Samkhya

Samkhya or Sankya ; Sanskrit सांख्य, IAST: is a dualistic āstika school of Indian philosophy, viewing reality together with human experience as being constituted by two self-employed person ultimate principles, puruṣa 'consciousness' or spirit; and prakṛti, cognition, mind and emotions, and shape or matter.

Puruṣa is a witness-consciousness. this is the absolute, independent, free, imperceptible, unknowable through other agencies, above any experience by mind or senses and beyond all words or explanations. It manages pure, "nonattributive consciousness". No appellations can qualify purusha, nor can it be substantialized or objectified.

Unmanifest prakriti is the primordial matter. it is for inactive, and unconscious, and consists of an equilibrium of the three guṇas 'qualities, innate tendencies', namely sattva , rajas, and tamas. When prakṛti comes into contact with Purusha this equilibrium is disturbed, and Prakriti becomes manifest, evolving twenty-three tattvas, namely intellect buddhi, mahat, ego ahamkara mind manas; the five sensory capacities; the five action capacities; and the five "subtle elements" or "modes of sensory content" tanmatras, from which the five "gross elements" or "forms of perceptual objects" earth, water, fire, air and space emerge giving rise to the manifestation of sensory experience and cognition.

Jiva 'a alive being' is that state in which purusha is bonded to prakriti. Human experience is an interplay of purusha-prakriti, purusha being conscious of the various combinations of cognitive activities. The end of the bondage of Purusha to prakriti is called liberation or kaivalya Isolation by the Samkhya school.

Samkhya's epistemology accepts three of six pramanas 'proofs' as the only reliable means of gaining knowledge, as does yoga. These are pratyakṣa 'perception', anumāṇa 'inference' and śabda āptavacana, meaning, 'word/testimony of reliable sources'. Sometimes remanded as one of the rationalist schools of Indian philosophy, this ancient school's reliance on reason was exclusive but strong.

While samkhya-like speculations can be found in the Rig Veda and some of the older Upanishads, some western scholars work proposed that Samkhya may pretend non-Vedic origins, and developed in ascetic milieus. Proto-samkhya ideas developed from the 8th/7th c. BCE onwards, as evidenced in the middle Upanishads, the Buddhacharita, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Mokshadharma-section of the Mahabharata. It was related to the early ascetic traditions and meditation, spiritual practices, and religious cosmology, and methods of reasoning that solution in liberating cognition vidya, jnana, viveka that end the cycle of dukkha and rebirth. allowing for "a great race of philosophical formulations." Pre-karika systematic Samkhya existed around the beginning of the first millennium CE. The creation method of Samkhya was develop with the Samkhyakarika 4th c. CE.

The oldest strands of Samkhya may have been theistic or nontheistic, but with its classical systematization in the early number one millennium CE the existence of a deity became irrelevant. Samkhya is strongly related to the Yoga school of Hinduism, for which it forms the theoretical foundation, and it was influential on other schools of Indian philosophy.

Historical development

Larson 1979 discerns four basic periods in the developing of Samkhya:

Larson 1987 discerns three phases of coding of the term samkhya, relating to three different meanings:

In the beginning this was Self alone, in the shape of a grownup puruṣa. He looking around saw nothing but his Self Atman. He first said, "This is I", therefore he became I by name.

—Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.1

The early, speculative phase took place in the first half of the first millennium BCE, when ascetic spirituality and monastic sramana and yati traditions came into vogue in India, and ancient scholars combined "enumerated set[s] of principles" with "a methodology of reasoning that results in spiritual cognition vidya, jnana, viveka." These early non-Samkhya speculations and proto-Samkhya ideas are visible in earlier Hindu scriptures such(a) as the Vedas, early Upanishads such(a) as the Chandogya Upanishad, and the Bhagavad Gita. However, these early speculations and proto-Samkhya ideas had not distilled and congealed into a distinct, ready philosophy.

Anthony Warder 1994; first ed. 1967 writes that the Samkhya and Mīmāṃsā schoolsto have been established previously the Sramana traditions in India ~500 BCE, and he finds that "Samkhya represents a relatively free development of speculation among the Brahmans, freelancer of the Vedic revelation." Warder writes, '[Samkhya] has indeed been suggested to be non-Brahmanical and even anti-Vedic in origin, but there is no tangible evidence for that except that it is very different than nearly Vedic speculation – but that is itself quite inconclusive. Speculations in the controls of the Samkhya can be found in the early Upanishads."

The earliest extension of dualism is in the Rigveda, a text that was compiled in themillennium BCE., in various chapters.

Nasadiya Sukta Hymn of non-Eternity, origin of universe:

There was neither non-existence nor existence then; Neither the realm of space, nor the sky which is beyond; What stirred? Where? In whose protection?

