Sāṁkhya: Dualism without substances

Sāṁkhya: Dualism without substances

Ferenc Ruzsa

Dualism may be understood as the view that there are two irreducible substances, soul and matter.

They are irreducible in that neither can produce the other, and as they are substances, they are

independent of each other, i.e. both could exist without the other.

Of course the theories of some of the staunchest materialists would meet the above criteria. The

ancient Greek atomists considered the psychê to be made up of atoms, but since these are a distinct

class of atoms, and atoms are uncreated and indestructible, we could say that we have two kinds of

substance here: soul atoms and all other atoms. Presumably we have to add that the spiritual substance

must be immaterial in some sense: it may be not in space or at least not occupying space, not resisting

the movement of matter. Unfortunately this restriction would exclude Jainism (where jīva, soul is

spatially circumscribed and can be stained by karmic matter) and that is an undesirable consequence.

We may try to stipulate instead that a person’s soul must be an absolute unit, thereby excluding Colin

McGinn’s hyperdualism1 as well as those versions of Vedānta where a human soul is just a part of a

cosmic entity, Brahman. Or we may try to emphasise the number two – in atomism there are many

kinds of atoms, not only soul and matter. Unfortunately this would make the atomists pluralists instead

of the monists most historians take them to be. Further, all those theories that postulate e.g. time as a

distinct substance would cease to be dualist.

So dualism is far from a clear-cut category and we have to live with it. Old Vaiśeṣika had nine

substances (the five elements, space, time, manas and soul), and therefore it should be best categorised

as pluralism. Later on the non-materiality of the soul came to be more important and its liberated state

(free from any influence of matter) received more detailed treatment, so labelling it as dualism should

not be objected to.

Classical Sāṁkhya is also a case in point. It is rightly considered the paradigmatic case of ancient

Indian dualism yet all the relevant criteria suggested so far are somewhat problematic. The name of

this school is derived from the word saṁkhyā, number, and it is normally supposed that the idea

suggested is that here all features of the world are given in numbered lists. However, in its

foundational text, the Sāṁkhya-Kārikā (SK)2 we are never told that there are two substances. When

the fundamental categories of the system are first mentioned, they are “the manifest, the unmanifest

and the knower” (vyaktâvyakta-jña, SK 2). The first two are material principles, the knower is, of

course, the soul. In the next verse a list of the well-known twenty-five entities (tattva) of the system

are given in four groups: the unmanifest, the seven productive and the sixteen unproductive manifest

tattvas, and finally the soul. So it appears as the system of three, or four, or twenty-five principles, not

of two!

Still, there can be no doubt that Sāṁkhya is a dualism: puruṣa (the ‘person’, the standard term

here for the soul) and prakr i (nature) are regularly contrasted, their relation analysed, and the aim of

the system is the absolute and final separation of the two. Perhaps it is not a self-conscious dualism: it

Sāṁkhya: Dualism without substances F. Ruzsa 2

does not call itself ‘the system of two’, and it has no appropriate category for substance (or kind of

substance), like res for Descartes.

Sāṁkhya’s conception of the soul (as it is normally interpreted) is again very far from the

standard European notion. It is definitely not the res cogitans, the thinking substance – it does none of

the functions of the Cartesian soul. To quote Larson,3 it is an ‘eccentric ghost’, ‘contentless

consciousness’. It does not seem to meet the criteria of substance, since it has no qualities and cannot

act or move – in fact it is absolutely unchangeable. Constantly changing matter and its more stable

formations again cannot be regarded as substances: as I will try to show in this paper, Sāṁkhya in its

classical version is a strict form of substance reductionism, i.e. substances are only constantly

changing combinations of qualities and functions, nothing more.

The Sāṁkhya classic

The Sāṁkhya here presented is śvarakr ṣṇa’s version of the system, because it is both the most

interesting philosophically and the most influential formulation. Sāṁkhya itself is immensely old,

clearly older than Buddhism, and had many significantly different forms.4 When, around the beginning

of the first millennium CE, many philosophical schools tried to standardize their teaching, there were

several attempts also in Sāṁkhya. Perhaps the extremely short Tattva-Samāsa (Summary of the

principles) is the earliest survivor,5 but it is only a list of key terms without any recognisable

philosophical argument. When the classical Sū ras of the other schools were already written6 and

therefore philosophical style, argumentation and organization were significantly more developed, there

appeared the SK (ca. 4th cent. CE), a compendium in 72 verses written in the āryā metre attributed to

śvarakr ṣṇa. It seems to consist of a core text of some 50 verses with several additions and minor

reworking.7 I refer to the author of the core te t as ‘ śvarakr ṣṇa’, although it is possible that it is in fact

the name of the (or a) person who added some extra verses.

