The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.32

v2.c40.s7.t3.32

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