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Samkhya Philosophy in the Gita
463
prakṛti, buddhi (intellect), ahamkāra (egohood), manas (mind-organ) and the ten senses, cognitive and conative. Manas is higher and subtler than the senses, and buddhi is higher than the manas, and there is that (probably self) which transcends buddhi. Manas is regarded as the superintendent of the different senses; it dominates them and through them enjoys the sense-objects. The relation between the buddhi and ahamkara is nowhere definitely stated. In addition to these, there is the category of the five elements (mahābhūta)1. It is difficult to say whether these categories were regarded in the Gītā as being the products of prakṛti or as separately existing categories. It is curious that they are nowhere mentioned in the Gitā as being products of prakṛti, which they are in Samkhya, but on the other hand, the five elements, manas, ahamkara and buddhi are regarded as being the eightfold nature (prakṛti) of God2. It is also said that God has two different kinds of nature, a lower and a higher; the eightfold nature just referred to represents the lower nature of God, whereas His higher nature consists of the collective universe of life and spirit3. The gunas are noticed in relation to prakṛti in III. 5, 27, 29, XIII. 21, XIV. 5, XVIII. 40, and in all these places the gunas are described as being produced from prakṛti, though the categories are never said to be produced from prakṛti. In the Gita, IX. 10, however, it is said that prakṛti produces all that is moving and all that is static through the superintendence of God. The word prakṛti is used in at least two different senses, as a primary and ultimate category and as a nature of God's being. It is quite possible that the primary meaning of prakṛti in the Gita is God's nature; the other meaning of prakṛti, as an ultimate principle from which the gunas are produced, is simply the hypostatization of God's nature. The whole group consisting of pleasure, pain, aversion, volition, consciousness, the eleven senses, the mind-organ, the five elements, egohood, intellect (buddhi), the undifferentiated (avyakta, meaning prakrti existing, probably, as the sub-conscious mind) power of holding the senses and the power of holding together the diverse mental functions (samghāta) with their modifications and changes, is called kṣetra. In another place the body alone is called kṣetraa. It seems, therefore, that the word kṣetra signifies in its broader sense not only the body, but also the entire mental plane, involving
1 Gitā, III. 42, XIII. 6 and 7, XV. 9.
3 Ibid. VII. 5.
2 Ibid. VII. 4.
4 Ibid. XIII. 2.
