The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies v4: Volume 4

The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies v4

Language: English

v4.c20 Front matter — 104 parts
v4.c21 The History and Literature of Sāṃkhya — 48 parts
v4.c22 The Philosophy of Sāṃkhya — 92 parts
v4.c23 Notes to Summaries — 433 parts

Volume 4

Front matter

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II. Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika up to Gaṅgeśa (1978)

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III. Advaita Vedānta up to Śaṃkara and His Pupils (1982)

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IV. Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy (1987)

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Sāṃkhya A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy

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EDITED BY GERALD JAMES LARSON AND RAM SHANKAR BHATTACHARYA

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In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page on this book

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This book has been composed in India by Shantilal Jain at Shri Jainendra Press, A-45, Naraina, Phase I, New Delhi 110 028

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Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability

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Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

Dayanand Bhargava, Department of Sanskrit, University of Jodhpur (Rajasthan), India Kalidas Bhattacharya, Department of Philosophy, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan (Bengal), India Harsh Narain, Department of Philosophy, University of Lucknow (UP), India Kapil Deo Pandey, Department of Sanskrit, Arya Mahila Degree College, Lahuravir Chowmuhani, Varanasi (UP), India Sangamlal Pandey, Department of Philosophy, Allahabad University, Allahabad (UP), India Karl H. Potter, Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, Seattle, USA Anima Sen Gupta, Department of Philosophy, Patna University, Patna (Bihar), India Prabal Kumar Sen, Department of Philosophy, University of Calcutta (Bengal), India Raghunatha Sharma, Sampurnananda Sanskrit University, Varanasi (UP), India Shiv Kumar Sharma, Department of Sanskrit, University of Poona, Poona (Maharashtra), India Esther A. Solomon, Department of Sanskrit, University of Gujarat, Ahmedabad (Gujarat), India Kedaranatha Tripathi, College of Oriental Learning, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi (UP), India the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.

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But the Church did not merely provide books; it also provided the means of their dissemination. The monastic scriptoria, where monks labored in silence to copy the sacred texts, were the precursors of the printing press. And when the press finally arrived, it was the Church that first harnessed its power, using it to spread the word of God to the corners of the earth. The Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in Europe, was a testament to the Church's commitment to the written word.

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Yet, even as the Church championed the spread of knowledge, it also sought to control it. The *Index Librorum Prohibitorum*, or List of Prohibited Books, was a tool used by the Church to suppress ideas it deemed dangerous or heretical. This tension between the desire to educate and the need to control would define the Church's relationship with literature for centuries to come.

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It is a complex history, one that is marked by both enlightenment and suppression. But it is a history that cannot be ignored, for it is the history of the very foundation of Western civilization. The Church, in its role as the guardian of knowledge, has shaped the way we think, the way we write, and the way we understand the world around us.

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PART ONE : INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SĀṂKHYA (*Gerald James Larson*)

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The History and Literature of Sāṃkhya 3 I. Proto-Sāṃkhya and Pre-Kārikā-Sāṃkhya 3 II. The Sāṃkhya Textual Tradition 14 Kārikā-Sāṃkhya and Pātañjala-Sāṃkhya 18 Kārikā-Kaumudī-Sāṃkhya 29 Samāsa-Sāṃkhya 32 Sūtra-Sāṃkhya 35 The Philosophy of Sāṃkhya 43 Preliminary Remarks 43 I. Sāṃkhya as Enumeration 48 II. Sāṃkhya as Process Materialism 65 III. Sāṃkhya as Contentless Consciousness 73 IV. Sāṃkhya as Rational Reflection 83

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PART TWO : SUMMARIES OF WORKS

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1. Kapila 107
2. Āsuri 107
3. Pañcaśikha 113
4. Ṣaṣṭitantra 125
5. Paurika 129
6. Pañcādhikaraṇa 129
7. Patañjali (the Sāṃkhya teacher) 129
8. Vārṣagaṇya 131
9. Vindhyavāsin 141
10. Mādhava 147
11. Īśvarakṛṣṇa 149 *Sāṃkhyakārikā* (*Karl H. Potter*; *Gerald J. Larson*) 149
12. Patañjali (the Yoga teacher) 165
13. Suvarṇasaptati (*G. J. Larson*) 167
14. *Sāṃkhyavṛtti* (*Esther A. Solomon*) 179
15. *Sāṃkhyasaptativṛtti* (*E. A. Solomon*) 193
16. Gauḍapāda 209 *Sāṃkhyakārikābhāṣya* (*G. J. Larson*) 210 17. Vyāsa, or Vedavyāsa 225
18. *Yuktidīpikā* (Raghunatha Sharma, Dayanand Bhargava, and Shiv Kumar Sharma) 227
19. *Jayamaṅgalā* (Ram Shankar Bhattacharya) 271
20. Śaṃkara 289
21. *Māṭharavṛtti* (Harsh Narain) 291
22. Vācaspati Miśra 301 *Tattvakaumudī* (G. J. Larson) 301 *Tattvavaiśāradī* 312
23. Bhojarāja 313
24. *Tattvasamāsasūtra* 315
25. *Kramadīpikā* (Anima Sen Gupta) 321
26. *Sāṃkhyasūtra* 327
27. Aniruddha 333 *Sāṃkhyasūtravṛtti* (G. J. Larson) 333
28. Vijñānabhikṣu 375 *Sāṃkhyapravacanabhāṣya* (Sangamlal Pandey) 376 *Sāṃkhyasāra* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 401 *Yogavārttika*, *Yogasārasaṃgraha* 412
29. Bhāvāgaṇeśa 413 *Tattvayāthārthyadīpana* (Kapil Deo Pandey) 413
30. Mahādeva Vedāntin 417
31. Svayaṃprakāśayati 419 *Guṇatrayaviveka* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 419
32. Nārāyaṇatīrtha 421 *Sāṃkhyacandrikā* (A. Sen Gupta) 421
33. Nāgoji Bhaṭṭa 429
34. Vamśīdhara Miśra 431 *Tattvavibhākara* (Kedaranatha Tripathi and R. S. Bhattacharya) 431
35. Śimānanda 443 *Sāṃkhyatattvavivecana* (A. Sen Gupta) 443
36. *Sarvopakāriṇīṭīkā* (K. D. Pandey) 445
37. *Sāṃkhyasūtravivaraṇa* (A. Sen Gupta) 447
38. Kavirāja Yati 449
39. Muḍumba Narasimhasvāmin 451 *Sāṃkhyataruvasanta* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 451
40. Raghunātha Tarkavāgīśa 459
41. Devatīrtha Svāmin 461
42. Tārānātha Tarkavācaspati 463 *Upodghāta* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 463
43. Narendranātha Tattvanidhi 465
44. Bhārati Yati 467 *Tattvakaumudīvyākhyā* (E. A. Solomon) 467
45. Pramathanātha Tarkabhūṣaṇa 473 *Amalā* (Kalidas Bhattacharya) 473

