metrical views the strongest exception must be taken. To carry out his rule that the first syllable of a dissyllabic, and the second of a trisyllabic, middle part of the Triṣṭubh is short he has to argue for *oṣădhyaḥ*, *purăstād*, *paramam* (*sāmyam*) as two shorts, *sŭriasya*, *kavayŏ yānti*, and *agrăhyam*; he turns *-āni* and *-eṣu* into single final syllables, and postulates a great number of quite impossible elisions of short vowels. These, added to text alterations, enable him to reform the metre, but they do not justify his severe censure of Deussen for his perfectly just strictures on the metre of the text as we have it. Every metrical irregularity could thus be removed from any text, and Hertel’s procedure is specially inconsistent, since he objects to alteration of Prākritic irregularities in grammar, which might equally well be changed, if the Upaniṣad is to be rewritten. But metre may be excused in a philosopher.

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The resemblance of the Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad⁴ to the Sāṁkhya is of a different character from that of the Kaṭha; it is due in all likelihood to direct Sāṁkhya influence at a much later date. In this Upaniṣad we find an answer attempted to the question why and how the absolute self enters the world and appears in individual form. Prajāpati, existing alone, had no joy; therefore he created offspring as inanimate, and to enjoy them he enters with the breaths into them, thus animating them, and then by means of the organs of sense and action and the mind he has joy of them. But the absolute self, Prajāpati, remains wholly unaffected, though an apparent actor; action actually belongs to the Bhūtātman, or elemental soul, which overcome by the fruits of action passes to a good or evil birth, and is merged in existence, while the true self remains unaffected like the drop of water on a lotus leaf. The elemental soul is overcome by the qualities or factors of nature, Prakṛti, and thus conceives the erroneous impression of individuality; thinking ‘This is I’ and ‘That is mine’ he binds himself as a bird with a snare.¹ But the pure self is not without responsibility for this evil state, for a definite though obscure statement attributes it to the fact that the elemental self is overpowered by the inner Puruṣa.² The composite character of the text reveals itself in the further conception of the self as the enjoyer, while the elemental soul is made out to be the body, which it enjoys.³ We find also the three factors named and described at length, essentially as psychic, and Prajāpati as affected by Sattva, goodness, as a factor is equated with Viṣṇu, as affected by Rajas, activity, with Brahman, and as affected with Tamas, dullness, with Rudra. It is characteristic that the Upaniṣad shows equally knowledge of the development of Yoga doctrine, though its scheme of stages of exercises has six in lieu of the classical eight.⁴ Further, it is markedly pessimistic, the evils of empirical existence being set out with an elaboration of comparison and detail such as is only to be paralleled in the Buddhist texts, which it doubtless knew in some early form. It shows an advanced psychology, for it recognizes the function of individuation, though not as in the Sāṁkhya in its classical form, as placed between intellect and mind and as the source of the latter, but as following on mind and intellect, without any assertion of derivation, and it conceives of the existence of the subtle body, or Liṅga, though it is not clear whether it actually asserts that the Liṅga possesses not merely the fine elements but also the gross elements as part of its composition.⁵ Moreover, the question is actually posed whether it is merely the factors that are really subject to bondage, or the self; the classical Sāṁkhya asserts definitely, though not always consistently, that the self is not really bound, but this is not the view accepted by the Upaniṣad, which insists on the bondage of the self, exhibited in the actions of intellect, mind, and individuation, and promises release when the sense organs, mind, and intellect have ceased to function.⁶

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⁴ Cf. E. A. Welden, AJP. xxxv. 32 ff.

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¹ ii. 3 ff.; iii. 1 f.

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² iii. 3.

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³ vi. 10.

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⁴ vi. 18.

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⁵ Cf. above, p. 533, n. 3. Deussen (*Sechzig Upanishad’s*², p. 337, n. 2) amends; Oldenberg (*op. cit.*, p. 355) prefers to see in Viçeṣa in Maitr. vi. 10 a designation of the subtle elements, not as in the epic (Strauss, VOJ. xxvii. 265), where it applies to the effects of the gross elements.

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⁶ vi. 30.

