Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s24.2

v2.c24.s24.2

In the history of thought there is nothing altogether new. No system of thought issues forth in all its fulness from the head of any one man. There must have existed philosophical ideas and doctrines affording the necessary material for the founder to work upon. In our account of the cosmology of the Ṛg-Veda,¹ we referred to certain vague anticipations of the Sāṃkhya theory of puruṣa and prakṛti. When we pass to the Upaniṣads, we find, in their varied teachings, the leading conceptions of the Sāṃkhya philosophy.² The authors of the Upaniṣads did not all think alike. Some of them threw out suggestions capable of being worked into the Sāṃkhya system, though they did not themselves reach it. When the Sāṃkhya claims to be a system based on the Upaniṣads, there is some justification for it, though the main tendency of the Upaniṣads is radically opposed to its dualism. The realistic tendencies of the Upaniṣads receive emphasis in the Sāṃkhya conception of the universe. The first mention of the Sāṃkhya is in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad,³ though the elements co-ordinated into the system are to be met with in the earlier Upaniṣads. Not only the notions of rebirth and the unsatisfactoriness of the world, but also such central principles as that knowledge is the means to release, and puruṣa is the pure subject, are taken from the Upaniṣads.⁴ In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad,⁵ the unmanifested (avyakta) stands at the top of an evolution series on the plane of matter, from which the great self (mahān-ātmā), intellect, mind, objects and senses spring in succession. Self-sense (ahaṃkāra) is not mentioned and the supreme spirit is admitted. Yet this is the earliest account of cosmic evolution which seems to have been utilised by the Sāṃkhya thinkers. The first product of prakṛti is called mahat, the great one; and the natural source of this idea is the Upaniṣad conception that the supreme spirit reappears as the first-born of creation, after producing primitive matter.⁶ The classification of the psychical functions may have been suggested by the account of the Praśna Upaniṣad regarding the states of sleep, dream, etc.⁷ The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad ⁸ contains a more developed account of the Sāṃkhya principles of the cosmos, the three guṇas, though the Sāṃkhya elements are subordinated to its main doctrine of theism. It identifies pradhāna and māyā as well as Brahman and puruṣa.⁹ The Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad, which seems to be a post-Buddhist one,¹⁰ is familiar with a developed Sāṃkhya and refers to tanmātras,¹¹ the three guṇas,¹² and the distinction of spirit and nature.¹ The Upaniṣads make use in a general and indeterminate way of these terms, which later systems have stamped with a special significance.