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*Āvaraṇavariṇi* (K. D. Bhattacharya) 488
47. Hariprasāda 501 *Sāṃkhyasūtravṛtti* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 501
48. Bālarāma Udāsīna 509 *Vidvattoṣiṇī* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 509
49. Pañcānana Tarkaratna 521 *Pūrṇimā* (K. D. Bhattacharya) 521
50. Kuñjavihārī Tarkasiddhānta 545 *Tattvabodhini* (Prabal Kumar Sen) 545
51. Kṛṣṇavallabhācārya 551 *Kiraṇāvalī* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 551 *Sāṃkhyakārikābhāṣya* (A. Sen Gupta) 554
52. Rājeśvara Śāstrin Drāviḍa 559 *Tattvakaumudīṭīkā* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 559
53. Rameśacandra Tarkatīrtha 563 *Guṇamayi* (K. D. Bhattacharya) 563
54. Kālipada Tarkācārya 577 *Sāraprabhā* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 577
55. Hariharānanda Āraṇya 581 *Sāṃkhyatattvāloka* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 581
56. Harirāma Śukla 591 *Suṣamā* (R. S. Bhattacharya) 591
57. Śivanārāyaṇa Śāstrin 599 *Sārabodhinī* (A. Sen Gupta) 599
58. Naraharinātha 611
59. Sītārāma Śāstrī 613
60. Brahmamuni 615
61. Keśava 617
62. Kṛṣṇa Miśra 617
63. *Sāṃkhyaparibhāṣā* 617
64. M. V. Upādhyāya 619
65. Śrī Rāma Pāṇḍeya 621

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NOTES 623

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the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.

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Many years ago when I met the great Gopinath Kaviraj for the first time in Varanasi, he inquired about my work. I commented that I was working on one of the ancient systems of Indian philosophy, namely, the Sāṃkhya. He impatiently waved his hand to interrupt me. "Sāṃkhya," he said, "is not *one* of the systems of Indian philosophy. Sāṃkhya *is* the philosophy of India!" He was referring, of course, to the ancient period, but he also went on to stress the remarkable influence that Sāṃkhya has had on almost every phase of Indian culture and learning. Philosophy, mythology, theology, law, medicine, art, and the various traditions of Yoga and Tantra have all been touched by the categories and basic notions of the Sāṃkhya. This is not at all to claim that these various areas of learning and cultural practice have accepted the dualist metaphysics of Sāṃkhya or its overall classical systematic formulation. To the contrary, there have been intense polemics over the centuries against the Sāṃkhya position. What is striking, however, is the ubiquitous presence of the Sāṃkhya network of notions, functioning almost as a kind of cultural "code" (to use a semiotics idiom) to which intellectuals in every phase of cultural life in India have felt a need to respond.

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The present volume of the *Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies* attempts to trace the history and to interpret the meaning of Sāṃkhya philosophy from its beginnings in the ancient period to the present time, a period of some twenty-five hundred years. As might well be imagined, it has not been an easy task to accomplish this in one volume. Ram Shankar Bhattacharya and I have had to make some difficult editorial decisions by way of limiting the boundaries of our undertaking. One such decision concerned the manner in which we would treat ancient and/or "popular" (nontechnical) Sāṃkhya passages. For a time we considered the possibility of including summaries of Sāṃkhya passages in the Upaniṣads, the *Mahābhārata* (including the *Bhagavadgītā*), the Purāṇas, the medical literature, and so forth. As we proceeded in our work, however, it became clear that these passages could be best treated in the Introduction to the present volume. More than that, it became clear that these passages represent what could be called "Proto-Sāṃkhya" and should be clearly distinguished from what we are calling in the present volume "Pre-Kārikā-Sāṃkhya," "Kārikā-Sāṃkhya," "Pātañjala-Sāṃkhya," "Kārikā-Kaumudī-Sāṃkhya," "Samāsa-Sāṃkhya," and "Sūtra-Sāṃkhya" (and see Introduction).

