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272 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY heavy; and rajas whatever is active. It is clear from this description that the conception is arrived at as a hypothesis in accounting for the diversity of the world in its material as well as its mechanical aspects. Their triple character merely signifies that three is the minimum number of elements necessary for such an explanation. If only one guņa is poştulated, it would not explain variety, at all; if two, they would either cancel each other's effect, thus leading to no transformation whatever, or one would dominate over the other always, thus leading to a monotonous movement in a single direction. In later Sankhya is found the important development that each of the three guņas is manifold and that the infinity of praksti is due to their indefinite number. In this case the triple division would be the result of grouping together like gunas. Such a view undoubtedly explains better the discord and diversity of the world of experience; but at the same time it makes the doctrine more like the Vaišeşikawith its belief in an infinity of atomic reals with qualitative distinctions.
The gunas form the substratum of change which as in Buddhism is taken to be perpetual (p. 211). But change is not total here and the gunas persist while only their modes appear and disappear. This solution of the problem of change leads to the postulating of a two-fold condition for all things-one, latent or potential and the other, potent or actual. When all the modes of praksti are latent, we have the state of dissolution (pralaya); at other times, evolution (sarga). Even in the state of dissolution, praksti is supposed to maintain its dynamic character; only then, instead of producing unlike forms, it reproduces itself (sajātīya- parināma) so that perpetual motion is a fundamental postulate of the system so far as the physical world is concerned (p. 233).3 The ground for the conclusion that there is per
The idea of guņas here, if not derived from the medical theory of the three dhātus, has at least a parallel in it. Cf. STK. st. 13. * SPB. i. 127-8. As regards the antiquity of the guna-doctrine, see OST. vol. v. p. 377. The conception occurs as early as AV., and the Mbh. is full of references to it. 3 Pratikşaņa-pariņāmino hi sarva eva bhāvā ste citi-sakteņ: STK. st. 5.
