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III. III]
AVIDYA IN THE SAMKHYA SCHOOL
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distinction is not tantamount to perception of identity. Thus there is no error because all our cognitions do correspond to objective facts as they are.
There is an unfortunate tendency to interpret the Sankhya theory of error on substantially the same lines with Prabhakara's theory. There is not the slightest warrant for this supposition. The Sankhya must believe in positive error. In the Sankhya theory, the self (puruşa), left to itself, is absolutely unattached to prakṛti, and so is unaffected by the vicissitudes of the latter. The self per se whether in bondage or in the emancipated state is absolutely free and pure. That in bondage the self does not feel its freedom is due to the fact that it mistakes the vicissitudes of prakyti to be the real incidents of its own career. This mistake is cured and corrected by the realization of the absolute distinction of the self from the not-self. In bondage, the self does not and cannot feel its distinction and difference from the not-self (prakṛti and its evolutes), because it identifies itself with the not-self. This identification of self with not-self is due to transcendent illusion which cannot be set down to any historical occasion. The self and not-self are eternal verities, and have a parallel existence. The relation between them is unreal and there is no reason why it should occur at all. But it is a question of fact and not of reason. The illusion of identity, which is called, in the favourite Sänkhya terminology, aviveka or non-discrimination, also is an uncaused fact. It is a source of gratification and comfort that it is liable to be destroyed by vivekakhyāti or the realization of difference. The reason for the illusion being called aviveka-khyāti seems to be due to the antithesis between viveka-khyāti 'the realization of difference' and the negation of it in illusion. As a matter of fact all who believe in the possibility of error, however variously they may interpret it, must admit that nondiscrimination of the subject and the predicate is the condition of it. The illusion of identity is the result of non-discrimination. It is not therefore wide of the mark to describe error as non-discrimination, because without it no error is possible, and because in every case of error it is immanent.
In the Sankhyasutra' error is called sad-asat-khyāti because the predicate is real taken by itself, and the reality of the subject is universally acknowledged ; but though both the subject and the predicate are true, the contradiction of the error proves that the predicate is falsely attributed to the subject. In other words, the relation between the predicate and the subject is unreal in the context. The theory seems to be the analogue of the theory of Vacaspati Miśra as propounded by him in the Tatparyaṭikā. He also regards the terms to be real, though the relation is not so.
1 V. 56.
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