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For the doctrine of the Guṇas or factors there is obvious a parallel in the Çvetāçvatara Upaniṣad,¹ which has on the ground of its content often been needlessly supposed to postdate the Sāṁkhya system, a view which cannot be supported on any cogent ground.² In it, we are told, that one she-goat, red, white, and black in hue, produces many young like herself: one he-goat leaps on her in love, the other abandons her, after associating with her. The idea of the relation of nature to the many spirits seems obviously expressed in this metaphor. But it is clear that the red, white, and black colours carry us beyond doubt to the Chāndogya Upaniṣad,³ where everything in the universe is declared to be connected with the three elements, the red of fire, the white of water, and the black of food, probably an allusion to earth, this being the order of creation when the absolute first produced heat, thence water, then earth, in the shape of food. It is not necessary to suppose that in the Çvetāçvatara there is anything more meant than the three elements: the transformation of these to psychic forces, which is prominent in the Sāṁkhya, though the other conception is implied in the ascription of the three to Prakṛti, would then be a later development, which in the Upaniṣads occurs first in the Maitrāyaṇīya.⁴

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¹ iv. 5.

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² Hopkins (JAOS. xxii. 380–7) insists that *sāṁkhyayogādhigamyam* in vi. 13 must refer to the system of the epic Sāṁkhya-Yoga, but this is *not* in the least proved; see Deussen, *Gesch. der Phil.* I. iii. 15. Moreover it is difficult to reconcile Hopkins' view with his date of the 4th cent. (ibid. p. 336) for this Upaniṣad. Kapila in v. 2 is clearly mythical (cf. iv. 12), not the teacher.

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³ vi. 4.

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⁴ iii. 5; v. 2.

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It is clear, therefore, that the seeds of the Sāṁkhya lie in the philosophy of the Upaniṣads: the conception of the deliverance from the round of rebirth and misery is wholly absurd on the Sāṁkhya theory of the universe, which denies any real connexion of spirit and nature,⁵ and, therefore, makes any suffering impossible, since without connexion there is no illumination, and without illumination of nature by spirit no suffering of any kind. In the doctrine of Māyā there is an illusion which is perfectly real though an illusion, and knowledge can dispel it and its products. But the ignorance which must be dispelled in the Sāṁkhya is the belief in a connexion which does not exist, and the Sāṁkhya philosophy never suggests that the misery of the universe is due to the belief: it is only possible because of the connexion: ignorance does not produce the connexion: therefore logically there is no misery. The mere fact of this illogicality alone and the marked pessimism of the system would testify to its derivative character.

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⁵ This leads Speyer (*Indische Theosophie*, p. 113) to the conjecture that an originally materialistic system has been transformed in an external method idealistically. But this theory rests on no solid basis and ignores the essential link of connexion with the Upaniṣads. So with Jacobi, *Festschrift Kuhn*, pp. 37 ff., and Berndl, *Über das Sāṁkhya*. For a later view of Jacobi, *see below*.

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A somewhat divergent view of the development of the Sāṁkhya is suggested by Dahlmann, who in several works⁶ has insisted on the view that the epic reveals to us the oldest stage of the Sāṁkhya philosophy and not as maintained by Hopkins,¹ and in some degree² Deussen among others, an eclectic philosophical view. Dahlmann’s position is obscured by its connexion with his ingenious but unsuccessful effort to prove that the epic is in itself a unity consciously produced at a period before Pāṇini, a thesis which rests on absolutely no cogent or even plausible evidence.³ Nor have we any tolerable ground for the view that the system of Sāṁkhya as first evolved under that name was other than atheistic, in the sense not merely of denying an Īçvara which in a degree Dahlmann would admit, but also of denying an absolute. Further, it is most natural to hold that the Sāṁkhya-Yoga of the epic is a definite theistic modification of the Sāṁkhya, which is more really theistic and absolutist than the later Yoga, in which as a system attention is directed towards the Yoga practices and not so largely to the theistic aspect.⁴ But the rejection of Dahlmann’s theories in these respects does not deprive of value his theory of the development of Indian philosophy. He argues that the first stage must be looked for in a view which is in close touch with the expressions of the Brāhmaṇas as to the process of creation, in which there is more or less consciously assumed to be some material beyond the actual creator, and he points out that in the early speculations of the Upaniṣads we learn of the Ātman on the one hand, but also of what is not the Ātman, which is full of misery. In more philosophic form this appears as the doctrine of the Brahman, beside which stands Prakṛti, into which is emptied the whole of the ordinary world of thought and action, while the Brahman remains outside all contact with thought, affording the end, Nirvāṇa, which is to be attained by the extinguishing of all kinds of feeling, by the negation of everything empirical. From this dualistic basis he deduces on the one hand the Sāṁkhya and on the other the Vedānta of the illusionist school. The former view is arrived at by a determined effort to make logical the process of development in final release: it became intolerable to contemplate that there was really only one Ātman, which, by connexion in some unexplained way with Prakṛti, produced the innumerable separate spirits through the action of Buddhi and of Ahaṁkāra, since release became meaningless, and it, therefore, assumed that there were innumerable Ātmans, whose derivation from the primitive Ātman was proved by the fact that they retained the characteristics of omnipresence and infinity, which belong properly only to the one Ātman and which, applied to all, lead to absurdity. On the other hand, the Vedāntins laid such stress on the unity of the universe that they denied the existence as real of Prakṛti, contenting themselves with the idle doctrine of illusion, which was clearly inconsistent with their own principle of unity. Moreover, he argues, materialism was a natural product of the early view, since it really emptied the Ātman of all empirical reality, and gave such reality to Prakṛti, and thus encouraged the view that matter by itself was able to produce the universe, while on the other hand by its subjectivism in the doctrine of the Ātman encouragement was given to scepticism, and finally to the philosophic indifference of early Buddhism.

