The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.64

v2.c40.s7.t3.64

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.