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ALBRECHT WEZLER
ORIGIN(S) OF THE GUNA-THEORY
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4. The difference between and the significance assigned to agreement of terms, on the one hand, and similarity of doctrines, on the other, in the reconstruction of the history of Samkhya have to be noted and to be examined as to their relative, and absolute, historical value - as do the theoretical premises they involve respectively, of course, in the situation as it is, i.e. in the absence of explicit references, allusions, or reliable historical reports.
As can be seen, a connection, of course, a historical one, is asserted here on the basis of an agreement of expressions from two different strata of the textual tradition of Samkhya, in spite of a certain semantic, or terminological, development which is admitted, but not elaborated by FRAUWALLNER, yet in combination with the indeed noteworthy triplicity common to both.'
When FRAUWALLNER, a little later, comes to speak of the "introduction of the doctrine of evolution", "the basic transformation which made the Samkhya system proper grow out of the old doctrine" of the Moksadharma,' his reconstruction of this period in the history of Samkhya philosophy includes the following passage: "Pancasikha" - whom FRAUWALLNER for the sake of simplicity, designates as "the man who carried out this recasting of Samkhya philosophy", a convention which I myself want to follow here - "did not content himself with teaching the emerging of the whole world from one primary matter, but he also put to himself the question of how it might be possible that the whole manifoldness of the phenomenal world springs from this one primary matter". And he came to the following solution:
This latter point is conveniently illustrated by FRAUWALLNER's (1953) ideas, both thoughtful and provoking, about the origin of the evolutiontheory, in effect also the guna-theory. In the framework of his exposition of what he calls the basic form of Sāmkhya as found in the epic" - an exposition which can be regarded as a summary, but equally also as the summa of his earlier studies on the Moksadharma (1925a, b and 1926) - he states, among other things, when discussing the "connections" ("Zusammenhänge") between the Samkhya doctrine preserved in three versions in this parvan and the system of classical Samkhya": "But above all, there are undeniable connections between the doctrine of the three states of cognition (buddhih), as contained in our text, and one of the most characteristic doctrines of the Samkhya-system, namely, the doctrine of the three qualities (gunah) of primary matter (prakrtih). It is true, pleasure, pain and dullness of our text belong as qualities only to cognition, it is true that they are primarily states (bhāvāh) of the cognition here, and that the expression quality' (gunah) is used for them only after the description of their different qualities has been given.' But the same peculiar designations of these states of cognition and of the qualities of primary matter as goodness (sarvam), passion (rajah) and darkness (tamah), and the outstanding role they play in the theory of liberation, are too conspicuous for a connection to be disputed."
In the age of the Upanişads an attempt was made in the instruction of Svetaketu to derive the manifoldness of things from the most simple conditions by assuming three ur-elements through the uniting of which all things arise. And as Samkhya onginated in Brahmanical circles in which the thoughts of the Upanisadic times were still in force, this doctrine was known to Pancasikha, too, and inspired him to his solution to the question posed. In the instruction of Svetaketu it had been said that all things are made up of the three ur-elements, and that the differences between things depend on how these elements are mixed with one another and which of them preponderales. ParcaSikha now assumed that primary matter possesses three
This phrase was completely misunderstood by BEDEKAR (1973: 234 f.). As his translation is in general not faithful to the orginal I always give my own English rendering here. The German original reads as follows: "vor allem aber bestehen unleugbare Beziehungen zwischen der Lehre von den drei Zuständen des Erkennen, wie sie unser Text enthält, und einer der charakteristischesten Lehren des Sāmkhya-Systems, nämlich der Lehre von den drei Eigenschaften (gunah) der Umalene (prakrti). Zwar gehören Lust, Leid und Dumpfheit in unserem Text als Eigenschaften nur dem Erkennen an, zwar heissen sie hier in erster Linie Zustände (bhavāh) des Erkennens
und erst nach der Schilderung ihrer verschiedenen Eigenschaften (gunah) wird dieser Ausdruck für sie selbst gebraucht. Aber die gleiche eigentümliche Benennung dieser Zustände des Erkennens und der Eigenschaften der Urmaterie als Güte (salivam). Leidenschaft (rajah) und Finsternis (tamah), und die hervorragende Rolle, die sie vor allem in der Erlösungslehre spielen, ist zu auffällig, als dass sich ein Zusammenhang in Abrede stellen liesse". (FRAUWALLNER 1953: 297 r.). CC. HARA 1974 and LIENHARD 1996 "Einführung der Evolutionslehre". "... kommen wir bereits zur grundlegenden Umgestaltung, welche aus der alten Lehre das eigentliche Sámkhya-System machte (FRAUWALLNER 1953: 299 f.). Le CHU 6.1. ff; FRAUWALLNER refers here (1953: 305) to "S. 886" of his Geschichte der indischen Philosophie, Bd. I
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