The earliest descriptions of a Samkhya which agrees with Ishvarakrishna’s Samkhya (but with an addition of Ishvara) are to be found in Patanjali’s Yoga sutras and in the Mahabharata; but we are pretty certain that the Samkhya of Caraka we have sketched here was known to Patanjali, for in Yoga sutra I. 19 a reference is made to a view of Samkhya similar to this.

From the point of view of history of philosophy the Samkhya of Caraka and Pancashikha is very important; for it shows a transitional stage of thought between the Upanishad ideas and the orthodox Samkhya doctrine as represented by Ishvarakrishna. On the one hand its doctrine that the senses are material, and that effects are produced only as a result of collocations, and that the purusha is unconscious, brings it in close relation with Nyaya, and on the other its connections with Buddhism seem to be nearer than the orthodox Samkhya.

We hear of a Sashtitantrashastra as being one of the oldest Samkhya works. This is described in the Ahirbudhnya Samhita as containing two books of thirty-two and twenty-eight chapters (1). A quotation from Rajavarttika (a work about which there is no definite information) in Vacaspati Mishra’s commentary on the Samkhya karika(72) says that it was called the shashtitantra because it dealt with the existence of prakriti, its oneness, its difference from purushas, its purposefulness for purushas, the multiplicity of purushas, connection and separation from purushas, the evolution of the categories, the inactivity of the purushas and the five viparyyayas, nine tushtis, the defects of organs of twenty-eight kinds, and the eight siddhis (2).

But the content of the Sashtitantra as given in Ahirbudhnya Samhita is different from it, and it appears from it that the Samkhya of the Sashtitantra referred to in the Ahirbudhnya Samhita was of a theistic character resembling the doctrine of the Pancaratra Vaishnavas and the Ahirbudhnya Samhita says that Kapila’s theory of Samkhya was a Vaishnava one. Vijnana Bhiksu, the greatest expounder of Samkhya, says in many places of his work Vijnanamrita Bhashya that Samkhya was originally theistic, and that the atheistic Samkhya is only a praudhivada (an exaggerated attempt to show that no supposition of Ishvara is necessary to explain the world process) though the Mahabharata points out that the difference between Samkhya and Yoga is this, that the former is atheistic, while the latter is theistic. The discrepancy between the two accounts of shashtitantra suggests that the original Sashtitantra as referred to in the Ahirbudhnya Samhita was subsequently revised and considerably changed. This supposition is corroborated by the fact that Gunaratna does not mention among the important Samkhya works shashtitantra but shashtitantroddhara (revised edition of shashtitantra) (3). Probably the earlier shashtitantra was lost even before Vacaspati’s time.

If we believe the shashtitantra referred to in the Ahirbudhnya Samhita to be in all essential parts the same work which was composed by Kapila and based faithfully on his teachings, then it has to be assumed that Kapila’s Samkhya was theistic (4). It seems probable that his disciple Asuri tried to popularise it. But it seems that a great change occurred when Pancashikha the disciple of Asuri came to deal with it. For we know that his doctrine differed from the traditional one in many important respects. It is said in Samkhya karika (70) that the literature was divided by him into many parts (tena bahudhakritam tantram). The exact meaning of this reference is difficult to guess. It might mean that the original shashtitantra was rewritten by him in various treatises. It is a well-known fact that most of the schools of Vaishnavas accepted the form of cosmology which is the same in most essential parts as the Samkhya cosmology.

This justifies the assumption that Kapila’s doctrine was probably theistic. But there are a few other points of difference between the Kapila and the Patanjala Samkhya (Yoga). The only supposition that may be ventured is that Pancashikha probably modified Kapila’s work in an atheistic way and passed it as Kapila’s work. If this supposition is held reasonable, then we have three strata of Samkhya, first a theistic one, the details of which are lost, but which is kept in a modified form by the Patanjala school of Samkhya, second an atheistic one as represented by Pancashikha, and a third atheistic modification as the orthodox Samkhya system. An important change in the Samkhya doctrine seems to have been introduced by Vijnana Bhikshu (sixteenth century A.D.) by his treatment of gunas as types of reals. I have myself accepted this interpretation of Samkhya as the most rational and philosophical one, and have therefore followed it in giving a connected system of the accepted Kapila and the Patanjala school of Samkhya. But it must be pointed out that originally the notion of gunas was applied to different types of good and bad mental states, and then they were supposed in some mysterious way by mutual increase and decrease to form the objective world on the one hand and the totality of human psychosis on the other. A systematic explanation of the gunas was attempted in two different lines by Vijnana Bhikshu and the Vaishnava writer Venkata. As the Yoga philosophy compiled by Patanjali and commented on by Vyasa, Vacaspati and Vijnana Bhikshu, agree with the Samkhya doctrine as explained by Vacaspati and Vijnana Bhikshu in most points I have preferred to call them the Kapila and the Patanjala schools of Samkhya and have treated them together–a principle which was followed by Haribhadra in his shaddarshanasamuaccaya.

The other important Samkhya teachers mentioned by Gaudapada are Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana and Vodhu. Nothing is known about their historicity or doctrines.

1: Ahirbudhnya Samhita, pp. 108, 110.
2: The doctrine of the viparyyaya, tusti, defects of organs, and the siddhi are mentioned in the Karika of Ishvarakrshna, but I have omitted them in my account of Samkhya as these have little philosophical importance. The viparyyaya (false knowledge) are five, viz. avidya (ignorance), asmita (egoism), raga (attachment), dvesha (antipathy), abhimivesha (self-love), which are also called tamo, moha, mahamoha, tamisra, and andhatamisra. These are of nine kinds of tusti, such as the idea that no exertion is necessary, since prakriti will herself bring our salvation (ambhas), that it is not necessary to meditate, for it is enough if we renounce the householder’s life (salila), that there is no hurry, salvation will come in time (megha), that salvation will be worked out by fate (bhagya), and the contentment leading to renunciation proceeding from five kinds of causes, e.g. the troubles of earning (para), the troubles of protecting the earned money (supara), the natural waste of things earned by enjoyment (parapara), increase of desires leading to greater disappointments (anuttamambhas), all gain leads to the injury of others (uttamambhas). This renunciation proceeds from external considerations with those who consider prakriti and its evolutes as the self. The siddhis or ways of success are eight in number, viz. (1) reading of scriptures (tara), (2) enquiry into their meaning (sutara), (3) proper reasoning (taratara), (4) corroborating one’s own ideas with the ideas of the teachers and other workers of the same field (ramyaka), (5) clearance of the mind by long-continued practice (sadamudita). The three other siddhis called pramoda, mudita, and modamana lead directly to the separation of the prakriti from the purusha. The twenty-eight sense defects are the eleven defects of the eleven senses and seventeen kinds of defects of the understanding corresponding to the absence of siddhis and the presence of tustis. The viparyyayas, tushtis and the defects of the organs are hindrances in the way of the achievement of the Samkhya goal.
3: Tarkarahasyadipika, p. 109.
4: evam sadvimshakam prahah shariramth manavah samkhyam samkhyatmakatvacca kapiladibhirucyate. Matsyapurana, IV. 28.

history of philosophy, kapila, mahabharata, oneness, patanjali, purusha, siddhis, upanishad, yoga sutra, yoga sutras