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⁶ *Das Mahābhārata als Epos und Rechtsbuch*; *Nirvāṇa*; *Genesis des Mahābhārata*; *Die Sāṁkhya-Philosophie* (1895–1902).

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¹ *Great Epic of India*, pp. 97 ff.

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² *Gesch. der Phil.* I. iii. 21 ff.; cf. Jacobi, *SBA.* 1911, p. 738; Winternitz, *Gesch. d. ind. Lit.* i. 376, n. 1.

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³ See references in Winternitz, *Gesch. d. ind. Lit.* i. 263.

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⁴ Tuxen, *Yoga*, pp. 56 ff.

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Apart from the fact that there is really no good ground for calling the first stage Sāṁkhya,¹ and that the denial of illusionism cannot be accepted as absolutely true of the Upaniṣads, Dahlmann’s theory has the merit of directing attention to a real aspect of the philosophy of the Upaniṣads and the epic: there is a real affinity between the process by which Buddhi and Ahaṁkāra are deemed to produce the world of experience and the older myths of Prajāpati and his desire, Kāma, as playing their parts in the creation of the world, while still further back we have the picture of Puruṣa as at once the material and the spiritual source of the world. But it would be a mistake to accept the view that the aspect insisted upon by Dahlmann was really either the sole aspect or the chief aspect of philosophy in the period of the later Upaniṣads. In particular Dahlman goes clearly too far in stressing the independent character of the evolution of Prakṛti, and in his insistence on the nature of Īçvara as the world soul arising from Prakṛti alone, thus placing Prakṛti beside the Ātman as in itself accounting for the whole of the empirical world. It must never be forgotten, as Dahlmann himself elsewhere² recognizes, that the spiritual side of existence is essentially conditioned by the fact that in Prakṛti the Ātman is present as the observer, a fact which in the Sāṁkhya is preserved and emphasized in the insistence on the doctrine that but for the connexion of Puruṣa and Prakṛti there would be no cognition or feeling of any kind. When due weight is accorded to this fact, we reach fairly closely to a conception which is not far different from that of Bādarāyaṇa as the normal, not unique, doctrine of the Upaniṣads: there is an absolute on which matter is dependent indeed, but not illusory, and individual souls which in the Upaniṣads, but not in the Brahma Sūtra, at the end are resolved into the absolute, but which are not in themselves illusory, being, we may assume, the necessary result of the coexistence of the absolute and matter, and therefore endowed, until united with the absolute through knowledge, with a certain relative but real independence.³

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¹ Oldenberg (*Die Kultur der Gegenwart*², I. v. 34) does not deny the possibility of this view; cf. *Buddha*⁵, p. 68, n. 1.

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² *Die Sāṁkhya-Philosophie*, pp. 80 ff., where he tends to exaggerate, as usual, the Prakṛti side of the compound Jīva.

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³ Cf. also Deussen, *Gesch. der Phil.* I. iii. 259 ff.

