SĀṆKHYA

Sāṇkhya also is concerned with the domain of nature, that is to say of Universal Manifestation, but, as we have already pointed out, this time nature is considered synthetically, starting from the principles that govern its production and from which it draws all its reality. The expounding of this point of view, which is in a way intermediate between the cosmology of Vaisheshika and metaphysics, is ascribed to the ancient sage Kapila; but, once again, this name does not stand for a person, and all references to it are of a purely symbolic character. As for the title Sāṇkhya, it is variously interpreted. It derives from sankhyā, which means 'enumeration' or 'catalogue', also occasionally 'reasoning'. It denotes especially a doctrine that devotes itself to the regular enumeration of the different degrees of manifested being, and this is indeed the character of Sāṇkhya, the whole teaching of which can be summed up in the distinction and consideration of the twenty-five tattvas, or true principles and elements, which correspond to those degrees revealed in their hierarchical order.

Having placed itself at the point of view of manifestation, Sāṇkhya takes as its starting-point Prakriti or Pradhāna, which is Universal Substance, undifferentiated and unmanifested in itself, but from which all things proceed by modification; this first tattva is the 'root' or mūla of manifestation, and the tattvas that follow represent its modifications at different stages. At the first stage comes Buddhi, which is also called Mahat or the 'great principle'. This is the pure intellect, transcendent relatively to the individual; here we are already situated in manifestation, but we still remain in the universal order. At the next stage, on the contrary, we find ahankāra, or 'individual consciousness', which proceeds from the intellectual principle by a 'particularizing' determination, if one may so express it, and which produces in its turn the elements that follow. These include first of all the five tanmātras, elementary incorporeal and non-perceptible determinations, which will be the respective principles of the five bhūtas or corporeal elements; Vaisheshika had only to take the latter into account, and not the tanmātras, which need only be conceived when one's intention is to refer the notion of the elements or of the conditions governing the corporeal modality to the principles of universal existence. Next follow the individual faculties, produced by differentiation of the individual consciousness of which they may be said to represent so many functions, and these are reckoned to be eleven in number, ten external and one internal; the ten external faculties include five faculties of knowledge, which, in the bodily sphere, are faculties of sensation, and five faculties of action; the internal faculty is manas, which is a faculty both of knowledge and of action, and which is directly bound up with individual consciousness. Lastly, we come back to the five corporeal elements, numbered this time in the order of their production or manifestation: ether, air, fire, water, and earth; and so we get the twenty-four tattvas comprising Prakriti and all its modifications.

Up to this point, Sāņkhya considers things only in relation to 'substance,' taken in its universal sense; but as was shown earlier, it is necessary to take into consideration, correlatively, as the other pole of manifestation, a complementary principle that can be called 'essence'. This is the principle to which Sāņkhya gives the name of Purusha or Pumas, and which it looks upon as a twenty-fifth tattva, entirely independent of the preceding ones; all manifested things are produced by Prakriti, yet, but for the presence of Purusha these productions could only enjoy a purely illusory existence. Contrary to some people's opinion, the consideration of these two principles does not imply the least suggestion of dualism: they are not derived from nor reducible to one another, but they both proceed from Universal Being, in which they constitute the first of all distinctions. However, Sāņkhya is not called upon to go beyond this particular distinction, and the consideration of pure Being does not enter into its point of view: but, not being systematic, it admits the possibility of all that transcends it, and this is the reason why it is in no wise dualistic. To connect this statement with our previous remarks on the subject of dualism, it must be added that the Western conception of spirit and matter only corresponds to the distinction of essence and substance under very special conditions and as a simple and particular application of that distinction, one among an indefinite number of other analogous distinctions all equally possible. It can thus be seen how far behind we have left the limitations of philosophic thought, even though we have not yet entered the realm of pure metaphysics.^[1]I

It is necessary to return for a little to the conception of Prakriti: it is endowed with three gunas or constituent qualities, which, in its primordial indifferentiation, are in perfect equilibrium; every manifestation or modification of substance represents a rupture of this equilibrium, and all beings, in their various states of manifestation, participate in varying degrees in the three gunas, in indefinitely varying proportions. They are not therefore states, but conditions of universal existence to which all manifested beings are subjected, and it is important to distinguish them from the special conditions determining this or that state or mode of manifestation—such as space or time, which govern the corporeal state to the exclusion of others. The three gunas are sattva, conformity to the pure essence of Being, or Sat, which is identified with intelligible light or knowledge and is represented as an ascending tendency; rajas, the expansive impulse, in obedience to which a being develops in a certain state and, as it were, at a determined level of existence; and lastly, tamas, or obscurity, assimilated to ignorance, and described as a downward tendency. It is easy to see how inadequate and even false are the interpretations current among orientalists, especially in regard to the first two gunas, which they try to designate respectively by 'goodness' and 'passion', whereas quite clearly they do not imply anything of a moral or psychological nature. We cannot expound this most important conception in greater detail here nor go into the many different applications to which it gives rise, especially insofar as the theory of the elements is concerned: we must content ourselves with drawing attention to its existence.^[2] Furthermore, as regards Sāņkhya in general, we do not need to discuss it at such length as would have been necessary had we not already described many of its essential characteristics when comparing the point of view it adopts with that of Vaisheshika; but there are still a few confusions to be dispelled. The orientalists, who mistake Sāņkhya for a system of philosophy, readily represent it as a 'materialistic' or 'atheistic' doctrine: it goes without saying that it is the conception of Prakriti which they identify with their own notion of matter, an utterly false assimilation, while in addition they take no account of Purusha in their distorted interpretation. Universal substance is quite another thing from matter, which is at most but one restrictive and specialized determination of it; and we have already had occasion to point out that the very notion of matter, as it exists among Westerners today, is no more known to the Hindus than it was to the Greeks themselves. It is not easy to imagine how there could be materialism without matter; the atomism of the ancients, even in the West, cannot for that reason be reckoned materialistic, even if it was 'mechanistic'; modern philosophy can safely be left the monopoly of labels which were only invented for its own use, and cannot validly be employed elsewhere. Moreover, though it relates to nature, Sāņkhya, owing to its manner of approach, is never in danger of provoking a tendency toward naturalism, such as was noticeable in the atomist form of Vaisheshika; all the more reason why it can in no wise be 'evolutionary', as some have fancied, and this is true even if one takes evolutionism in its most general sense and without making it synonymous with a crude 'transformism'; such a confusing of points of view is too obviously absurd to merit further attention.

As for the reproach of atheism, this is what it amounts to: Sāņkhya is nirīshvara, that is to say it does not introduce the conception of Ishvara or the Divine Personality; but, if this conception is absent from it, that is because it has no place there, given the point of view in question, any more than it has in Nyāya or Vaisheshika. The non-inclusion of something in a more or less specialized point of view only becomes denial when that point of view is declared to be exclusive, that is to say when it turns into a system, which is not the case here; the orientalists might well be asked whether European science, in its present form, should be labelled as essentially atheistic because it does not introduce the idea of God into its particular province (which indeed it is no more qualified to do than Sāņkhya), since that is something which lies outside its purview. Moreover, side by side with Sāņkhya as we have just described it, there exists another darshana that is sometimes looked upon as a second branch of Sāņkhya, complementary to the first, and that is then qualified, in order to distinguish it, as Seshvara, because on the contrary it does introduce the conception of Ishvara; this darshana, which must now be examined, is the one usually called Yoga, thus identifying the doctrine with the goal that it expressly sets before itself.