The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.60

v2.c40.s7.t3.60

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.