Authorship Of Sastitantram

SR No.: 269347
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G Oberhammer
Publisher: G Oberhammer
Total Pages: 22
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

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dealt with in polemics and it is possible that a scholar of Vacaspati's rank knows only a few fragments of his work and considers him, who was once the most famous teacher of the Samkhya, as a representative of the Yoga system and attributes genuine Vrsaganafragments to Pañcasikha.
If we now recapitulate the results we have arrived at, we get the portrait of a teacher who can be exactly fitted in historically and whose work has had a wide influence upon the development of the school and the philosophy of the time. This is a portrait quite contrary to the one resulting from our study of Pañcasikha who is not known to the classical period through any fragment and who was too remote to be noted by the philosophy of the time. And thereby the question of the authorship of the Şaşțitantram is already decided. But let us first examine the expression,,Sastitantram". Şastitantram means a system of sixty concepts". This expression occurs in the Samkhyakārikā **), its commentaries and some passages of the Jainas ). This means that this expression is attested
**) Sāmkhyakārikā Kā. 72.
5) Sometimes we come across passages in which the Sastitantram is attributed to Kapila. For instance, in Kalpanasutra I, 10 we find the expression sattitantavisarae wich is commented on by Yasovijaya as sastitantram kapilaśāstram, tatra visaradah panditah; Bhaskara says in his Brahmasūtrabhāṣyam on Br. S. II, 1, 1: yadi brahmaivopādāna karanam nimittakaranam ca tatah kapilamaharṣipranitasastitantrakhyasmṛter anavakaso nirviṣayatvam... To conclude on the basis of such and similar passages, as does Udayana Sastri, that the Sastitantram is Kapila's work is unjustifiable. Such passages are easily to be derived from the identification of the Samkhya system with the Sastitantram, and they mean nothing more than that the Samkhya system had been founded by Kapila.
The same is to be said of the question of the Sastitantram in the Ahirbudhnyasamhita that has been raised by Schrader and recently resumed by V. M. Bedekar. Bedekar says in his essay,,The Development of the Samkhya and the Problem of the Sastitantram" that, in order to solve the problem of the Sastitantram in a satisfactory manner, the Sastitantram of the Ahirbudhnyasamhita must also be explained. To this we may say that we are talking of a Sastitantram meaning a definite text that is historically ascertainable. That text is, as far as we know, entirely different from the so-called Şastitantram of the Pañcaratra work. Only in the first case is the name Şastitantram deduced logically and organically from the teachings of the school, namely from the system of the sixty concepts. In the Ahirbudhnyasamhita we find, in the contents of the Samkhya system, categories
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