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The real question is in a sense whether we can legitimately call Sāṁkhya a system which accepts an absolute, and differs from the normal Upaniṣad doctrine essentially in the attention given to derivation from the absolute of Prakṛti and individuals. The best defence of this suggestion is that of Oldenberg,⁴ who faces the fundamental difficulty that a system with an absolute in the epic is not normally Sāṁkhya, and that the twenty-five principles of the Sāṁkhya of the epic seem in their correspondence with the classical school to negate the presence among them of the absolute. Oldenberg’s suggestion, that the twenty-fifth principle includes both the absolute and its manifestations as individual, is ingenious, but hardly convincing, and as a matter of terminology and historic fact it seems unwise to employ the term Sāṁkhya as applicable to any system which acknowledges an absolute. The facts of the derivation of the Sāṁkhya above accepted are, of course, not affected by the question of terminology, and in view of the extremely composite nature of epic philosophy we need not be in the least surprised to find a conglomerate of this side of Aupaniṣada views with genuine Sāṁkhya, and the blend which the epic knows as Sāṁkhya-Yoga, and which has the somewhat unfortunate appearance of an effort to reconcile the Upaniṣads and the Sāṁkhya.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 206–58, who accepts an epic Sāṁkhya with an absolute as explaining Buddhism (GN. 1917, pp. 218 ff.).

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An interesting and ingenious effort, however, has been made by Professor Edgerton¹ to establish the doctrine that the epic knows nothing of a Sāṁkhya which denies the world soul or an Īçvara, and that in it Sāṁkhya and Yoga do not denote philosophical systems but means of realizing that unity with the world soul, which is the aim of all philosophy in this period which is not materialistic. Sāṁkhya denotes simply reflection—doubtless its primary meaning—and Yoga practical exercises tending to produce the unity desired, the details in the Mokṣadharma showing that a sort of self-hypnosis is aimed at, while in the Gītā the method is that of unselfish normal activity in the position of life in which fate has placed a man. Ingenious as this effort is, the denial of a specific Sāṁkhya doctrine appears, on the whole, untenable. It compels us in the passage xii. 11037 ff. to render the words *anīçvaraḥ kathaṁ mucyet* as ‘how the soul may be saved’, and to hold that in this passage no distinction is being drawn between the views of Sāṁkhya and Yoga, which is to put an intolerable strain upon the language.² Nor does it seem possible in xii. 11408 to render *anīçvaram* applied to the twenty-fifth principle merely as ‘supreme’; the term *īçvara* in the preceding verse makes it clear that a contrast is intended.³ Another reference to the distinctive Sāṁkhya insistence on a multitude of spirits must be seen in xii. 11483,⁴ and the whole matter appears clearly from xii. 13713 ff. In this passage we find two very distinct views set out: the Sāṁkhya and the Yoga accept a multiplicity of souls, while Vyāsa insists that all the souls at bottom rest on the world soul. To endeavour⁵ to explain away this obvious distinction by the theory that the real distinction is between a full and a brief exposition, and not between the views of Kapila and others and of Vyāsa, is as unsatisfactory as the suggestion that *adhyātma* in the description of Kapila’s activities means that he took thought on the supreme soul; the reference is clearly to the soul only. Nor is there anything out of place¹ in the allusion to the Yoga, for on the score of the multiplicity of souls Sāṁkhya and Yoga in their classical forms agree. The effort also to remove the significance of the addition of a twenty-sixth principle in the Yoga on the score that, as Oldenberg² suggested, the new head serves merely to distinguish the souls as released, is clearly a *tour de force*; the twenty-sixth is Īçvara, with whom, indeed, the enlightened soul may be identified.³

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¹ AJP. xlv. 1 ff. Contrast Hopkins, *Great Epic of India*, pp. 104 ff.

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² The meaning must be ‘how can one be saved without a creator?’

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³ Hopkins, *op. cit.*, p. 126.

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⁴ The rendering in AJP. xlv. 24 is certainly impossible.

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⁵ AJP. xlv. 27, n. 29.

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¹ AJP. xlv. 29, n. 31.

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² GN. 1917, p. 237.

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³ Hopkins, *op. cit.*, pp. 134 ff.

