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The Samkhya-Yoga and the Jain Theories of Parinņāma
in the Mahabharata, remained true to its original inspiration of monism and to support its (i.e. Upanisadic) cosmology adapted the cosmological ideas of Samkhya, with which the latter must have been identified amongst thinkers. We would not, therefore, agree with the opinion of those who regard the Samkhya in the Upanisads, the Mbh., the Smrtis and Purānas as mere perversion of the classical Samkhya or with the opinion of those who regard the Kapila Samkhya as derived from the Upanisad-Mbh. view. We would rather regard these Samkhya ideas as adaptations of the classical Samkhya. The Samkhya proper remained true to its position of dualism, 'Pariņāmism' and atheism15 just as the Vedanta remained true to its Upanisadic monism.
Whether Kapila-Samkhya had some affiliation with any of the numerous early Vedic schools or whether it was like the Śramana sects, a school of non-vedic Parivrajakas, we cannot definitely say, though Isvarakrṣṇa's contemptuous reference to 'ānusravika' in the Ska. and other such references in the Mbh. and the Gita (noted above) leave room for the possibility that in the beginning, it might have been non-Vedic.
As we have seen, these two schools (viz. Sāṁkhya and Jaina) have many points of agreement between them such as (i) the dualism of sentience (cetana) and non-sentience (jaḍa); (ii) the infinite number of purusas; (iii) the explanation of world-phenomena through Parinama and achievement of salvation through
13 Garbe and Jacobi.
14 Keith.
15 The fact that the Mbh. mentions a school of Samkhya agreeing with that of Isvarakṛspa and the express statement of the Mbh. that the Samkhya unlike the Yoga, does not believe in a supreme personal God, point out that the dualistic and atheistic Samkhya had its existence then. The statement in the Mbh. of the Cenial of Isvara by the Samkhya (Mbh. XII. 300) seems to indicate that it might have been atheistic from the beginning.