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A second editorial decision concerned the manner in which we would deal with the extensive number of passages in Indian philosophical literature that criticize Sāṃkhya from the perspective of other traditions, passages, for example, from Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Buddhist, Jaina, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta works. Again, for a time we considered the possibility of including at least some of these passages, but we ultimately determined that such passages appropriately belong in their own respective volumes in the Encyclopedia series and not in the Sāṃkhya volume itself.

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A third editorial decision concerned the manner in which we would deal with the issue of the literature of Yoga. Our own view is that “Pātañjala-Sāṃkhya” is an important type of Sāṃkhya philosophy and deserves to be treated as such, but we encountered the practical difficulty of some seventy Sanskrit texts on Yoga that should be considered. The only sensible solution appeared to be, therefore, to prepare a separate volume of the Encyclopedia series for the Yoga materials with appropriate cross-references in both the Sāṃkhya and Yoga volumes. Eventually, then, when both volumes are published, they can be used in tandem.

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Apart from such external editorial decisions, that is to say, what to exclude from the volume, we also had to make a number of decisions regarding the internal boundaries of the volume. It was obvious from the beginning, for example, that three of our texts required special treatment, namely, the Sāṃkhyakārikā, the Tattvasamāsasūtra, and the Sāṃkhyasūtra. These are the three fundamental and primary texts of the tradition upon which most other texts are based, and each presented a unique problem. Because the Sāṃkhyakārikā is the oldest systematic text available, we thought it appropriate to present an extensive treatment of it. Indeed, the so-called “summary” of the Sāṃkhyakārikā in the volume is considerably longer than the original text itself! In our view, however, since our task was not that of translation but, rather, that of presenting an overview of the systematic philosophical arguments in the text, we felt justified in taking some liberties in unpacking those arguments. Regarding the Tattvasamāsasūtra, the problem was the reverse. The Tattvasamāsa is not really a text in any sense. It is a checklist of topics upon which several commentaries have been written. We have, therefore, presented it in its entirety as a checklist. The Sāṃkhyasūtra, as is well known, is a late compilation, and there is no authoritative tradition either for the sequence of sūtras or their intepretation apart from the reading and interpretation offered, first, by Aniruddha, and then later by Vijñānabhikṣu (who generally follows Aniruddha throughout). We have, therefore, presented the sūtras themselves in a bare, outline form. We have, then, presented a full summary of Aniruddha’s reading and interpretation followed by a shorter summary of Vijñānabhikṣu’s reading and interpretation (stressing only those views of Vijñānabhikṣu that clearly differ from Aniruddha).

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In three instances in the volume we have presented unusually detailed summaries, namely, those for the *Sāṃkhyavṛtti*, the *Sāṃkhyasaptativṛtti*, and the *Yuktidīpikā*. The former two texts are recently edited by Esther A. Solomon, and because they have been unknown in Sāṃkhya studies until now, we invited Professor Solomon to prepare full treatments of both. The latter text, the *Yuktidīpikā*, is undoubtedly the most important text for understanding the details of the Sāṃkhya system, but until now no translation has been available. We thought it appropriate, therefore, to include as full a treatment of it as possible. The summary of the *Yuktidīpikā* in this volume is not by any means exhaustive, but it does provide a wealth of information that has until now been unavailable.

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Dr. Ram Shankar Bhattacharya and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who helped to bring this volume to completion. First, of course, our thanks to the many contributors (see List of Contributors) who prepared the published summaries. Second, a special word of thanks and acknowledgment to those who prepared summaries of passages that could not be included in the final published version of the volume—passages, for example, from Jaina, Buddhist, or epic literature that, based on our final editorial decisions, finally fell outside of the boundaries of the volume, or summaries in which it became apparent that a particular text was simply repeating what had been said earlier in terms of philosophical interpretation. In this regard, we would like to thank and acknowledge the help of Dr. Biswanath Bhattacharya (Calcutta Sanskrit College), Dr. Sabhajit Misra (University of Gorakhpur), Dr. A. N. Pandey (Kashi Vidyapith), Dr. R. R. Pande (Banaras Hindu University), Dr. R. K. Tripathi (Banaras Hindu University), and Dr. S. P. Verma (Kurukshetra University).

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Several research assistants have helped us in our work along the way, and we would like to thank and acknowledge them as well: Dr. Jayandra Soni, formerly of Banaras Hindu University and currently at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; Dr. Paul Muller-Ortega, Dr. Wade Dazey, Dr. Michiko Yusa, and Dr. James McNamara, former doctoral students in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Also, a special word of thanks for the research assistance of Dr. Edeltraud Harzer, of the University of Washington, Seattle. Our thanks, furthermore, to the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Indo-U.S. Commission for Education and Culture for financial assistance to our various contributors and to the coeditors, and, finally, our thanks and appreciation to Karl H. Potter for his continuing patience, encouragement, and help in his capacity as general editor of the *Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies*.

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For the nonspecialist reader of the volume, it should be noted that the Index provides brief definitions of many technical Sāṃkhya terms before listing page numbers and may be used, therefore, as a glossary for those unfamiliar with the Sanskrit terminology of the Sāṃkhya system. An additional glossary for classical Sāṃkhya terminology may also be found in Gerald J. Larson, *Classical Sāṃkhya* (2nd edition, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979), pp. 237-247.

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Full diacritical marks are given only for all primary entries of texts and authors in the volume. In the case of modern Indian scholars, namely, authors of secondary works, summarizers, and other contributors, names are cited without diacritical marks, in accordance with current convention in modern India, Likewise, the names of modern Indian cities are given without diacritical marks.

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January 1987

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GERALD JAMES LARSON Santa Barbara, California, USA

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INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SĀṂKHYA the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.