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In the very different view of Berndl⁴ the Sāṁkhya system, as we have it in the Kārikā of Īçvarakṛṣṇa and later, is a serious deviation from the true views of Kapila, who may have been the first teacher to express his views in prose. The original doctrine which denied any soul has been recast to meet Brahman prejudices, and has thus lost its definite character. Traces of the older view may be found in the assertion of the Mahābhārata⁵ which gives number and matter, Prakṛti, and twenty-four principles as the essence of the Sāṁkhya. Originally the doctrine recognized only three Guṇas, 'Charactere', whose interactions, themselves uncaused, since cause does not affect these things in themselves, produce the whole empirical world, which is ruled by absolute necessity. The Guṇas are not material, but are capable of mutual attraction, repulsion, and experience, and their interaction results in the formation of complexes (Empfindungszentren), which are selves, but which true knowledge shows are not distinct, eternal, metaphysical entities. But each is conscious of its essential relation to the Guṇas, and this is expressed, subjectively, in the consciousness of transcendence, and, objectively, in the will to live and to maintain one's individuality. Space is an abstraction made by the subject from the relations of things *inter se* and to itself, to which there corresponds only a manifold of heterogeneous sensations of quality, which the subject, by reason of the difference from its own homogeneity, experiences as something without. Time is also an abstraction made by the subject, to which alterations of external and internal conditions correspond, the ground for distinguishing them being their different characters, those without being many and cutting across one another, while those which are internal are individualized and unified. The suggestion is ingenious, but it is perfectly clear that it is unhistorical. To eliminate Puruṣas as an essential feature opposed to Prakṛti is to contradict everything we know of the Sāṁkhya, and it is difficult to appreciate why the system should thus have been transformed, nor do the changes in the system of Empedokles made by Anaxagoras⁶ provide an adequate parallel. It is necessary also in Berndl’s view to deny the doctrine of necessary periodical destruction of the universe, since all that is requisite is that, since things have originated, they cannot be permanent, and to question the early character of the marked pessimism of the Kārikā as inconsistent with the date of 700 or 800 B.C. ascribed to Kapila.

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⁴ *Über das Sāṁkhya. Versuch einer Wiederherstellung und Deutung der Sāṁkhya-Prinzipien.*

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⁵ xii. 1. 409. He notes also the disappearance of the Ṣaṣṭitantra as supporting his view as well as the legend of Vindhyakavāsa's changes in the Sāṁkhya (see Garbe, *Sāṁkhya-Philosophie*², pp. 79 ff.).

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⁶ The latter invented nous because the fact that the elements of Empedokles were conscious was forgotten, in Berndl's view. The view of Kapila was similarly altered, but illogically many selves were admitted, to avoid adopting the Vedānta view. But, while Anaxagoras was a pioneer as to nous, Kapila was a rebel against the Brahman soul doctrine, which ruins the alleged parallel.

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A different view of the relation of the Upaniṣads and the Sāṁkhya is presented by Professor Jacobi,¹ whose latest view is that a distinct gulf lies between the older Upaniṣads, and the middle and younger groups, terms which denote the Kaṭha, Īçā, Çvetāçvatara, Muṇḍaka and Mahānārāyaṇa, and the Praçna, Maitrāyaṇīya, and Māṇḍūkya respectively. The middle group is marked out from the oldest group by the absence of Āraṇyaka characteristics, the fact that the thought of the Upaniṣads is no longer in the making but already expresses itself in characteristic verses and turns of phrase, and the metrical form, while, as Jacobi points out, there appears in the middle and younger groups a large number of technical terms of philosophical interest which are unknown to the earlier texts. In Jacobi’s view there is also a vital philosophical difference between the two strata; the middle and younger Upaniṣads are composed under the direct influence of the Sāṁkhya system which had come into being after the oldest Upaniṣads. The vital element in the new point of view is the manifestation of the belief in the doctrine of the personal immortality of the souls of men and other creatures conceived as monads or as a multiplicity of immaterial substances, this view being accompanied by the clear distinction of what was material and what was immaterial. The souls of the Sāṁkhya are derived, in his view, from the aspect of the self as composed of intelligence or consciousness (*vijñānamaya*) in the older Upaniṣads, but with the essential difference that the soul is no longer regarded as being derived from and merging on death into the Brahman. At the same time the being (*sat*) of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad² with its three constituents, which in the Upaniṣad are regarded as living, is distinguished as purely material, and its constituents figure as the Guṇas of the Sāṁkhya, while the Buddhi of the Sāṁkhya is a transformation of the *vijñānaghana ātmā* of Yājñavalkya, the whole somewhat bizarre conception being due to an effort at an early date to make a coherent system out of the confused thoughts of the oldest Upaniṣads. This system was of influence, though it did not prove generally acceptable. The middle and younger Upaniṣad groups represent efforts to compromise between the Sāṁkhya with its kindred Yoga, and the pantheistic spirit of the Upaniṣads, an effort continued in the Bhagavadgītā and the philosophical parts of the Mahābhārata, and finally resulting in the compromise of the Purāṇas. One doctrine, however, that of the personal immortality of the soul, became generally accepted, figuring in the Nyāya and Vaiçeṣika schools,³ the Vedānta of Bādarāyaṇa, and even the Pūrva Mīmāṁsā,⁴ as well as in Jainism. In the latter case the conception both of soul and matter seems to have been developed contemporaneously with the Sāṁkhya views, though it is probable that the idea of the soul as essentially pure intelligence and immortal was taken over by the Jains from some other doctrine, much of primitive hylozoism clinging to their view of the soul.

