A History of Indian Philosophy I by Surendranath Dasgupta

Author:Surendranath Dasgupta [Dasgupta, Surendranath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

A word of explanation is necessary as regards my interpretation of the Sâ@mkhya-Yoga system. The Sâ@mkhya kârikâ is the oldest Sâ@mkhya text on which we have commentaries by later writers. The Sâ@mkhya sûtra was not referred to by any writer until it was commented upon by Aniruddha (fifteenth century A.D.). Even Gu@naratna of the fourteenth century A D. who made allusions to a number of Sâ@mkhya works, did not make any reference to the Sâ@mkhya sûtra, and no other writer who is known to have flourished before Gu@naratna seems to have made any reference to the Sâ@mkhya sûtra. The natural conclusion therefore is that these sûtras were probably written some time after the fourteenth century. But there is no positive evidence to prove that it was so late a work as the fifteenth century. It is said at the end of the Sâ@mkhya kârikâ of Îs'varak@r@s@na that the kârikâs give an exposition of the Sâ@mkhya doctrine excluding the refutations of the doctrines of other people and excluding the parables attached to the original Sâ@mkhya works—the @Sa@s@titantras'âstra. The Sâ@mkhya sûtras contain refutations of other doctrines and also a number of parables. It is not improbable that these were collected from some earlier Sâ@mkhya work which is now lost to us. It may be that it was done from some later edition of the @Sa@s@titantras'âstra (@Sa@s@titantroddhâra as mentioned by

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[Footnote 1: Venka@ta's philosophy will be dealt with in the second volume of the present work.]

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Gû@naratna), but this is a mere conjecture. There is no reason to suppose that the Sâ@mkhya doctrine found in the sûtras differs in any important way from the Sâ@mkhya doctrine as found in the Sâ@mkhya kârikâ. The only point of importance is this, that the Sâ@mkhya sûtras hold that when the Upani@sads spoke of one absolute pure intelligence they meant to speak of unity as involved in the class of intelligent puru@sas as distinct from the class of the gu@nas. As all puru@sas were of the nature of pure intelligence, they were spoken of in the Upani@sads as one, for they all form the category or class of pure intelligence, and hence may in some sense be regarded as one. This compromise cannot be found in the Sâ@mkhya kârikâ. This is, however, a case of omission and not of difference. Vijñâna Bhik@su, the commentator of the Sâ@mkhya sûtra, was more inclined to theistic Sâ@mkhya or Yoga than to atheistic Sâ@mkhya. This is proved by his own remarks in his Sâmkhyapravacanabhâ@sya, Yogavârttika, and Vijñânâm@rtabhasya (an independent commentary on the Brahmasûtras of Bâdarâyana on theistic Sâ@mkhya lines). Vijñâna Bhiksu's own view could not properly be called a thorough Yoga view, for he agreed more with the views of the Sâ@mkhya doctrine of the Pura@nas, where both the diverse puru@sas and the prak@rti are said to be merged in the end in Îs'vara, by whose will the creative process again began in the prakrti at the end of each pralaya. He could not avoid the distinctively atheistic arguments of the Sâ@mkhya sûtras,

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