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The History and Literature of Sāṁkhya

I. Proto-Sāṁkhya and Pre-Kārikā-Sāṁkhya

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The term “sāṁkhya” means “relating to number, enumeration, or calculation.” As an adjective, the term refers to any enumerated set or grouping and can presumably be used in any inquiry in which enumeration or calculation is a prominent feature (for example, mathematics, grammar, prosody, psychology, medicine, and so forth). As a masculine noun, the term refers to someone who calculates, enumerates, or discriminates properly or correctly. As a neuter noun, the term comes to refer to a specific system of dualist philosophizing that proceeds by a method of enumerating the contents of experience and the world for the purpose of attaining radical liberation (mokṣa, kaivalya) from frustration and rebirth.

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These three dimensions of meaning in the word “sāṁkhya” are not simply synchronic distinctions but indicate as well the diachronic or historical development of the word in the ancient period. That is to say, in the ancient history of South Asian culture there appear to be three identifiable phases of development of the term “sāṁkhya” that roughly correspond to these three basic meaning dimensions.¹ These can be briefly characterized as follows:

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(1) Intellectual inquiry in the oldest learned traditions of ancient India (from the Vedic period, ca. 1500 before the Common Era [B.C.E.], through the Mauryan period in the fourth and third centuries B.C.E.) was frequently cast in the format of elaborate enumerations of the contents of a particular subject matter — for example, the principles of statecraft as preserved in Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, the principles of medicine as preserved in the Carakasaṁhitā and Suśrutasaṁhitā, and so forth. The Vedic corpus itself exhibits this tendency as do traditions of law (nītiśāstra) and politics (rājadharma), and it is in such environments that one finds some of the early references to sāṁkhya. Kauṭilya, for example, refers to sāmkhya as one of three traditions of ānvīkṣikī.² The notion of ānvīkṣikī in these ancient contexts means something like the enumeration of the contents of a particular subject matter by means of systematic reasoning.³ The practice of ānvīkṣikī is not really "philosophy" in our usual senses of the term; it is, rather, a kind of general "scientific" inquiry by means of the systematic enumeration of basic principles.⁴ Such enumerations appeared in a variety of intellectual subject areas, including phonology, grammar, statecraft, medicine, law, cosmology, and iconography, and the compilations of these subject-area enumerations sometimes came to be called "tantras" (meaning a scientific work, and synonymous with such terms as "śāstra," "vidyā," and so forth). Moreover, certain stylistic rules or "methodological devices" (yuktīs) came to be accepted in composing scientific works—for example, a brief statement of a position (uddeśa), a lengthy exposition of a position (nirdeśa), an etymological explanation (nirvacana), the proper order or sequence in enumerating a subject (vidhāna), and so forth.⁵ Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra provides a list of such methodological devices, and the author illustrates how his work uses the various methodological devices, thereby establishing that his treatise is a scientific work. The medical texts (Caraka and Suśruta) are also scientific works in this sense and likewise provide lists of methodological devices. This may well explain why the later technical Sāmkhya philosophy is frequently referred to as a tantra, and it helps in understanding the reasons why the long introduction to the Yuktidīpikā (the most important commentary on the Sāmkhyakārikā), contains a detailed discussion of the methodological devices essential for any systematic inquiry. In this oldest period, however, it is undoubtedly an anachronism to interpret references to sāmkhya, ānvīkṣikī, or tantra as themselves completed or distinct systems of thought, as some older scholars have suggested (Garbe, for example).⁶ It is more plausible to interpret these references in a much more general sense as the first and groping attempts at systematic thinking, which proceeded by determining and enumerating the components of anything (whether it be the components of the human body, the components of the sacrificial ritual, the components of the heavens, or the components of grammar).

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(2) A second phase in the development of the term "sāmkhya" begins from the period of the oldest, pre-Buddhist Upaniṣads, ca. eighth or seventh centuries B.C.E., and can be traced through traditions of the early ascetic spirituality in South Asia, namely, the various monastic (śramaṇa and yati) groups, the early Jain and Buddhist movements, and so forth, reaching a culmination in the sorts of speculative thinking one finds in the Mokṣadharma portion of the Mahābhārata, in the Bhagavadgītā, and in the cosmological descriptions of the oldest Purāṇas (or, in other words, reaching into the first centuries of the Common Era). If in the oldest period the term "sāmkhya" could refer generally to any enumerated set of principles (in an environment of *ānvīkṣikī* for the sake of constructing a scientific work), in this second period the notion becomes linked to a methodology of reasoning that results in spiritual knowledge (*vidyā, jñāna, viveka*) that leads to liberation from the cycle of frustration and rebirth. It is possible, of course, perhaps even likely, that in the oldest period the term “*sāṃkhya*” in its general sense of intellectual enumeration was applied on occasion in contexts of meditation and religious cosmology — the enumerations in *Ṛg Veda* I.164, X.90, or X.129, or the enumerations of the parts of the body or the breaths in the *Atharva Veda* or in the *Brāhmaṇa* literature would suggest as much — but there is little doubt that it is primarily in this second period that “*sāṃkhya*” becomes a prominent notion in those environments in which meditation, spirititual exercises, and religious cosmology represent the crucial subject matters.

