The word sankhya means exact knowledge, which involves exact discrimination. The word sankhya, in which the first 'a' is shortened, means number; and the Sankhya philosophy counts a definite number of categories, which are generally twenty-five. The philosophy that is usually known by this name is atheistic, but it is not certain whether the philosophy as originally propounded by Kapila its founder, was atheistic. Kapila is said to have composed the Sankhya Aphorisms, which are lost. Later, Isvarakrsna wrote his Sahkhyakarikas, purporting to give the ideas of Kapila. The Mahabharata gives an account of theistic Sankhya, and so did Vijnanabhiksu, who belonged to this school. But in its restricted usage, the word Sankhya has come to mean the atheistic, but spiritual philosophy of Isvarakrsna.
Both Jainism and the Sankhya accept that the dtmans are many; but while Jainism treats the material world as a plurality, the Sankhya treats it as a unity and calls it Prakrti, deriving the plurality of the world not from atoms, but from the unitary Prakrti. For the Sankhya, time and space have no separate existence; they are only forms in which the plurality of the forms of the Prakrti appears. The Sankhya made no use of the doctrine of the Brahman. Nevertheless, unlike the Mimamsa, it believed in salvation. Later, as already mentioned, Vijnanabhiksu, in the fifteenth century, turned the atheistic Sankhya into a Vedanta.
EPISTEMOLOGY
The Sankhya does not seem to accept verbal testimony with the seriousness with which the Mimamsa and the Vedanta accepted it. For the Sankhya, the acceptance meant only its being orthodox, since it accepted the Mimamsa doctrine of dharma for worldly values. Verbal testimony was given an important place by almost all the Indian traditions mainly to defend the truthfulness of the Vedic statements which were at that time transmitted orally from tracher to pupil. The Sankhya, as an orthodox school, also defended it, saying that the statements of the Veda were absolutely reliable (aptavacanas). Statements are of two kinds : those made by worldly beings (laukika), and those made by the superempirical Veda (alaukika). The former may be mistaken and are often unreliable, but the latter are absolutely reliable. They are meant for the good of the world, not for deceiving it. However, the Sankhya made little use of the Vedas for building up its system, and made an independent approach in expounding its ideas.
The Sankhya maintains that every cognition is valid or invalid in itself, and not made valid or invalid by something else. We have seen that, according to the Mimamsa, every cognition is valid in itself, but is made invalid by something else; according to Buddhism, it is invalid in itself, but made valid by something else. The reason which the Sankhya gives for holding this view is that the object we know is a modification of reason (buddhi) - which is ontological in the Sankhya as in the Vedanta - brought about by the mind and the senses, which come into contact with the object. Taking the example of the rope seen as a snake, the snake of the illusion is a modification of reason (buddhi), and the form of the cognition is, 'That is a snake'. In this cognition the 'That' and the 'snake' are not perceived as distinct entities, but as one object 'That-snake'. Similarly, when we perceive the object correctly as the rope, the form of the cognition is, 'That-rope', expressed in the form 'That is a rope'. It is thought generally that the latter contradicts the former, because 'That is a snake' and 'That is a rope', have the same 'That' in common, and the 'That' cannot be both a rope and a snake. That is, falsity applies to the predicate of a judgment, but not to its subject. But the Sankhya maintains that the 'That' and its predicate are not distinguishable in cognition. The 'That' is never cognized apart from the predicate. That is, only the snake is cognized or the rope is cognized, but not the 'That and the snake' or the 'That and the rope'. So each cognition as a modification of reason (buddhi), is a separate one, and is without reference to the other. Hence the cognition of the snake is invalid by itself and not made invalid by the cognition of the rope; and the cognition of the rope is valid by itself, and not made valid by anything else.
But reason is the same in both cases; and it is the same reason that has the modification of the snake and also that of the rope. And so the same reason knows the validity and invalidity of the two cognitions. This position of the Sankhya needs a little explanation. The Sankhya lifts the common point of reference from the demonstrative 'That' to reason (buddhi} itself, because no 'That' can be separated from the predicate and because the assertion of the presence of the object is made by reason. It is the function of reason to confer existence on the forms perceived, but it is not the function of the mere 'That' to do so. Reason itself should, therefore, know which of its modifications are true and which false, and it knows them through its very modifications.