śvarakr ṣṇa clearly wanted to write the philosophical classic of the school. Therefore, first and

foremost, he construed a relevant and coherent system where all the tenets are argued for without

reference to any kind of traditional authority. At the same time he continued a long tradition and that is

most apparent in his choice of terminology; however, the at times astonishingly archaic words are

given modern definitions and the ancient agricultural/tantric imagery of the fertile, female nature

(Mother Earth) and the passive male spirit ruling over it is consistently understood as a metaphor only.

Thirdly, he tried to produce a text acceptable to all branches of the school and therefore avoided

controversial issues, either not mentioning them at all or at times picking an intentionally ambiguous

phrasing.8

śvarakr ṣṇa’s success is really amazing. His te t became the absolute authority within the school

to which additions were possible (as in the medieval Sāṁkhya-Sū ra) but whose formulations

remained standard ever since. As Sāṁkhya concepts permeate other philosophies (especially Vedānta),

Hindu religious thought and literature (notably the Purāṇas) and also traditional science, his

formulations were known and used everywhere.

As a philosopher, he can be compared to the greatest. There are at least three points where his

ideas may be considered fully relevant even in present day discussions. They are his conception of the

guṇas; his version of dualism, distinguishing the ontological and the epistemic sphere of

consciousness; and his substance-reductionism in general and in the specific cases. His denial of

emergence, his causally grounded epistemological theory and many of his single arguments are still

exciting and may often be felt essentially correct.


Unfortunately he was not well understood in several respects. Already the person(s) extending the

SK to its present form added lots of philosophically uninteresting idiosyncratic material: long lists of

possible mental states, or of causes of non-perception (trivial ones, like “it is too far”), thereby also

disturbing the original composition and obscuring the tight internal logic of the whole. Partly because

of this, partly because of his philosophical depth combined with extreme conciseness, and partly

because of the general acceptance of some new ideas (notably the absolute unchangeability of the

soul), even his most faithful commentators often misrepresent his position and fail to grasp some of

his arguments. The voluminous Yukti-Dīpikā, often called “the most important commentary of the SK”

is no better; it could be described much more aptly as “the most important post-SK treatise in the

Sāṁkhya tradition (formally a commentary on the SK)”. As has already been noticed by some

scholars, there was a definite break in the tradition after the SK, at several places the commentators

plainly just did not know what the author’s intention was.9

The twenty-five entities

Classical Sāṁkhya is widely known as the system of the twenty-five tattvas. Tattva, literally ‘that-

ness’ or ‘being that’ means reality, principle, element, essence or substance; here it will be translated

as ‘entity’. No definition of the term is given, and the concept itself is unimportant in the SK – it

occurs but once. Intuitively we could say that a tattva is a fundamental, fairly stable kind of reality;

everything else can be described as a (more or less temporary) combination of tattvas. It would be

very tempting to render tattva with ‘element’; however, the unanimous practice of the translators

reserve this world for the five bhū as (earth, water, fire, air and ether).

śvarakr ṣṇa inherited this list and as it was central to the tradition it was out of the question to

change it. However, several signs testify to his less than enthusiastic attitude to it: he never mentions

the number twenty-five, his single use of the term is not technical and he does not give all the

members of the list. Still, it is the fundamental map of the basic categories of Sāṁkhya, so it is

reasonable to start with an overview. (It may be helpful time and again to look at the summary table at

the end of this section.)

Besides the two fundamental, imperceptible entities (soul and unmanifest materiality) there are

the twenty-three empirical entities of the manifest world: thirteen internal (psychic and biological) and

ten external (physical) entities. The latter are the five elements and the five sensibilia; together they

make up the inanimate world, but of course they form also the bodies of living beings. They constitute

the “field of activity”, kārya (lit. ‘what is to be done’, duty, work, effect)

The elements are called bhū as or viśeṣas, ‘beings’ and ‘kinds’, they are the gross material

substances of the world. It is a question for empirical science what exactly the elements are and how

many e ist – śvarakr ṣṇa seems unconcerned, he never lists them, although he retains the traditional

number five. The category itself is relevant philosophically, but the members of the group are

irrelevant.

