History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

Page 1238

xvi] Philosophy of the Ahirbudhnya-samhitā 49
The process of development herein sketched shows that one active sense and one cognitive sense arise together with the development of each category of matter, and with the final development of all the categories of matter there develop all the ten senses (cognitive and conative) in pairs. In the chapter on the gradual dissolution of the categories we see that with the dissolution of each category of matter a pair of senses also is dissolved. The implication of this seems to be that there is at each stage a co-operation of the material categories and the cognitive and conative senses. The selves descend into the different categories as they develop in the progressive order of evolution, and the implication of this probability is that the selves, having been associated from the beginning with the evolution of the categories, may easily associate themselves with the senses and the object of the senses. When all the categories of matter and the ten senses are developed, there are produced the function of imagination, energy of will (samrambha), and the five prāņas from manas, ahamkāra and buddhi; and through their development are produced all the elements that may co-operate together to form the concrete personality. The order followed in the process of development in evolution was maintained in an inverse manner at the time of dissolution.
The above-mentioned manus produce in their wives many children, who are called mānavas. They in their turn produce many other children who are called the new mānavas, or the new men, in all the four castes. Those among them who perform their work for a hundred years with true discriminative knowledge enter into the supreme person of Hari. Those, however, who perform their karmas with motives of reaping their effects pass through rebirths in consonance with their actions. As has been said before, the manus may be regarded as the individuated forms of the original kūțastha puruṣa. All the jīvas are thus but parts of Visņu's own self-realizing being (bhūty-amsa). Now the prakrti, which is also called vidyā,
samkalpaś caiva samrambhaḥ prāņāh pañcavidhās tathā manaso'hamkrter buddher jāyante pūrvam eva tu evam sampurna-sarvangah prāņāpānādi-samyutah sarve-ndriya-yutās tatra dehino manavo mune.
Ahirbudhnya-samhitā, vii. 42, 43. Thus from bhūtādi, acting in association with taijasa ahamkāra, are produced successively the five tan-matras of sabda, sparsa, rūpa, rasa and gandha, from each of which in the same order are produced the five bhütas of ākāśa, vāyu, tejas, ap and prihivi. Again, from the associated work of taijasa and vaikārika ahamkāra there are produced the five cognitive and conative senses.
DINI