Qualities Of Sankhya

SR No.: 269584
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst
Total Pages: 14
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

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J. BRONKHORST
is already known to Aryadevall and Mallavādin (DNC 1/271).13 It must therefore have co-existed with the view that material objects are nothing but collections of qualities for at least some time. Yet the two are strange bedfellows.
In order to accomodate the doctrine of satkāryavāda, classical Sānkhya views the world as a continuous series of modifications parinama) of substrates which do not lose their essence.14 The Yuktidīpikā defines pariņāma in the following stanza (YD 75,6f.):
jahad dharmāntaram pūrvam upādatte yadā param/
tattvād apracyuto dharmi parināmaḥ sa ucyate // When the substrate (dharmin), without abandoning its essence, drops the earlier property (dharma) and accepts the next one, that is called modification (parināma).' Essential in this definition is that the substrate remains in each modification, without abandoning its essence. That is to say, material objects are more than mere collections of properties; there is necessarily something more to them, viz. the all-important substrate 15
12 E.g., Catuḥsataka XI (LANG 1986, esp. p. 106f.); see further HONDA 1974.
13 Several authors (FRANCO 1991: 127; JOHNSTON 1937: 25; LARSON 1969: 165; LIEBENTHAL 1934: 9n. 11) have drawn attention to the fact that satkāryavāda is without clear precedents in the earlier literature, and must be a relatively late development in Sankhya. Regarding the origin of this doctrine we may recall LIEBENTHAL's question, "ob nicht vielleicht satkārya selbst nur ein Aspekt einer Diskussion mit Madhyamika-Buddhisten ist" (1934: 4).
14 The ultimate substrate is, of course, known by the name prakrti or pradhāna.
15 This is how we must read YD 51,17f.: asmākan tu kāra pamätrasyaiva samghätäd äkäräntaraparigrahād vā kriyāgunānām pracitir vyaktivise so bhavatiti bruvatäm adosah "But [this] reproach is not valid for us because what we teach is that a particular manifest thing originates as the accumulation of movements and qualities on account of the cause and nothing but the cause having coagulated or having assumed another shape" (WEZLER 1985b: 22). This passage occurs in a discussion about the question whether the effect pre-exists in its cause, the famous satkāryavāda. The opponent argues that if the effect were there, it should be observable, which it is not; and if it is not observable, one should be able to infer it on the basis of its movements and qualities, which, again, is not the case. Here the author of the Yuktidīpikā responds that one can only search for the movements and qualities of an effect as distinct from those of the cause, if one assumes that cause and effect themselves are distinct, which Sankhya denies; cf. YD 51,15-17: kāryakāranaprthaktvavādinas tatkriyāgunānām prthaktvam anumătum yuktam ity atas tantvavasthāne patakriyāgunagrahanād anumānābhāva ity ayam upalambhah sävakāśaḥ syät | 'For him who holds that effect and cause are separate, it is appropriate to infer that their movements and qualities are separate. For this reason the reproach can be made that, in the state of a mere] thread (and no cloth), no [cloth can be inferred on the basis of the observation of the movements and qualities of [that] cloth (precisely because