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¹ *Die Entwicklung der Gottesidee bei den Indern* (1923), pp. 19 ff.

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² vi.

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³ Keith, *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 239 ff.

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⁴ Keith, *Karma-Mīmāṁsā*, pp. 64 ff.

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This view has been accepted as regards the origin of the theory of soul by Prof. Stcherbatsky,¹ who holds that the fact that the theory was new was the ground why it was so bitterly assailed by the Buddhists. He admits that the idea of a surviving personality is not unknown in the Veda, and that its essence and its relation to the Brahman are the main topic of discussion in the Upaniṣads. ‘But this self is a psychological entity, different explanations of its nature are proposed, and materialistic views are not excluded.² The idea of an immortal soul in our sense, a spiritual monad, a simple, uncomposite, eternal, immaterial substance is quite unknown in the Veda inclusive of the older Upaniṣads.’ Most regrettably neither Prof. Jacobi nor Prof. Stcherbatsky has pointed out the passages in the middle or younger Upaniṣads in which this new idea of an immortal soul is to be found, as contrasted with those in the older Upaniṣads; and it appears to me wholly impossible to find any such distinction as real. The idea that at this period in the history of Indian thought the conception of an immortal soul was first introduced appears wholly without warrant, and to misunderstand entirely the course of development of Indian philosophy.

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¹ *The Central Conception of Buddhism* (1923), pp. 69 ff.

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² That such views are allowed in the older Upaniṣads seems an error, perhaps based on Jacobi's older suggestion of materialism in *CU.* vi, which seems tacitly revised in *op. cit.*, pp. 11 f.

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The fact, of course, is that the primitive Vedic belief clung to the doctrine of the survival of something after death, and that, therefore, immortality was no new idea. The view as to what survived was as hazy as it is to-day in popular and philosophic thought alike, for then, as now, it was practically impossible to form any intelligible conception of what a soul is, for such a description of the modern view as that given by Prof. Stcherbatsky cannot be said to have any intelligible meaning. But superinduced on this simple view we have the philosophic doctrine passed off under the name of Yājñavalkya, which asserts that the soul is not, as the ordinary man thinks, independent; it is only a part of a greater whole or more accurately an aspect of that whole, so that at death there is no separate existence in the sense of personal immortality. That this view was ever generally accepted in philosophic circles is not suggested in the older Upaniṣads, and the middle and younger Upaniṣads show that it was not attractive and that the tendency was to consider the matter more theistically, the absolute taking on a definitely personal appearance and less stress being laid on merger in it, though it is essential to note that merger remains as a doctrine alongside with the contemplation of continued existence. But there is not the slightest trace of the advent of personal immortality or the spiritual nature of the soul as new ideas in the period of the middle Upaniṣads; the soul there remains a psychological entity exactly to the same extent as it was such an entity in the older Upaniṣads.

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Prof. Stcherbatsky, however, maintains that the old and the new soul theories were clearly distinguished; thus all Buddhists rejected the doctrine of a self corresponding to the psycho-physical individual, Ātmavāda, but the Vātsīputrīyas and Sammitīyas accepted the theory of the doctrine of permanent soul, Pudgalavāda. This basis of distinction, however, is clearly illegitimate, and is not given by the Buddhist texts; instead the Pudgala is clearly a self corresponding to the psycho-physical individual, since it is maintained that it assumes new elements at birth and throws them off at death,¹ and the other Buddhist schools justly rejected either doctrine, seeing through the subterfuge by which these two schools endeavoured, while evading direct contradiction of the master’s insistence on Anattā, negation of a self, to preserve the existence of something which could transmigrate, thus preserving the reality of the doctrine of moral retribution, which utterly disappears in the ordinary conception of Buddhism.² Nor is there any plausibility in the view that the Kaṭha Upaniṣad already recognizes what Prof. Stcherbatsky—on dubious grounds—claims to be the fundamental doctrine of Buddhism, the existence of Dharmas conceived as a plurality of subtle, ultimate, not further analysable elements of matter, mind, and force. The theory is based on the fact that in that Upaniṣad (iv. 14) we find a condemnation of him who sees Dharmas separately (*pṛthag dharmān paçyati*), which is a very different thing from Stcherbatsky’s rendering ‘maintains the existence of separate elements’. The idea that Dharmas in this passage are ‘elements’ is as implausible as that the term Dharma in i. 21 has this sense; the word seems to mean in both instances something like ‘thing’ as taken by Geiger,³ and this use harmonizes with *dharmya* as opposed to what is subtle (*aṇu*) in ii. 13, a passage ignored by Stcherbatsky. With this rendering disappears wholly the idea that the author of the Kaṭha is directing a polemic against a doctrine which denies both the old and the new theories of the soul, or that Dharma is ‘a catchword referring to a new and foreign doctrine, some *anātma-dharma* theory’. Nor is there the slightest justification for the view that Pāṇini⁴ is aware of Buddhist and Sāṁkhya views of causation, for his explanation of the use of *saṃskṛta* and *upakṛta* or *upaskṛta* corresponds very poorly with this suggestion.