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The archaic ontology of *Chāndogya Upaniṣad* VI.2-5, for example, with its emphasis on primordial Being (*sat*) in its tripartite manifestations as fire (red), water (white), and food (black), correlated with speech, breath, and mind, probably foreshadows the later Sāṃkhya ontological notions of *prakṛti*, the three *guṇas*, and the preexistence of the effect. On one level, of course, this kind of reflection echoes older Vedic notions (for example, some of the number sequences and symbolism of RV.X.164), but, on another level, it represents a transition to later formulations such as those in *Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad* — for example, “The One unborn, red, white, and black...” (*Śvet. Up.* IV.5), and “Two birds, companions (who are) always united, cling to the selfsame tree...” (*Śvet. Up.* IV.6-7) — a text in which the older Vedic symbolism is clearly present and yet a text in which the terms “*sāṃkhya*” and “*yoga*” are actually used. Cosmological speculations such as these are combined with elaborate descriptions of yogic experience in such texts as *Kaṭha Upaniṣad*, *Mokṣadharharma*, *Bhagavadgītā*, and *Buddhacarita*. The same sorts of speculation are used in the medical literature (*Carakasamhitā* and *Suśrutasamhitā*), and the hierarchical ordering of basic principles (*tattva*) is given a cosmological turn with respect to the periodic creation and dissolution of the manifest world in *Manusmṛti* and in most of the oldest *Purāṇas*. Certain characteristic notions become associated with Sāṃkhya, but throughout the period Sāṃkhya is primarily a methodology for attaining liberation and appears to allow for a great variety of philosophical formulations. Edgerton has expressed the matter well: “Any formula of metaphysical truth, provided that knowledge thereof was conceived to tend towards salvation, might be called Sāṃkhya.”⁷ It appears, then, that Sāṃkhya means in the Upaniṣads and the Epic simply the way of salvation by knowledge, and does not imply any system of metaphysical truth whatever.⁸

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On one level, Sāṃkhya as a methodology for attaining salvation by knowing carries further many of the older cosmological notions of the oldest Upaniṣads as set forth in Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI, and so forth. On another level, Sāṃkhya as a methodology for attaining salvation by knowing carries further the various psychological analyses of experience that first appear in the oldest Upaniṣads and then become dominant motifs in Jain and Buddhist meditation contexts and in such later Upaniṣads as Kaṭha and Śvetāśvatara. The enumeration of basic principles in a hierarchical order is a fundamental aspect of the methodology, but the precise number of enumerated items varies widely. In some passages seventeen basic principles are enumerated;⁹ in other passages twenty;¹⁰ or twenty-four;¹¹ or the later, standard listing of twenty-five¹² are enumerated. On occasion the highest principle is the old Upaniṣadic brahman or ātman, or, again, the highest principle is God (īśvara). In some contexts the Sāṃkhya methodology implies a monistic perspective, in others a theistic or dualist perspective. Throughout the period, however, a characteristic terminology and a recurrent set of intellectual issues begin to develop around the methodology: reflections about a primordial materiality (pradhāna); enumerations of psychic states or conditions (bhāvas, guṇas) that can be construed psychologically and/or cosmologically; analyses of the various aspects of intellectual experience in terms of intellect/will (hereafter translated simply as "intellect") (buddhi), egoity (ahaṃkāra), and mind (manas); speculations about the nature of the inner self (puruṣa) in terms of a cosmic Self (ātman) or the self in the body or in the manifest world (jīva, bhūtātman); elaborations of the five sense capacities (indriya) correlated with the five gross elements (bhūta), the five action capacities (karmendriya), and the five contents or "objects" (viṣaya) of the senses; and a general polarity between subjectivity and objectivity in terms of "the knower of the field" (kṣetrajña) and "the field" (kṣetra). Clearly there is a system (or systems) in the process of developing, but the focus in this second period is rather on the process or methodology itself and not on the contents that result from the process.

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In contrast to methods of spiritual discipline (yoga) that emphasize posture, breathing, recitation, and ascetic practices (tapas), sāṃkhya is the intellectual or reasoning method. The follower of sāṃkhya is one who reasons or discriminates properly, one whose spiritual discipline is meditative reasoning. This is probably the sense of the term "sāṃkhya" in the compound sāṃkhya-yoga-adhigamya ("to be understood by proper reasoning and spiritual discipline") in Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad VI.13. It is probably also the sense meant in the twelfth chapter of Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita, in which reference is made to older spiritual methodologies studied by Gotama the Buddha prior to the discovery of his own unique method of meditation. Regarding the specific contents of this reasoning methodology, J.A.B. van Buitenen has offered the following comment:

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There must have existed scores of more or less isolated little centres where parallel doctrines were being evolved out of a common source. Occasional meetings at pilgrimages and festivals, reports from other and remote āśramas brought by wandering ascetics, polemic encounters with other preachers must have resulted in a laborious process of partial renovation and conservation, more precise definitions of doctrines and eclecticism, readjustments of terminology, etc. At this stage to credit these little centres with the name "schools" is to do them too much or too little honor.... Most of the process must elude us necessarily, but we stand a better chance of recovering the little that is left by allowing for the greatest diversity, rather than the greatest uniformity of doctrine.13

