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K. C. BHATTACHARYYA
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being (freedom) or their positive indetermination (value)” (II 117). And in the last sentence of the book freedom is opposed to being: "freedom without being” (1 92).103 The subjective attitude leads to the subject as Freedom. Theoretic consciousness leads to the nonsubject as Truth.
K. C. Bhattacharyya's last and longest works, not published in his lifetime, are two series of lectures, on Sankhya and Yoga,104 delivered at the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner in 1937. These ancient systems are treated with the same originality which characterized his earlier studies of Vedanta, Jainism, and Kant (I xi). In Sankhya especially, where the classical commentators "do not help us much” but the sources "are suggestive enough to tempt us to construct the system anew," the reconstruction "involves supplying of missing links from one's imagination,” without which "one cannot be said to understand Sankhya as a philosophy” (1 127). In both studies technical terms are given in Sanskrit, a source of difficulty for the non-Sanskritist reader. But the ancient traditions are presented as living philosophies.105 The Studies in Sankhya are of great intrinsic interest, with more metaphysical detail than any of his other works. There are some characteristic Bhattacharyya expressions. Prakriti or matter, traditionally described as constituted by the gunas or qualities as a rope by its strands, is said to be not a unity or substratum or togetherness of the gunas but their alternation (I 200). The doctrine of alternative absolutes is discussed: "knowing, willing, and feeling amount to self-becoming in the region of the absolute” (1 181); "the aesthetic (tanmatra) in fact is an absolute mentality like willing (ahamkara) and certitude (buddhi)” (1 180). He even suggests what seems like the beginning of a further development if not radical revision of this doctrine when he says, "These forms of the absolute mind are really three stages: buddhi as self-knowing becomes ahamkara as self-willing which in its turn becomes tanmatra as self-feeling" (1 181). Were this sentence elaborated in an article, it might be considered a fourth phase (hierarchical absolutes) in the development of
103 Cf.: "It is not objective being but objective negation or freedom that is eternally willed" (II 295).
104 of the four principal Hindu philosophies, the metaphysically oriented Vedanta, scientifically oriented Sankhya, psychologically oriented Yoga, and logically oriented Nyaya, Bhattacharyya wrote studies on all except the last. This is perhaps to be regretted, as Nyaya, already exquisitely subtle in its classical form, would seem an especially fertile field for his peculiar talents.
105 He "has almost at every cardinal point turned Sankhya into a living and original thought," says Kalidas Bhattacharyya (Memorial Volume, 230).