The Sankhya, in its own way but differently from the Mimamsa, adopts a thorough-going realistic attitude. Even the false object, e.g. the snake in illusion, is existent and has being. Non-being not only does not exist, but also is never perceived. How can anyone perceive Non-being with his senses? Non-being is only a concept. But the snake is not a concept. So it is an existent or being. The Sankhya adopts, thereby, the doctrine that the object of illusion is existent (satkhydtivada). But it is not an object perceived somewhere else. There is no remembering or recognizing the snake seen in illusion. It is an individual existing object. Since reason (buddhi) is a being, but not a non-being, its assertion, which is its modification, is also a being. If we saw the rope, we could not have seen the snake. So there is non-cognition (akhydti) of the rope. If we see the snake, i.e. if reason is modified as the snake, we cannot see the rope; and similarly, if we see the rope, i.e. if reason is modified as the rope, we cannot see the snake. So the Sankhya says that illusion is the perception of one existent object, and the non-perception of another.
If both the snake and the rope are existent, why do we call the former false? Here the original Vedic (Mimamsa) view that the world is a world of action comes to the help of the Sankhya also. The snake does not belong to the world of action and does not serve the purpose for which it is meant. So we treat the rope as real and the snake as unreal. But from a point of view above that of the world of action, every object of cognition is existent and real. For the distinction between logical truth and falsity, the Sankhya, like all other philosophies, accepts the principle of contradiction. But logical falsity, although an error, is not the same as illusion and does not raise the problem of the perception of existence.
METAPHYSICS
The Sankhya attempts to understand even the external world from the stand-point of the inner being of man, because even the external world is a being for the consciousness of man. The question for the Sankhya is: How are we to understand the various forms of experience, including that of the independent objective world, with reference to the conscious being of man? So every division and classification has to be made with reference to the being of man. Man is more certain of his own conscious existence - although he may not be clear about
exactly what it is - than of anything else. And for a philosophy of life the stand-point of the inner being of man is more important than that of the external world of matter, which is studied by the different sciences. Such is the attitude of the Sankhya to philosophy.
The Sankhya, as an atheistic philosophy, rejects the reality of God and advances the usual arguments. They are: (i) God cannot be the cause of the world, because He is said to be eternally perfect and unchanging, but nothing can be a cause, unless it changes itself during the process of causation. (2) God cannot be postulated even as the controller of Nature (Prakrti), which is insentient and blind. For even to control it, God has to act, and in the act He has to undergo transformation. But God is conceived by the theists to be eternally perfect and unchanging. (3) We cannot understand what purpose God can have in creating the world, if he is perfect and complete in Himself, and if there is nothing for Him to desire. (4) A benevolent God could not have created the evil in this world, but God is said to be benevolent. (5) The dtmans are all perfect originally and are eternal; there is no need of God to create them.
So it is enough to postulate insentient Nature (Prakrit), with determinate laws of her own. It acts in the same way for every atman, and evolves the world, when the dtman so desires; and it withdraws the world, when the dtman is no longer interested in her. Prakrti is like a dancing girl, who shows her postures and forms to those who are interested and retires from those who are not. And she shows herself in the same way to all.
The atmans are of an infinite number, according to the Sankhya. By nature each is pure, existent and conscious. That is, the nature of the dtman is existence and consciousness. Unlike the Vedanta, the Sankhya does not attribute bliss to the atman. Bliss belongs to reason (buddhi), and is its state. But in the stage of liberation, the atman is freed from reason, and so experiences neither pain nor pleasure.
