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 255

238 The Kapila and the Pātañjala Sāmkhya [CH. a stage that they would not like to borrow from one another. As this can only be held true of earlier Buddhism I am disposed to think that the date of the first three chapters of the Yoga sūtras must be placed about the second century B.C. Since there is no evidence which can stand in the way of identifying the grammarian Patañjali with the Yoga writer, I believe we may take them as being identical?
The Samkhya and the Yoga Doctrine of Soul or Purușa.
The Sāmkhya philosophy as we have it now admits two principles, souls and prakyti, the root principle of matter. Souls are many, like the Jaina souls, but they are without parts and qualities. They do not contract or expand according as they occupy a smaller or a larger body, but are always all-pervasive, and are not contained in the bodies in which they are manifested. But the relation between body or rather the mind associated with it and soul is such that whatever mental phenomena happen in the mind are interpreted as the experience of its soul. The souls are many, and had it not been so (the Sāmkhya argues) with the birth of one all would have been born and with the death of one all would have died?.
The exact nature of soul is however very difficult of comprehension, and yet it is exactly this which one must thoroughly grasp in order to understand the Sāmkhya philosophy. Unlike the Jaina soul possessing anantajñāna, anantadarśana, anantasukha, and anantavīryya, the Sāmkhya soul is described as being devoid of any and every characteristic; but its nature is absolute pure consciousness (cit). The Sāmkhya view differs from the Vedānta, firstly in this that it does not consider the soul to be of the nature of pure intelligence and bliss (ānanda) Bliss with Sāmkhya is but another name for pleasure and as such it belongs to prakrti and does not constitute the nature of soul; secondly, according to Vedānta the individual souls (jiva) are
1 See S. N. Das Gupta, Yoga Philosophy in relation to other Indian systems of thought, ch. II. The most important point in favour of this identification seems to be that both the Palañjalis as against the other Indian systems admitted the doctrine of sphoța which was denied even by Samkhya. On the doctrine of Sphota see my Study of Patanjali, Appendix 1.
? Karikā, 18. 3 Sec Citsuk ha's Tattva pradipikā, iv.