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XXIV] Kapila's philosophy in the Bhāgavata-purāņa 45 treatises, which regards the puruşas as being absolutely untouched by the instinctive root-desires (vāsanā) and the afflictions, it considers (like the Jains) that the puruşas are coated with the impurities of vāsanās and klešas, though in themselves they are essentially pure; again, the classical Sāmkhya considers that the vāsanās are produced in a beginningless way, through karma, through an endless series of births and rebirths, whereas the Pañcarātra holds that different puruşas are originally associated with different vāsanās according to the will of God. Unlike the account of the classical Sāmkhya, where the vāsanās are regarded as a part of prakrti as buddhi or citta, in this it is an original extraneous impurity of the puruşas. It is probable, however, that this account of vāsanās and their original association with the puruşas through the will of God did not form any part of the philosophy of Kapila's
Şaşți-tantra, but was a supplementary doctrine introduced by the author of the Ahirbudhnya, as it is not mentioned in the seventh chapter of the work, which is definitely devoted to the account of Sâmkhya.
The Sāmkhya thought described in the Gītā has been explained in the second volume of the present work, and it will be seen that, though the Gītā account is unsystematic and nebulous, with significant details missing, it is essentially theistic and intimately associated with this Ahirbudhnya account of Kapila Sāmkhya; and as such is fundamentally different from the classical Sāmkhya of the Samkhya-karikā.
In Chapter 22 of the 11th book of the Bhāgavatá a reference is made to various schools of Sāmkhya admitting different categories of being or evolutes'. Thus some Sāmkhyists admitted nine categories, some eleven, some five, some twenty-six, some twenty-five, some seven, some six, some four, some seventeen, some sixteen and some thirteen. Uddhava requested Lord Krsna to reconcile these diverse opposing views. In reply Lord Krsna said that the different enumeration of the categories is due to the varying kinds of subsumption of the lower categories into the higher or by the omission of the higher ones, i.e. by ignoring some of the effect entities (as
kati tattvāni višveśa samkhyātāny rşibhiḥ prabho nava-ekādaśa-pañca-triny atha tvam iha suśruma kecit sadvimśatim prāhur apare pañcavimśatim saptaike nava-șat kecic catvāry ekādaśāpare kecit saptadaśa prāhuḥ sodaśaike trayodaśa. Slokas 1, 2.
