The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.39

v2.c40.s7.t3.39

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.