The five sensibilia or sense objects are those that the five senses can react to: colour, sound,

smell, taste and tangibility (including hot/cold). They are the tan-mā ras or a-viśeṣas, meaning ‘only

that’ and ‘uniform’. Both names probably e press that each of them is an unmi ed simple (a colour

has no sound etc.), in contrast to the elements that have more than one sensible property (earth has

colour, smell etc.).10

The not exactly natural terminology of anmā ras (instead of ‘qualities’ or

‘perceptible qualities’) is justified in Sāṁkhya by its characteristic theory of the three guṇas,


‘qualities’ – it is so fundamental for the school that it was imperative never to use the word ‘quality’

for anything else but rajas, tamas or sattva.

The psycho-physiological functions of a living being are together called the instrument, karaṇa

(lit. ‘doing’, action, means of action). It is conveniently split up into a centre and a periphery. The

latter, called the external instrument (bāhya karaṇa), connects the centre to the physical world.

Inward-moving information comes through the five senses, outward-moving instructions go through

the five active powers.

The senses are not to be confused with the physical organs where they reside: hearing is not the

ear – it is the receptivity to specific entities of the physical world, i.e. sound and those things that

produce sound. The Sanskrit term, buddhi-indriya, clearly e presses this: it means ‘power of

becoming aware’.

The five active powers (karma-indriya, lit. power of action) represent a surprisingly refined

biological theory veiled in a bafflingly archaic terminology – they are called speech, hand, foot, anus

and lap. No wonder śvarakr ṣṇa felt the need to e plain them: “and the function of the five [active

powers] is speaking, taking, movement, e cretion and joy.”11

Nowadays we would perhaps express the

same idea with the concepts of consuming and excretion (including breathing in and out), movement,

reproduction and communication. A fairly comprehensive list, since perception is dealt with

separately, although growth and healing might perhaps be added.

The innermost core of a living being is the internal instrument, antaḥkaraṇa, consisting of the

manas, egoity and understanding. Although the concept matches quite well our concept of mind, great

care must be exercised in the use of this term on account of the unfortunate, but consistent practice of

Indologists who – mislead by the distant etymological connection – regularly translate manas with

‘mind’.12

Manas is, in fact, the lowest function of the mind, directly connected to the senses and the active

powers: “Manas is the coordinator,13

and it is a power reckoned among both kinds [i.e. the senses and

the active powers]. It is internal, for its objects belong to the three times [past, present and future];

therefore it works in both areas, [internal and e ternal].”14

As a sense, it takes the isolated pieces of

information of each sense and reproduces a coherent internal picture of the world and passes it on to

the conscious awareness; for we normally see an elephant, not a big patch of grey, and we hear the

same elephant, not some unrelated sound. As an active power, it controls the other active powers,

partly automatically, partly in response to a conscious decision “above”. But it is not only the eleventh

power, it is also part of the internal instrument, because the external instrument (i.e. the other powers)

can only operate in the present, while manas can produce images of the past or even imagine things

for the future.

Egoity is a very interesting psychological concept15

and it has a central function in the Sāṁkhya

meditational practice leading to the liberation of soul from matter. At first sight it appears superfluous

in a system where each individual has its own soul, but in fact it has a very important role to play. Its

name, ahaṁ-kāra (‘I-maker’) and its synonyms mama-kāra (‘my-maker’) and asmi ā (‘I am-ness’, i.e.

the intuition that “I am [this or such]”)16

together with its succinct definition abhimāna

(‘appropriation’, SK 24) are all that we are told, but they are e pressive enough and the idea is widely

known in all Hindu schools and in Buddhism as well. Perhaps the best analysis is Śaṅkara’s

introduction to his commentary on the Brahma-Sū ra, where it is called adhyāsa, ‘superimposition’ or

rather ‘projection’. Nature is in itself single and continuous, but we all split it up into I and not-I

