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INTRODUCTION.
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Paramarshi, a portion of Vishnu, intended to destroy error in the Krita Yuga, a teacher of the Sankhya philosophy.
Vignânâtman explains the verse rightly, and without any reference to Kapila, the Sânkhya teacher.
Sankarananda goes a step further, and being evidently fully aware of the misuse that had been made of this passage, even in certain passages of the Mahâbhârata (XII, 13254, 13703), and elsewhere, declares distinctly that kapila cannot be meant for the teacher of the Sânkhya (na tu sânkhyapranetâ kapilah, nâmamâtrasâmyena tadgrahane syâd atiprasangah). He is fully aware of the true interpretation, viz. avyâkritasya prathamakâryabhůtam kapilam vikitravarnam gñânakriyâsaktyâtmakam Hiranyagarbham ityarthah, but he yields to another temptation, and seems to prefer another view which makes Kapila Vasudevasyâvatârabhatam Sagaraputrânâm dagdhâram, an Avatâra of Vasudeva, the burner of the sons of Sagara. What vast conclusions may be drawn from no facts, may be seen in Weber's Indische Studien, vol. I, p.430, and even in his History of Indian Literature, published in 1878.
Far more difficult to explain than these supposed allusions to the authors and to the teaching of the Sânkhya philosophy are the frequent references in the Svetâsvataraupanishad to definite numbers, which are supposed to point to certain classes of subjects as arranged in the Sankhya and other systems of philosophy. The Sânkhya philosophy is fond of counting and arranging, and its very name is sometimes supposed to have been chosen because it numbers (sankhyâ) the subjects of which it treats. It is certainly true that if we meet, as we do in the Svetâsvatara-upanishad, with classes of things', numbered as one, two, three, five, eight, sixteen, twenty, forty-eight, fifty and more, and if some of these numbers agree with those recognised in the later Sânkhya and Yoga systems, we feel doubtful as to whether these coincidences are accidental, or whether, if not accidental, they are due to borrowing on the part of those later systems, or on the part of the Upanishads. I feel
See I, 4; 5; VI, 3.
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