The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.51

v2.c40.s7.t3.51

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