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In the Mokṣadharma portion of the Mahābhārata various names of ancient teachers are associated with these developing traditions, including Kapila, Āsuri, Bhṛgu, Yājñavalkya, Sanatkumāra, Vasiṣṭha, Śuka, Asita Devala (or Asita and Devala), Vyāsa, Janaka, and Pañcaśikha. Some of these names can be traced back to the older Upaniṣads, and many of them also appear in the later Purāṇic literature. Three of them are frequently referred to in the later technical philosophical literature as important precursors of Sāṃkhya philosophy, namely, Kapila, Āsuri, and Pañcaśikha. The Sāṃkhyakārikā and its commentaries refer to Kapila and Āsuri as the founders of the philosophical system and to Pañcaśikha as a teacher who greatly expanded or revised the original teachings. Unfortunately, all three teachers are lost to antiquity. References to Kapila and Āsuri are brief and largely eulogistic, and the situation is not much better with Pañcaśikha. Fragments here and there are attributed to a certain "Pañcaśikha," and Pañcaśikha on occasion is referred to as the author of a massive treatise in verse on Sāṃkhya philosophy called Ṣaṣṭitantra. The views attributed to Pañcaśikha in the Mokṣadharma, however, appear to be clearly different from the views that can be pieced together from the fragments, suggesting that there was more than one Pañcaśikha or that the name Pañcaśikha was a revered name in the tradition to which a variety of views were ascribed.14 Moreover, the claim that Pañcaśikha is the author of the Ṣaṣṭitantra is contradicted by other references that attribute authorship of Ṣaṣṭitantra to Kapila or to a certain Vārṣagaṇya. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that Pañcaśikha was a revered teacher of sāṃkhya in the sense that has been indicated in this second period, that is, sāṃkhya not yet as a fixed philosophical system, but as a general methodology of salvation by knowing or reasoning. It is also reasonable to suppose that practitioners of sāṃkhya in this sense represent various kinds of ancient lines of teachers (guruparamparā) that traced their lineages to archaic figures such as Kapila and Āsuri (in much the same fashion as Jains and Buddhists claimed archaic precursors for their traditions).

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What is missing in all of these environments, however, is a critical appreciation for the need to argue for or establish an intellectual basis for these speculative intuitions. Reasoning, to be sure, is being used, but it is a reasoning not yet distinguished from the immediacy of personal experience and the accumulated heritage of ritual performance and priestly wisdom. There is, of course, some groping for independence and a growing recognition that thinking itself may be a unique human activity that can exert its own identity against the established and received ordering of things. The very fact that much Upaniṣadic speculation appears to have been developed in princely (rājanya) or warrior (kṣatriya) circles (as opposed to priestly groups) and that the early independent ascetic movements (Jains, Buddhists, and so forth) were especially successful among the newly emerging commercial classes in towns where commerce and a monied economy were developing, certainly suggest that thoughtful persons were in need of new and independent ways of thinking and behaving. Moreover, that the political consolidation achieved under the Mauryans appears to have been legitimized by a notion of dharma and a theory of the state that owed more to Jain and Buddhist paradigms than to older Vedic models is also symptomatic of changes that were occurring in other areas of intellectual life. Similarly, the rise of devotional and theistic movements (the Kṛṣṇa cult, and so forth) in the last centuries before the beginning of the Common Era is an additional symptom of a broadly based cultural need to develop new and different patterns of intellectual formulation. Many of these tensions and changes come together intellectually in the Bhagavadgītā, and it is surely no accident that the so-called "philosophy" of the Gītā is little more than a potpourri of Upaniṣadic speculation, cosmological and psychological sāṃkhya reasoning, Jain and Buddhist ascetic motifs, varṇāśramadharma as karmayoga, tied together with an apologia for early Vaiṣṇava bhaktiyoga — a potpourri that confuses a modern reader almost as much as it confused Arjuna.

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In older German scholarship there was an interesting debate as to whether the kind of "philosophy" one finds in the epics (including the Gītā) and the Purāṇas is pure syncretism (Mischphilosophie, as in Garbe) or transitional philosophy (Übergangsphilosophie, as in Oldenberg).¹⁵ The resolution of the debate is surely the correctness of both, or possibly neither, for the crucial point is that there is no evidence of serious independent philosophizing of any kind in these texts. Whether one wishes to call these traditions syncretistic religion (or what we usually mean when we use the terms "Hinduism" and "Buddhism") or prephilosophical speculation on the way to becoming philosophy (or what we usually mean when we use the expressions "the philosophy of the Vedas and Upaniṣads” in regard to the Vedic corpus or “early Buddhist philosophy” in regard to the Buddhist canonical texts of the Tripiṭaka makes little difference. They all have in common a predilection for speculative intuition in an environment of received authority. Returning, however, to Sāṃkhya, the point to be stressed is that in this ancient period there is only a Proto-Sāṃkhya. There was, of course, an incipient philosophical Sāṃkhya gradually distilling itself out of this diffuse and varied intellectual heritage, but the evidence suggests that it was not at first taken very seriously. Whenever it is referred to (in the Mokṣadharma or the Gītā, for example), it is simply discounted and characterized as not really being different from Yoga.16 Taken overall, then, it is heuristically permissible to refer to this second period of development of Sāṃkhya as Kapila-Pañcaśikha-Sāṃkhya, or to carry through the association of the term “sāṃkhya” with the term “tantra” from the oldest period, to refer to this second period as Kapila-Pañcaśikha-Tantra, or simply as Kapila-Tantra.

