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In. x] CRITICISM OF THE SAMKHYA-YOGA AVIDYA
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earnest striving for the release of the prakrti which is only an unconscious instrument of fulfilment of the interests of the purusa? Moreover, the prakrti remains as it is with reference to other puruṣas even after it is released with reference to a particular puruşa. What then is the meaning of emancipation for the praksti? It is a selfcontradiction to say that the prakrti is emancipated with reference to a particular purusa while it remains in bondage with reference to all others. There is, again, no ground for maintaining that there are as many prakytis as there are puruşas.
There are of course some adherents of Sānkhya who believe in the multiplicity of prakytis, each assigned to each puruṣa. But though it effects an improvement in the sense that the emancipation of one purusa does not involve the retirement of prakyti from cosmic activity and thus the continuity of the world process is not snapped asunder, yet it leads to unnecessary complexity. In the first place, the postulation of a number of prakrtis is itself a cumbrous hypothesis and the postulation of one prakrti answers the requirements of the law of parsimony. In the second place, the plurality of the prakrtis cannot be supposed to remain unrelated inter se as that would rob the objective world of every claim to independence. The main ground for believing in the objective independence of the material world is that it is public property to which all the purusas have the same or similar relationship. In the third place, if a common objective cosmic principle were posited to comprehend all these microcosmic worlds within its sweep, the objections urged against the unitary prakrti as the cosmic prius would remain unanswered. In the fourth place, the postulation of the plurality of the prakrtis will only be a restatement of the atomic pluralism of the Nyāya-Vaiseșika school which the Sankhya system is supposed to transcend by the postulation of a unitary cosmic principle. Though Vijñānabhiksu has sought to reduce one prakrti to a plurality of atoms, it cannot be regarded as the orthodox representation of Sankhya ontology. All the arguments showing the unity of the nature of material, that is, unspiritual things as partaking of threefold character will be reduced to futility. The argument for the repudiation of atomic pluralism that infinite mass cannot be produced out of infinitesimal atoms and that the material cause must be greater than the product in magnitude will lose all meaning if the unitary prakrti were nothing but a congeries of atomic units each independent of and isolated from the other. Fifthly, the explanation of creation as evolution as opposed to conglomeration of units which is the position of the Vaiseșika will have no force and cogency if the world could be deduced from a plurality. Lastly, the question would arise whether the infinite praktis are ubiquitous and infinite in magnitude or not. If each prakyti be ubiquitous and all-pervading, it is difficult to conceive how
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