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The Samkhya-Yoga and the Jain Theories of Parināma
Historical ... Many divergent views are held by scholars on the question of the nature of pre-Isvarakršna Samkhya.
According to Garbe, the Sāmkhya was thought out by one seer as a complete and well-knit system, such as we have in Isvarakrsna's Kārikā, in non-Brāhmanic circles, in pre-Buddhist period. This original Samkhya came to be perverted in the Upanişads and the epic, the Gitā, and later still in the theistic Yoga and the several sectarian Puranas; but, in spite of such deliberate attempts outside, the doctrine in its own school was maintained singularly unalloyed, all through its long career extending over more than a dozen centuries.
Jacobi* assigns the origin of the Samkhya to 800 B. C. approximately and before 500 B. C. it became fixed up in a systematised form which agreed with the classical form in being dualistic and atheistic but differed from the classical in other details such as the following :- (1) The 'pre-classical Sāmkhya, as differing from the later system which has only a metaphyical interest, had a didactic and practical purpose, being addressed to the masses rather than to trained dialecticians. (2) Its original dogma of Satkāryavāda or the continual reality of the products sub specie aetenitatis was more allied to the contemporary Jain doctrine of the indesructibility but qualitative indefiniteness of matter, rather than to the Vedāntic 'satkaraņavāda', with which it later came to be identified. (3) It did not fully develope the doctrine of the three-fold pramāņas right from the very start. (4) The similarity between the Sāmkhya and the Jain view as regards the nature of matter the size of the individual souls. belief in Karm an and
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Die Sámkhya Philosophie' first edition, 1894, second edition 1917. (As Prof. Belvalkar has noted in History of Indian Philo sophy, Vol. II. p. 414). cf. His two reviews of the two editions of Garbe's book in 'Gottingensche Gelehrte Anzeigen', 1895, pp. 202-211 and 1919, pp. 1-30. cf, also ZDMG, Vol. I ii, pp. 1-15, other smaller papers contributed to 'Kuhn Festschrift, Lichtdes Ostens,' etc. (Prof. Belvalkar, p. 416).