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(3) The third phase in the development of the term “sāṃkhya” marks the beginning of the technical philosophical tradition and coincides with the end of the second period, namely, from about the last century B.C.E. through the first several centuries C.E. Until recently this third phase was as shrouded in obscurity as the second phase, and Edgerton, for example, in 1924 claimed that Sāṃkhya as a technical philosophical system was not really in existence prior to Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṃkhyakārikā.17 Since then, however, three sources have become available that clearly indicate that Sāṃkhya as a technical system existed prior to Īśvarakṛṣṇa, and that Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s own formulation comes at the end of the normative period of formulation rather than at the beginning. These three sources are (A) the publication of a previously unknown commentary on the Sāṃkhyakārikā called Yuktidīpikā (edited by P. Chakravarti in 1938, and edited a second time by R. C. Pandeya in 1967);18 (B) the reconstruction of a pre-Kārikā interpretation of Sāṃkhya epistemology based on quotations from older Sāṃkhya texts cited in Dignāga, Jinendrabuddhi, Mallavādin, and Siṃhasūri by E. Frauwallner;19 and (C) the reconstruction of a Sāṃkhya “emanation text” or a “short instructional tract” from the earliest Purāṇas and the Mokṣadharma, which Purāṇic editors then brought into conformity with the normative view of an established Sāṃkhya philosophical system, by P. Hacker.20

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(A) From the Yuktidīpikā it becomes clear that there was a tradition of philosophical Sāṃkhya in the early centuries of the Common Era that was more than a methodology of liberation by knowing (that is to say, more than the rather diffuse Sāṃkhya-Yoga traditions characteristic of the second period described above), and, specifically, that this tradition (1) attempted to establish certain instruments of knowledge (pramāṇas) and to offer careful definitions of these instruments;

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(2) developed a special interest in inference (*anumāna*) and constructed a sequence for making inferences made up of ten members (*avayavas*); (3) attempted, after much debate, to fix the number of basic principles, together with the precise order of their enumeration, including the technical term “subtle element” (*tanmātra*); (4) fully developed the related notions of *prakṛti*, the three *guṇas*, the transformation of the *guṇas* (*guṇapariṇāma*), and the effect’s preexistence in the cause (*satkārya*); (5) finally accepted after much controversy one primordial *prakṛti* but a plurality of *puruṣas*; (6) maintained a rich fabric of internal debate involving such teachers as Paurika, Pañcādhikaraṇa, Patañjali, Vārṣagaṇya, and various schools such as the “followers of Vārṣagaṇya,” including Vindhyavāsin and Īśvarakṛṣṇa,²¹ and (7) maintained as well a vigorous polemic of external debate with certain Buddhist philosophers and with the followers of early Vaiśeṣika. (8) It also identified itself with a tradition known as *ṣaṣṭitantra*, which apparently referred to a scheme of sixty topics made up of ten principal topics (*mūlikārtha*) and fifty subsidiary categories (*padārtha*) and which also apparently referred to a text (or possibly texts, that is to say, more than one version) by the same name (*Ṣaṣṭitantra*); and (9) it received its final normative formulation in Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s *Sāṃkhyakārikā*, which, though a brief text, nevertheless encompassed all of the important issues of the system in a concise and cogent fashion.

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(B) From Frauwallner’s reconstruction it becomes clear that Pre-*Kārikā* philosophical Sāṃkhya operated with a definition of perception (“the functioning of the ear, etc.”, *śrotrādi-vṛttiḥ*) and a definition of inference (“because of the perception of one aspect of an established relation, one is able to infer the other aspect of a relation,” *sambandhād ekasmāt pratyakṣāt śeṣasiddhir anumānam*, based on a scheme of seven established relations, or *saptasambandha*) that Īśvarakṛṣṇa clearly built upon and improved. Frauwallner speculates that this older Sāṃkhya epistemology derives from a revised version of *Ṣaṣṭitantra* composed by Vārṣagaṇya at the beginning of the fourth century of the Common Era. Such may or may not be the case, but the reconstructed passages do point to a pre-*kārikā* philosophical Sāṃkhya epistemology.²²

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(C) Finally, from Hacker’s reconstruction it becomes clear that there was an older Sāṃkhya ontology-cosmology that, again, formed the bases for Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s normative conceptualization in the *Sāṃkhyakārikā*.²³

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Apparently, this philosophical tradition of Sāṃkhya developed some time between the sorts of speculation one finds in the *Mokṣadharma* and the *Bhagavadgītā*, on the one hand, and the sort of normative conceptualization one finds in the *Sāṃkhyakārikā*, on the other. Moreover, it appears to coincide with the development of comparable conceptualizations within traditions of early Buddhist thought and early Vaiśeṣika. It is tempting to suggest with Frauwallner that this Sāṃkhya philosophical tradition is the oldest of the technical schools of Indian philosophy (Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain) and that Buddhist ontology, Vaiśeṣika atomism, and Nyāya epistemology may all have arisen out of an earlier Sāṃkhya philosophical environment, but this is perhaps to claim too much. To be sure, all of the later technical systems undoubtedly derive from the sorts of fluid speculation one finds in the "middle"-verse Upaniṣads (Kaṭha, and so forth), the Mokṣadharma, and the Bhagavadgītā, in which Sāṃkhya is primarily a methodology for liberation by knowing. When the term "sāṃkhya" becomes linked with a technical philosophical system, however, one has the impression that there has been a definite turn away from the older diffuse speculations and that philosophical Sāṃkhya has become a parallel or sibling intellectual movement alongside Vaiśeṣika and the early Buddhist schools, rather than a parental tradition to these schools.

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Unfortunately, although the Yuktidīpikā refers to a number of older Sāṃkhya philosophical teachers, it is difficult to ascertain even rough approximations of their dates. Paurika, who evidently accepted a plurality of prakṛtis along with a plurality of puruṣas, was probably an older teacher whose views were finally rejected during the final stages of normative consolidation. Similarly, Pañcādhikaraṇa, who accepted only ten organs instead of the normative thirteen, was also probably an older teacher. Moreover, Pañcādhikaraṇa appears to have had a somewhat eccentric view concerning the subtle body, which later teachers rejected. Also, Patañjali (not to be confused with the compiler of the Yogasūtra and/or the grammarian) is apparently an older figure, for his views that there was a new subtle body for each rebirth and that egoity has no separate existence as a basic principle apart from the intellect were discounted in the final formulation of the Sāṃkhya system.

