The Heritage of India The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy

About The Book : The denial in the Samkhya of the supreme spirit carries with it curious consequences when added to the extreme development of the doctrine that the spirit is alone the subject. The first product of nature is the intellect, which is called the great one, and which clearly is originally a cosmic function, derived from nature but lighted up by spirit. The natural source of this conception must be found in the idea in the Upanisads that the supreme spirit re- appears as the firstborn of creation after it has produced the primitive matter. The ultimate origin of the idea can be traced beyond the Upanisads to the Rgveda.A much more developed account of Samkhya type is to be found in the Svetasvatara Upanisad, which is no doubt older than the Prasna, but later than the Katha. The Upanisad is definitely deistic, Rudra who bears the epithet but not the name, Siva, being the object of devotion and belief, but at the same time being regarded as the absolute and supreme spirit, rather than as derived from that spirit. On the other hand, the Upanisad contains a series of numbers which are best to be explained as referring to enumerations accepted by the Samkhya school: thus in i, 4, the individual self is compared to a wheel with three tyres, sixteen ends, fifty spokes, twenty counter-spokes and six sets of eight.