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¹ See Vasubandhu’s account in Stcherbatsky’s *Soul Theory*, p. 851.

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² Cf. Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 81 ff.

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³ *Pāli Dhamma*, p. 9.

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⁴ ii. 3. 53; iv. 2. 16, 4. 3; vi. 1. 139. The Paribhāṣās referred to neither prove the thesis nor have validity for Pāṇini. They do not appear in the Mahābhāṣya, but in the Kāçikā (7th cent. A.D.). The absurdity of the suggestion of Pāṇini’s knowledge would be increased if we accepted Charpentier’s claim (*ZII.* ii. 140 ff.) that he lived not later than 550 B.C., since he knew the title of Kamboja King, which was extinct after the death of Kambyses (= Kamboja King, title of older Achaemenidai). But this rests on a number of conjectures, all unproved and all most implausible.

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Stcherbatsky¹ suggests further that from the Sāṅkhya the Buddhists derived the incentive to the doctrine of the world as consisting of momentary elements of mind, matter, and force. The Guṇas of the Sāṅkhya on this view are interpreted as fundamental principles, matter, mind-stuff, and energy-stuff, acting as interdependent moments in every real and substantial existence; ‘the infinitesimals of energy, present everywhere, are semi-material; although different from the inertia of matter and the luminosity of mind, they are separate and substantial’. The Buddhist elements are a reply to the Sāṅkhya by an architect of greater skill. Ingenious as this theory is, it depends, even if we accept the suggested view of the Buddhist Dharmas as primitive—which seems impossible—on the belief that the interpretation of the Guṇas adopted is really that of the early Sāṅkhya. This seems frankly impossible in view of the silence of the Sāṅkhya texts and of the epic alike. The interpretation is based on the Yogabhāṣya of Vyāsa,² who is a comparatively late author,³ and who shows every sign of influence by the Buddhist schools.⁴ To substitute his views for those of the origin of the Sāṅkhya is as unwise as to adopt the doctrines of the Sarvāstivādins, as expounded by Vasubandhu, as representing the early doctrines of Buddhism from a philosophical point of view. The same error marks the suggestion⁵ that the name of Sāṅkhya is borrowed from Sāṅkhya in the sense of Prajñā, that intellectual insight which destroys the infections (*kleças*), through which the spirit is bound to continued existence. There can be no question that the epic⁶ explanation of the term as Parisaṅkhyāna, ‘enumeration (of principles)’, is to be preferred to this suggestion, though it is still more probable that in its earliest stage the term simply referred to reasoning.

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¹ *Op. cit.*, p. 22.

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² Cf. Dasgupta, *The Study of Patañjali*; *Ind. Phil.* i. 243 ff.

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³ Cf. Woods, *Yoga-System of Patañjali*, pp. xx f. His reasoning (p. xxi) that the comm. is after A.D. 650 because it is cited by Māgha is clearly a slip; Māgha knew it apparently and so it dates before A. D. 700. Dasgupta’s (*Ind. Phil.* i. 230 ff.) early date for Patañjali as identical with the grammarian is implausible in the extreme.

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⁴ See Stcherbatsky, *op. cit.*, pp. 46, 47, n. 3. The idea that the Sāṅkhya did not recognize substance and quality in a relation of inherence (*ibid.*, p. 27, n. 2) is clearly impossible, and is not even Vyāsa’s view.

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⁵ *Op. cit.*, p. 51, n. 1. Berndl (*op. cit.*, p. 13 n.) seeks to show that the name refers to number, not of principles, but of the Guṇas as transcendent realities.

