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The Jaina Philosophy Sankhyas had advanced further, if advance it may be called, than the Vaisheshikas in their analysis of matter and had demonstrated a theory of evolution, anything more entirely novel than which even the Vedanta has not to teach. They postulated Prakriti or undifferentiated cosmic matter as the eternal basis of cosmic evolution; and they definitely enumerated the various evolving stages of this matter with its properties, being here upon called the Sankhyas. They however thought it would be impossible to postulate matter without mind and they therefore laid down an eternal union between Purusha or the eternal mind and Prakriti in all its stages of evolution.
They attributed no functions to Purusha and regarded the evolutions of Prakriti for this 'Purusha who was ever in it but never of it, trying in this manner to satisfy the necessity of philosophic thought. The Sankhyas will thus be nearer the truth, nearer because they were, by postulating two entities in the form of Prakriti and Purusha, both interdependent so to speak, indirectly precluding the possibility of Moksha, salvation and initiating a principle which would lead to false results in practical ethics. Satvagana or purity the first of the three properties of matter is after all a kind of material purity in as much as that property is inseparable from Prakriti and to set this up as a standard to which men should even try to reach is only to point a way to re-incarnation or fresh evolution (of the individual self) and misery contemplation of Prakriti can raise the contemplation no higher than Prakriti, the source of all mundane existence and misery.
Patanjali not satisfied with the practical side of Sankhya set up a kind of training, generally known as Yoga for attaining the state of eternal bliss and postulated a kind of God, for purposes of contemplation. His Yoga led to marvellous physical results but nothing more. It again landed the student in Prakriti only on a higher stage of it. The Vedanta philosophy while trying to meet
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