(ahaṁ-kāra), mine and not mine (mama-kāra). We feel certain facts of the world as belonging to our

being: I am old, I am fat, I am rich, I am a father, I am a scholar (asmi ā). But in fact the real subject,


the soul is not fat nor is it a scholar, it has no money nor offspring. So egoity is the “illegal” e tension

of the ontological subject, the soul, producing thereby our familiar phenomenal selves. Secondarily we

further e tend our authority over inanimate objects and even other persons, the similar use of “my”

obscuring the process: my hand, my suggestion, my car, my wife…

Understanding, buddhi comes closest to the Cartesian res cogitans, except for it being a material

entity. Its definition is simply “Understanding is judgment”, but it is added that “virtue, knowledge,

dispassion and sovereignty are its good (sā vika, sattvic) forms, the dark ( āmasa, tamasic) forms are

the opposites of these.” 17

So judgment is here not only a value-neutral cognitive act, but includes also

moral judgments and decision-making as well. This is also the seat of the relevant motives (passion

and power); therefore it appears that buddhi corresponds to our notions of rationality, volition and

emotions. And it is here, and only here that soul and matter meet – therefore this is the point where

they can part ways at liberation. “Since understanding prepares all e periences for the soul, again only

it can distinguish the subtle difference between materiality and soul.”18

The last two principles – immaterial consciousness or soul and undetectable unmanifest

materiality – are never met with in experience, only inference can prove their existence. They will be

dealt with later in separate sections.

It is worthy of notice that the whole system seems to be basically an anthropology: it represents a

person (a human or any other living being). Although there is room for inanimate objects, provided by

the elements and sensibilia, these physical entities also constitute biological bodies.

Further, this anthropology focuses on information processing, it shows a refined, bidirectional

multi-layered system. To illustrate the point with the inward path: it starts with physical objects (the

elements); the sensibilia carry the information from them, then pass it on to the corresponding senses;

manas coordinates the information, arranging it into a coherent picture; egoity relates it to the subject

(“I see”, “he wears my shirt”, “I am afraid of dogs”19

); understanding grasps the situation conceptually,

and presents it to the soul, that experiences it.20

It is clear that such a detailed analysis of cognition is

fuller and therefore perhaps superior to and potentially more promising than the more abstract,

widespread two-step model of immediate and conceptualised perception (nirvikalpaka–savikalpaka

pratyakṣa).

Here is a table of the twenty-five entities (in the bottom row), normally listed from left to right,

together with their groups and combinations. Mere groups are signified by the plural (like “11

powers”), whereas combinations, i.e. functional higher units are in the singular – like “3 internal

instrument”, read “the internal instrument that can further be analysed into three entities”. In brackets

appear those names and numbers that are not actually used in the SK.


[25] entities (tattva)

conscious

(cetana) [24] nature (prakr i)

[2] inferable only

(liṅgin) [23] manifest (vyakta)

13 instrument (karaṇa) 10 field of activity

(kārya)

3 internal instrument

(antaḥkaraṇa)

10 external instrument

(bāhya [karaṇa])

11 powers (indriya)

5 senses

(buddhîndriya)

5 active

powers

(karmêndriya)

5 sensibilia

( anmā ra)

5 elements

(bhū a)

soul (puruṣa)

unmanifest

materiality

(avyakta)

under-

standing

(buddhi)

egoity

(ahaṁ-

kāra)

manas

sight (cakṣus)

hearing(śro ra)

smelling(ghrāṇa)

tasting (rasana)

skin (tvac)

speech (vāc)

hand (pāṇi)

foot (pāda)

anus (pāyu)

lap (upastha)

colour (rūpa)

sound(śabda)

[smell]

[taste]

[touch]

[earth]

[water]

[fire]

[air]

[ether]

Cosmogony or psychology?