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⁶ See Hopkins, *Great Epic of India*, pp. 126 f. Thus Sāṁkhya indicates a stage of definition prior to the Vaiçeṣika, which defines by special difference (*viçeṣa*). In lieu it gives a description with enumeration of contents. The term Yoga, however, when used with Sāṁkhya indicates the wider sense. It itself denotes the exertion which results in hypnosis, praxis as opposed to theory, but it assumes other shades of meaning, including the restraint of the senses (cf. Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, p. 225) and the joining of the spirit to that of Içvara or an absolute. Cf. Keith, *Sāṁkhya System*, chap. iv.

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The Upaniṣads themselves contain traces of the doctrine of Yoga, regarded as a discipline by which the mind can be withdrawn from the things of this world and unity with the absolute can be attained, although it is only in the Kaṭha, the Çvetāçvatara, and the much later Maitrāyaṇīya that these traces are of importance. The Çvetāçvatara, however, contributes an element which in the classical Yoga distinguishes it from the Sāṁkhya, the presence of a personal deity, though the figure of the god in the Upaniṣad is infinitely more vivid and important than that of the Īçvara of the Yoga. This Upaniṣad, however, is distinctly marked by lack of clearness of conception, and attempts at harmonization of contrasting views. Recognizing the strength of the popular religion which craved for aid from the gods, and in no wise satisfied with mere Yoga methods of securing the end desired, the Çvetāçvatara introduces into its system the conception of god. But in this introduction we find a repeated confusion between god as an addition to the empiric universe beside matter and spirits, and god as identical with the absolute. In the first sense¹ we have the conception of the absolute as comprehending the three; god, who is the knower, the inciter to enjoyment, the lord; spirit, the enjoyer, the ignorant, not the lord; and nature, which is to be enjoyed by each spirit according to its merit or demerit. Two birds there are dwelling in one tree, one eats the sweet fruit, the other merely gazes on the scene; one, spirit, is distressed in contact with nature, but when it beholds the other, the lord, is freed from its woes. In the classical Yoga this picture presents itself in the form of a god who is a special spirit untouched by the impurity of the world, by action and its fruits, and who promotes the freedom of unemancipated spirits. The objections to the later view are obvious; how can there exist a god, who is not removed from all connexion with the world as is the released spirit, and yet is untouched by the misery of the world? In the Upaniṣad, however, god has a much more real existence; he is hailed as Rudra² and begged to spare the votary; he is invoked with the names of Maheçvara, Hara, and Çiva, and he is identified at times with the Brahman, which, though also set above Rudra, is immediately after³ expressly given the name of Lord, Īça, which is essentially that of Rudra. The end of man is to know, to see mystically this god, who is the magician⁴ who creates the universe in which the soul by illusion (*māyā*) is bound. He is the maker of all, all-knower, self-sourced, intelligent, the author of time,⁵ yet above the three times and impartite,⁶ possession of qualities, omniscient, the ruler of matter (*pradhāna*), and of the spirit, lord of qualities, the cause of transmigration and of liberation, of continuance and of bondage. When men shall roll up space as if it were a piece of leather, then only will there be an end of evil apart from the knowledge of god.⁷

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¹ i. 8–16; iv. 6, 7.

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² iii. 1–6; iv. 16, 18, 21, 22.

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³ iii. 7.

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⁴ iv. 9, 10.

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⁵ vi. 16.

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⁶ vi. 5.

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⁷ vi. 20, obviously a polemic against views similar to those of Buddhism or the later Sāṁkhya.

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Knowledge of god is vouchsafed by the grace of the lord⁸ to him who has the highest devotion (*bhakti*) to god, and also to his spiritual teacher even as to god,¹ a doctrine which suggests not the later Yoga, but the spirit of the Bhagavadgītā and the general adoration of the teacher, as an essential part of the way of salvation, in the sectarian religions.

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⁸ iii. 20 (= TA. x. 10. 1; cf. KU. ii. 20). Cf. the Yoga doctrine in *Vyāsabhāṣya*, i. 23 f.

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¹ vi. 23.

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The early Upaniṣads contain no clear trace of the doctrine which is later found in the Buddhism of the Sarvāstivādins,² and which discriminates between the power of knowledge to remove causes of existence and that of ecstasy, assigning to the latter alone the power of suppressing all material elements and all sensuous consciousness, knowledge dealing with mental elements and mental consciousness. Such a distinction has every appearance of being an excrescence on the original Buddhist doctrine, evoked by the desire to find a logical place for ecstasy as opposed to mere knowledge, but it may have been early in appearing.

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