The so-called proofs for the reality of the dtman are the same as those given generally by the other orthodox schools. They are as follows, (1) Every object that is a compound, that is made up of parts, is meant for some other. But every material object is made up of parts. So it is meant for someone else that is not made up of parts. And that someone else is the dtman. (2) That someone else must be distinct from all the objects that have parts. These objects are insentient. So the atman must be sentient and without parts. (3) Blind, material, insentient objects in their activities must be controlled and directed by a sentient object, which is the atman. (4) We experience pleasure and pain, and there will not be pleasure and pain without someone who enjoys the pleasures and suffers from the pains. That someone is the atman. (5) Liberation will be meaningless, unless there is an atman that is to be liberated. This argument is directed against the Buddhists who accept the necessity of liberation, but do not accept the reality of the atman that is to be liberated.
The Sankhya also gives reasons for the plurality of the atmans. (1) Birth, death, and mental and physical capabilities are different for each person. If the atman is the same for all, then birth, death, and the endowments must be the same for all. (2) If the atman is the same then when one sleeps, the others also must sleep and so on. (3) There are different kinds of sentient beings, gods, men, and birds and beasts. If the atman is the same, these differences cannot be true. But they are true. (4) If the atman is the same, when one atman is liberated, the others also must be liberated. But they are not liberated. (5) If the atman is the same, when one man enjoys the fruits of his action, then other men also must enjoy them.
Prakrti (Nature) is one and real, and is independent of any atman. Prakrti is indeed insentient, but we should not equate it with mere matter, which, in western terminology, is what is opposed to mind. For according to the Sankhya, mind also is a product of Prakrti. The word Prakrti means the original or original nature, as opposed to vikrti, its form or modification. For instance, we can speak of a man's prakrti, meaning his natural constitution, which may be healthy or unhealthy, weak or strong. Similarly, the prakrti of carbon dioxide is carbon. The basic constituents of any medicine are its prakrti. Prakrti in any case is the ultimate determining factor. Now, when an atman, which is originally pure and indeterminate consciousness, becomes a personality, what determines it as a personality is Prakrti. Since the same Prakrti determines the personalities of all the atmans, there is a basic similarity in the psycho-physical constitution of all of them. Thus Prakrti is the origin of both the mental and the physical aspects of our being.
However, the Sankhya should not be interpreted as if it knows no distinction between mind and matter. The Sankhya knows the distinction, and goes so far as to abstract sentience so completely that it is treated as having an existence of its own apart from Prakrti. The Sankhya has also the distinct category of mind, which is one of the twenty-five. The original distinction, for the Sankhya, is not between mind and matter, but between the atman, which is infinite consciousness, but indeterminate and Prakrti, which is the infinite unconscious, but determinate. It is out of this infinite, but determinate unconscious that the manifold world evolves.
Thus Prakrti is the original stuff of the psycho-physical world. Yet it is not a chaotic stuff, but something in which everything is in harmony and equilibrium. We cannot attribute order to it, because the concept of order implies a plurality among the members of which definite, fixed relations exist. Prakrti is originally absolute equilibrium, but completely undifferentiated.
It has three attributes (gunas) - clarity (sattva), activity (rajas), and darkness (tamas) - which remain in equilibrium before the world evolves. There is no consciousness in them. When the atman comes into contact with Prakrti, and throws its reflection in it, the equilibrium of the three attributes is disturbed, and each begins to dominate over the other two. This disturbance starts the process of the evolution of the world.
The contact between the atman and Prakrti is not spatial or temporal. And the Sankhya does not explain why and how the two come into contact. Neither can it explain why the atman, even after it is liberated, will not come into contact again.
The Nyaya has a very elaborate theory of perception, and analyses it from different points of view. First, there is the difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary perception. Ordinary perception is what we usually have, the perception of a pot, a pen, a flower, and so on. But the Nyaya recognizes three kinds of extra-ordinary perceptions, which are not due to the usual sense-contact with the objects and which have each a peculiar kind of contact. The first is called cognition obtained through contact with the universal (samanyalaksana). The second kind of perception is cognition due to cognitive association. Looking at a pigeon, I say 'That is soft', even without touching it. The third kind of extra-ordinary perception is due to Yoga. A yogi can even see atoms without the aid of his senses. He can see objects hundreds and thousands of miles away, and can look through the minds and thoughts of others.
Source: Philosophical Traditions of India, P. T. Raju |
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