A particularly nasty problem in reading Sāṁkhya texts is the unclear distinction between cosmology

and cosmogony on the one hand, and psychology and individual evolution on the other. This is but one

appearance of the microcosm–macrocosm homologization pervading practically the whole of Indian

culture, most apparent in the ubiquitous pantheism, where the cosmos is viewed as the body of God in

one sense or another. The classic e ample is Arjuna’s vision of Kr ṣṇa in the the 11th canto of the

Bhagavad-Gī ā (a remarkably Sāṁkhyaistic text). This is a truly archaic feature of Hinduism and

Sāṁkhya, going back to prehistoric ideas and appearing already in the gveda,21

although it is perhaps

not of Aryan origin.22

A somewhat similar situation obtains in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharma-Kośa,

heavily influencing Tibetan Buddhism in this respect; here mental (meditational) states and

cosmogonical events are identified.23

The problem, according to Michel Hulin is that “the Sāṁkhya thinkers did not pay much attention

to dilemmas that are crucial to us, like ‘is there only one cosmic buddhi [intellect] or as many buddhis

as individual beings?’”24

Eli Franco points out the absurdity in no unclear terms: “Typical

psychological and individual terms like cognition, ego, mind, sense organs, and even hands, feet,

tongue, anus and penis, become trans-individual and obtain cosmological dimensions.”25

Hulin’s e planation is that since the followers of Sāṁkhya strove to leave this world of individual

material existence, the confusion was not relevant for them:

in the wake of discrimination, there is no ground anymore to contrast the personal with the

universal perspective. As for the “temporary” continuation of individual, psychic experience,

the Sāṁkhya thinkers, quite understandably, were prepared to admit a certain degree of

apparent contradiction within it, as a mark, so to say, of its ultimate lack of authenticity.26


Johannes Bronkhorst found traces in several commentaries indicating that the ambiguity was resolved

in some sub-schools: the first principles were cosmic, the last ones individual. “If the thinkers of

classical Sāṁkhya did indeed not confuse these two, they must have somewhere drawn a line, in the

middle of their evolutionary scheme, to distinguish between cosmological and psychological (or

rather: individual) essences (tattva).”27

His carefully worded conclusion is,

Does this [ambiguity] still hold true for the main thinkers of classical Sāṁkhya? As we now

know, the answer must be a qualified no. It is true that cognition and ego – i.e. mahat/buddhi

and ahaṁkāra – appear to have been shared, and therefore cosmological, entities for some,

though not all Sāṁkhyas. Other elements – in particular mind, sense organs, as well as hands,

feet, tongue, anus and penis – were looked upon as only individual, not trans-individual or

cosmological entities. The anmā ras remain enigmatic… (p. 688.)

Bronkhorst did not analyse the SK itself, probably because he thought it self-evident that it is the very

source of the confusion. But that is not true: in the relevant passages śvarakr ṣṇa’s meaning is always

individual. He just selected a wording that could be interpreted cosmogonically, thereby

accommodating his text to the needs of some traditionally minded subschools.

If somebody really wanted to combine a cosmological account with the description of individuals,

that was easily done in a coherent way – as e.g. Vijñānabhikṣu (16th century) did in his commentary

on Sāṁkhya-Sū ra 3.10:

If there is one subtle body (liṅga, transmigrating entity), how could the experiences of each

person be different? On this the Sūtra says:

“10. Differentiation to individuals is according to the particular karma.”

Even if at the beginning of the creation there is but a single subtle body, connected to the god

Hiraṇyagarbha (Golden Womb), still later it will be differentiated to individuals, its parts will

also be separate as individuals. As now the parts of the single subtle body of the father will be

separate as the subtle bodies of his sons and daughters. The Sūtra says the reason: “according

to the particular karma”, and that means that according to the acts (karma) causing experiences

etc. of different beings.28

This model was widely used in Vedānta te ts, e.g. in Sadānanda’s Vedān a-Sāra. But the idea itself is

ancient, already in the Puruṣa-hymn of the gveda (10.90) everything in the world originates from the

different parts of a primordial cosmic giant.

But clearly śvarakr ṣṇa did not want anything like that – there is no sign of a two-step creation,

first cosmic, then individual. We have instead the problematic, ambiguous passage. Is he talking about

the origin of the world, or an individual, or both?

The contact of the soul and the unmanifest: that causes the creation. From nature the Great,

from that egoity, from that the group of sixteen; also from among those sixteen from five, the

five elements. … Egoity is appropriation. From it, two kinds of creation proceed: the eleven

powers and the five sensibilia. … The sensibilia are simple; from them, the elements: five

from five.29

In Sāṁkhya technical terminology, the Great is just another name of the buddhi, understanding;

probably it is just short for the Great Self (Ā man Maha ). At the beginning of the series we have the

clearly single, cosmic unmanifest nature, at the end the plural, but again cosmic elements (earth, water

etc.) and sensibilia (smell, sound etc.). In between there are entities characteristic only of living

beings: understanding, egoity, the coordinator manas, the senses and the biological faculties.