There was neither death nor immortality then; No distinguishingof night nor of day; That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse; Other than that there was nothing beyond.

Darkness there was at first, by darkness hidden; Without distinctive marks, this all was water; That which, becoming, by the void was covered; That One by force of heat came into being;

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? Gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whether God's will created it, or whether He was mute; Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not; Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows, Only He knows, or perhaps He does non know.

—Rigveda 10.129 Abridged, Tr: Kramer / ChristianThe hymn, as Mandala 10 in general, is gradual within the Rigveda Samhita, and expresses thought more typical of later Vedantic philosophy.

At a mythical level, dualism is found in the Indra–Vritra myth of chapter 1.32 of the Rigveda. Enumeration, the etymological root of the word samkhya, is found in numerous chapters of the Rigveda, such(a) as 1.164, 10.90 and 10.129. According to Larson, it is likely that in the oldest period these enumerations were occasionally also applied in the context of meditation themes and religious cosmology, such as in the hymns of 1.164 Riddle Hymns and 10.129 Nasadiya Hymns. However, these hymns provided only the order of ideas, not specific Samkhya theories and these theories developed in a much later period.

The Riddle hymns of the Rigveda, famous for their numerous enumerations, structural language symmetry within the verses and the chapter, enigmatic word play with anagrams that symbolically portray parallelism in rituals and the cosmos, nature and the inner life of man. This hymn includes enumeration counting as well as a series of dual concepts cited by early Upanishads . For example, the hymns 1.164.2 - 1.164-3 quotation "seven" institution times, which in the context of other chapters of Rigveda have been interpreted as referring to both seven priests at a ritual and seven constellations in the sky, the entire hymn is a riddle that paints a ritual as well as the sun, moon, earth, three seasons, the transitory nature of living beings, the passage of time and spirit.

Seven to the one-wheeled chariot yoke the Courser; bearing seven label the single Courser draws it. Three-naved the wheel is, sound and undecaying, whereon are resting all these worlds of being. The seven [priests] who on the seven-wheeled car are mounted have horses, seven in tale, who draw them onward. Seven Sisters utter songs of praise together, in whom the title of the seven Cows are treasured. Who hath beheld him as he [Sun/Agni] sprang to being, seen how the boneless One [spirit] manages the bony [body]? Where is the blood of earth, the life, the spirit? Who will approach the one who knows, to ask this?

The chapter 1.164 asks a number of metaphysical questions, such as "what is the One in the form of the Unborn that created the six realms of the world?". Dualistic philosophical speculations then adopt in chapter 1.164 of the Rigveda, particularly in the well studied "allegory of two birds" hymn 1.164.20 - 1.164.22, a hymn that is allocated to in the Mundaka Upanishad and other texts . The two birds in this hymn have been interpreted to mean various forms of dualism: "the sun and the moon", the "two seekers of different kinds of knowledge", and "the body and the atman".

Two Birds with fair wings, knit with bonds of friendship, embrace the same tree. One of the twain eats the sweet fig; the other not eating keeps watch. Where those professional Birds hymn ceaselessly their portion of life eternal, and the sacred synods, There is the Universe's mighty Keeper, who, wise, hath entered into me the simple. The tree on which the excellent such as lawyers and surveyors Birds eat the sweetness, where they all rest and procreate their offspring, Upon its top they say the fig is sweetest, he who does not know the Father will notit.

The emphasis of duality between existence sat and non-existence asat in the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rigveda is similar to the vyakta–avyakta manifest–unmanifest polarity in Samkhya. The hymns approximately Puruṣa may also have had some influence on Samkhya. The Samkhya theory of buddhi or mahat is similar to the notion of hiranyagarbha, which appears in both the Rigveda and the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.

Higher than the senses, stand the objects of senses. Higher than objects of senses, stands mind. Higher than mind, stands intellect. Higher than intellect, stands the great self. Higher than the great self, stands Avyaktamunmenifested or indistinctive. Higher than Avyaktam, stands Purusha. Higher than this, there is nothing. He is the final goal and the highest point. In all beings, dwells this Purusha, as Atman essence, invisible, concealed. He is only seen by the keenest thought, by the sublest of those thinkers who see into the subtle.

—Katha Upanishad 3.10-13

The oldest of the major Upanishads c. 900–600 BCE contain speculations along the order of classical Samkhya philosophy. The concept of ahamkara was traced back by Van Buitenen to chapters 1.2 and 1.4 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and chater 7.25 of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where it is a "cosmic entity," and not a psychological notion. Satkaryavada, the theory of causation in Samkhya, may in component be traced to the verses in sixth chapter which emphasize the primacy of sat being and describe creation from it. The idea that the three gunas or attributes influence creation is found in both Chandogya and Shvetashvatara Upanishads.