A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c2.3

c2.3

3. The Place of the Upanishads in Indian Philosophy.—The Upanishads indeed occupy a unique place in the development of Indian thought. All the later Systems of Indian Philosophy, as we believe has been shown in detail for the first time in the history of Upanishadic literature in the fourth Chapter of this work, have been rooted in the Upanishads. The indebtedness of particular systems of Philosophy to the Upanishads has been partially worked out by a Garbe or an Oldenberg; but the entire problem of the relation of all the later Systems of Philosophy to the Upanishads has been hitherto an unattempted task. Oldenberg has indeed fairly worked out both in his earlier volume on "Buddha" as well as in his later "Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des Buddhismus" how the Upanishads prepared the way for Buddhistic thought, and deserves praise for having attempted a hitherto unattempted task. Garbe in his "Samkhya-Philosophie" has discussed how far we could legitimately trace the origin of Sāmkhya Philosophy to the Upanishads, and has come to the conclusion that the roots of the Sāmkhya Philosophy cannot be traced to the oldest Upanishads (p. 27), but that the Sāmkhya ideas came into existence only during the interval elapsing between the older period of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka and the Chhāndogya on the one hand, and the later period of the Kaṭha, the Śvetāśvatara, the Praśna, and the Maitri on the other. Garbe points out truly that the Ahaṃkāra of Chhāndogya VII. 25 is to be understood not as the egoism of Sāmkhya philosophy, but as the mystical ego, and there is much truth in what Garbe says. He similarly makes a discussion about such conceptions as those of Sambhūti and Liṅga occurring in the earlier Upanishads, and comes to the conclusion that even they have no Sāmkhyan connotation. So far so good. It is, however, when Garbe refuses altogether to find any traces of Sāmkhya doctrine in the older Upanishads that it becomes impossible for us to go with him. Indeed, in our fourth Chapter we have pointed out how the conception of the three colours in the Chhāndogya must have led to the conception of the tri-coloured Prakṛiti in Sāmkhya Philosophy (pp. 182-183), and as the Chhāndogya is recognised to be an old Upanishad all round, a general statement such as the one which Garbe makes that no traces whatever of Sāmkhya doctrine are to be found in