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Vārṣagaṇya, however, and the followers of Vārṣagaṇya, including Vindhyavāsin, appear to have been closer to the time of Īśvarakṛṣṇa. Indeed, it could well be the case that Īśvarakṛṣṇa was himself in the lineage of Vārṣagaṇya. Frauwallner has suggested, basing his opinion primarily on citations of Vārṣagaṇya’s views in the works of Vācaspati Miśra, that Vārṣagaṇya was the author of a revised version of the Ṣaṣṭitantra, older versions of which had been attributed to Kapila or Pañcaśikha. Vindhyavāsin is said to have been a pupil of Vārṣagaṇya, to have revised the developing system further, and, according to Paramārtha’s “Life of Vasubandhu,” to have defeated Vasubandhu’s teacher (Buddhamitra, according to Paramārtha, or Manoratha, according to Hsüan Tsang’s pupil, Kuei-chi) in a debate during the reign of Candragupta II (ca. fourth century).²⁴ Vasubandhu, according to Chinese sources, then composed a rejoinder to Vindhyavāsin. Also, Hsüan-tsang (seventh century) refers to a later debate between Guṇamati and a certain Sāṃkhya teacher, Mādhava, by name.²⁵ It is interesting to observe, however, that the views of Vindhyavāsin (as set forth in the *Yuktidīpikā*) and Mādhava (as set forth in Dignāga) diverge considerably from the views of Īśvarakṛṣṇa. Vindhyavāsin clearly preceded Īśvarakṛṣṇa, for the author of the *Yuktidīpikā* indicates that Īśvarakṛṣṇa refrained from discussing the tenfold inference, since it had already been discussed by Vindhyavāsin. Moreover, the author of the *Yuktidīpikā* claims that Vindhyavāsin rejected the notion of a subtle body (because the sense capacities are ubiquitous and do not, therefore, require a subtle vehicle for transmigration); and that he accepted neither the contention that the subtle elements emerge out of egoity (since they emerge, rather, along with egoity from the intellect) nor the notion of a thirteenfold instrument (*trayodaśakaraṇa*) (since he argued instead that experience occurs in the mind, thus reducing intellect, egoity, and mind to one organ of internal experience, which, along with the ten sense capacities make a total of eleven organs instead of thirteen). These variant views of Vindhyavāsin are suspiciously similar to the views of Vyāsa in his *Yogasūtrabhāṣya*, a similarity that has inclined both Chakravarti and Frauwallner to suggest that the Vārṣagaṇya-Vindhyavāsin line of Sāṃkhya is preserved in the Pātañjala-Sāṃkhya of classical Yoga philosophy.²⁶

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Mādhava, on the other hand, appears to have been later than Īśvarakṛṣṇa, for the reported debate with Guṇamati occurred around the time of Dignāga (ca. 480-540) a period in which the normative view of Sāṃkhya was already established. Moreover, Dignāga refers to Mādhava as a Sāṃkhya heretic or “destroyer of Sāṃkhya” (*sāṃkhyavaināśika, sāṃkhya-nāśaka*) because he interprets the notion of *prakṛti* and the three *guṇas* as a plurality of primordial materialities (thus taking *prakṛti* in the direction of Vaiśeṣika atomism). Then, too, Mādhava appears to have believed that action (*karman*) resides in this plurality of kinds of stuff and that the cycle of rebirth (*saṃsāra*) is beginningless (thereby implicitly denying the Sāṃkhya notion of emanation).

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In all of this, it is quite clear that Sāṃkhya was a vigorous and polemical philosophical system, and one is tempted to believe the old Chinese claim that there were as many as eighteen schools of philosophical Sāṃkhya (though the parallel with the eighteen Buddhist schools is probably no accident). This must have been intellectually a remarkable stage in the development of Sāṃkhya, and of Indian philosophy generally, for it was evidently in this creative and formative period in the first several centuries of the Common Era that the main issues of Indian philosophy were first formulated and polemically discussed: the number and definition of the instruments of knowledge, theories of ontology and causation, the role and function of knowing and ignorance, the theory of error, the problem of selfhood, the problem of action and rebirth, and the problem of freedom and bondage. All of these issues had been discussed earlier, but the crucial task in this first philosophical period was that of systematic formulation, overall intellectual coherence, and persuasive presentation. Earlier diffuse traditions were brought together and codified in collections of sūtras and kārikās—one thinks, for example, not only of the Sāṃkhyakārikā but of Nāgārjuna’s, and, later, Gauḍapāda’s kārikās, and, of course, the early sūtra collections of Vaiśeṣika, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta; patterns of training students were being established; commentaries were being composed explaining the emerging technical terminology; and rules for discussion and debate were being formulated. These developments in Indian philosophy mirrored similar developments in literature, art, law, medicine, and social reality generally. The older Mauryan political hegemony had collapsed centuries earlier and the resulting decentralized regionalism had generated a resurgence of local traditions that now found themselves in creative tension with one another as the Gupta political unification (beginning in the fourth century under Candra Gupta [ca. 320]) reopened once again a broader cultural environment that transcended the older provincialism.

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The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies v4: Volume 4

Contents

Volume 4

Front matter

The History and Literature of Sāṁkhya

I. Proto-Sāṁkhya and Pre-Kārikā-Sāṁkhya