A word of explanation is necessary as regards my interpretation of the Samkhya-Yoga system. The Samkhya karika is the oldest Samkhya text on which we have commentaries by later writers.

The Samkhya sutra was not referred to by any writer until it was commented upon by Aniruddha (fifteenth century A.D.). Even Gunaratna of the fourteenth century A D. who made allusions to a number of Samkhya works, did not make any reference to the Samkhya sutra, and no other writer who is known to have flourished before Gunaratna seems to have made any reference to the Samkhya sutra. The natural conclusion therefore is that these sutras 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 Samkhya karika of Ishvarakrishna that the karikas give an exposition of the Samkhya doctrine excluding the refutations of the doctrines of other people and excluding the parables attached to the original Samkhya works–the shashtitantrashastra.

The Samkhya sutras contain refutations of other doctrines and also a number of parables. It is not improbable that these were collected from some earlier Samkhya work which is now lost to us. It may be that it was done from some later edition of the shashtitantrashastra (shashtitantroddhara as mentioned by Gunaratna), but this is a mere conjecture. There is no reason to suppose that the Samkhya doctrine found in the sutras differs in any important way from the Samkhya doctrine as found in the Samkhya karika. The only point of importance is this, that the Samkhya sutras hold that when the Upanishads spoke of one absolute pure intelligence they meant to speak of unity as involved in the class of intelligent purushas as distinct from the class of the gunas. As all purushas were of the nature of pure intelligence, they were spoken of in the Upanishads 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 Samkhya karika. This is, however, a case of omission and not of difference. Vijnana Bhikshu, the commentator of the Samkhya sutra, was more inclined to theistic Samkhya or Yoga than to atheistic Samkhya. This is proved by his own remarks in his Samkhyapravacanabhashya, Yogavarttika, and Vijnanamritabhasya (an independent commentary on the Brahmasutras of Badarayana on theistic Samkhya lines).

Vijnana Bhiksu’s own view could not properly be called a thorough Yoga view, for he agreed more with the views of the Samkhya doctrine of the Puranas, where both the diverse purushas and the prakriti are said to be merged in the end in Ishvara, 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 Samkhya sutras, but he remarked that these were used only with a view to showing that the Samkhya system gave such a rational explanation that even without the intervention of an Ishvara it could explain all facts. Vijnana Bhikshu in his interpretation of Samkhya differed on many points from those of Vacaspati, and it is difficult to say who is right. Vijnana Bhikshu has this advantage that he has boldly tried to give interpretations on some difficult points on which Vacaspati remained silent. I refer principally to the nature of the conception of the gunas, which I believe is the most important thing in Samkhya. Vijnana Bhikshu described the gunas as reals or super-subtle substances, but Vacaspati and Gaudapada (the other commentator of the Samkhya karika) remained silent on the point. There is nothing, however, in their interpretations which would militate against the interpretation of Vijnana Bhikshu, but yet while they were silent as to any definite explanations regarding the nature of the gunas, Bhikshu definitely came forward with a very satisfactory and rational interpretation of their nature.

Since no definite explanation of the gunas is found in any other work before Bhikshu, it is quite probable that this matter may not have been definitely worked out before. Neither Caraka nor the Mahabharata explains the nature of the gunas. But Bhikshu’s interpretation suits exceedingly well all that is known of the manifestations and the workings of the gunas in all early documents. I have therefore accepted the interpretation of Bhikshu in giving my account of the nature of the gunas. The Karika speaks of the gunas as being of the nature of pleasure, pain, and dullness (sattva, rajas and tamas). It also describes sattva as being light and illuminating, rajas as of the nature of energy and causing motion, and tamas as heavy and obstructing. Vacaspati merely paraphrases this statement of the Karika but does not enter into any further explanations. Bhikshu’s interpretation fits in well with all that is known of the gunas, though it is quite possible that this view might not have been known before, and when the original Samkhya doctrine was formulated there was a real vagueness as to the conception of the gunas.

There are some other points in which Bhikshu’s interpretation differs from that of Vacaspati. The most important of these may be mentioned here. The first is the nature of the connection of the buddhi states with the purusha. Vacaspati holds that there is no contact (samyoga) of any buddhi state with the purusha but that a reflection of the purusha is caught in the state of buddhi by virtue of which the buddhi state becomes intelligized and transformed into consciousness. But this view is open to the objection that it does not explain how the purusha can be said to be the experiencer of the conscious states of the buddhi, for its reflection in the buddhi is merely an image, and there cannot be an experience (bhoga) on the basis of that image alone without any actual connection of the purusha with the buddhi. The answer of Vacaspati Mishra is that there is no contact of the two in space and time, but that their proximity (sannidhi) means only a specific kind of fitness (yogyata) by virtue of which the purusha, though it remains aloof, is yet felt to be united and identified in the buddhi, and as a result of that the states of the buddhi appear as ascribed to a person. Vijnana Bhikshu differs from Vacaspati and says that if such a special kind of fitness be admitted, then there is no reason why purusha should be deprived of such a fitness at the time of emancipation, and thus there would be no emancipation at all, for the fitness being in the purusha, he could not be divested of it, and he would continue to enjoy the experiences represented in the buddhi for ever. Vijnana Bhikshu thus holds that there is a real contact of the purusha with the buddhi state in any cognitive state. Such a contact of the purusha and the buddhi does not necessarily mean that the former will be liable to change on account of it, for contact and change are not synonymous. Change means the rise of new qualities. It is the buddhi which suffers changes, and when these changes are reflected in the purusha, there is the notion of a person or experiencer in the purusha, and when the purusha is reflected back in the buddhi the buddhi state appears as a conscious state.

The second, is the difference between Vacaspati and Bhikshu as regards the nature of the perceptual process. Bhikshu thinks that the senses can directly perceive the determinate qualities of things without any intervention of manas, whereas Vacaspati ascribes to manas the power of arranging the sense-data in a definite order and of making the indeterminate sense-data determinate. With him the first stage of cognition is the stage when indeterminate sense materials are first presented, at the next stage there is assimilation, differentiation, and association by which the indeterminate materials are ordered and classified by the activity of manas called samkalpa which coordinates the indeterminate sense materials into determinate perceptual and conceptual forms as class notions with particular characteristics. Bhikshu who supposes that the determinate character of things is directly perceived by the senses has necessarily to assign a subordinate position to manas as being only the faculty of desire, doubt, and imagination.

It may not be out of place to mention here that there are one or two passages in Vacaspati’s commentary on the Samkhya karika which seem to suggest that he considered the ego (ahamkara) as producing the subjective series of the senses and the objective series of the external world by a sort of desire or will, but he did not work out this doctrine, and it is therefore not necessary to enlarge upon it. There is also a difference of view with regard to the evolution of the tanmatras from the mahat; for contrary to the view of Vyasabhashya and Vijnana Bhikshu etc. Vacaspati holds that from the mahat there was ahamkara and from ahamkara the tanmatras.

Vijnana Bhikshu however holds that both the separation of ahamkara and the evolution of the tanmatras take place in the mahat, and as this appeared to me to be more reasonable, I have followed this interpretation. There are some other minor points of difference about the Yoga doctrines between Vacaspati and Bhikshu which are not of much philosophical importance.

commentaries, gunas, intelligence, reference to, sutras, upanishads, yoga system