As an abstract, philosophical creation story it is very attractive. After the first contact of

unconscious matter with soul, there arose sentience (buddhi) in matter; and with it, differentiation

started (I and not-I, subject and object – that is, the principle of egoity); with this difference, the

subject could react to the object (perception), and then the subject could influence the object (the

karmêndriyas, the powers of action); the object, as perceived, distinguished the sensibilia sound,

colour etc.; and finally, the combinations of the sensibilia resulted in the five basic elements.

If this is the creation of a single Great Person, then it must have started with a single, very special

soul – and he would be God, Īśvara. Then why does everybody contrast godless (nirīśvara) Sāṁkhya

with theist (sêśvara) oga? Even worse, did śvarakr ṣṇa simply forget about all the simpler

individuals like us, since there is not even a mention of the origin of other beings?

I think that this text is not a creation story at all,30 and its primary reading is just a list of the

components of any living being, indicating the interrelations of the components. śvarakr ṣṇa may have

belonged to that group in the Sāṁkhyan fold who taught that the connection of the soul and matter is

beginningless; or he may have been agnostic on the point. But, since he was trying to write the classic

for all subschools, he offered this description in a form that can be read as the beginning of such a

connection, either as a new soul entering an eternal world, or even as a creation or re-creation story.

Later tradition preferred the last version, because the idea of the cosmic cycles gained general

acceptance in Hinduism.

The key to the possibility of this multiple interpretation is the term sarga, so far carelessly

translated in its usual sense of ‘creation’. But it can have other meanings as well: etymologically it is

pouring out, emission; and it can mean a troop and a herd as well. In the SK it is a frequent word, let

us consider its occurrences:

In verse 21, sarga is the result of the contact of soul and matter (in the next verses followed by the

description of the twenty-three manifest entities). In verse 24, we have the sarga of the eleven powers

and the sarga of the five sensibilia; in 46, the sarga of mental states (pratyaya); in 52, the sarga of the

transmigrating entity (liṅga, consisting of eighteen tattvas) and the sarga of the dispositions (bhāva).

Verse 53 speaks about the divine sarga with eight divisions, the fivefold animal sarga and one kind of

human sarga; taken together, the sarga of living beings. In 54, sarga is clearly the same, i.e. of living

beings. Finally, in 66 we find a pun: here sarga is both ejaculation and the continuation of physical

existence.31

It seems that the dominant meaning of sarga in the SK is clearly ‘group’, especially of some

fundamental entities or categories of the system. And thus the beginning of the apparent “creation-

story” will be simply: “The group (of the twenty-three manifest entities) is the result of the contact of

matter with soul.”32

The following series of Ablatives (‘from …’ – starting with ‘From nature the

Great’, SK 22 etc. quoted above at note 29) do not necessarily express origination, rather they suggest

direction of dependence.

To sum up: śvarakr ṣṇa gave the description of the constituents of a human being in a traditional

form, so that those to whom it was important could read it as an emanation scheme, either of an

individual or of the whole cosmos; or of both. In śvarakr ṣṇa’s philosophy such an emanation has no

role to play and no attempt is made to substantiate it. Still, it is a value-ordered presentation starting

from the innermost core of a rational human and moving outward, “down” to the physical constituents

of the body and of the external world.


Soul as pure consciousness

In the complex system of the twenty-three entities of manifest nature we have all the functions of the

Cartesian res cogitans fulfilled by understanding, egoity and manas. It seems to be a closed

naturalistic description of the world; but in Sāṁkhya there is also an immaterial entity, the soul,

puruṣa. What could its function be? It is not needed even for such popular purposes as immortality,

since the transmigrating entity is immortal, but it is just a complex of the intangible material entities.33

Puruṣa is pure consciousness; today it is easier to grasp the concept than half a century ago. If we

feel, as most of us do, that our computers are fully unconscious; and if we think that it would not

change even if they were even more advanced and would be able to do whatever an average human

intellect can do; and such computer would control a nice human-looking artificial body – we got the

idea. Consciousness is what a robot does not have, while a dog has it.

This concept is extremely exciting philosophically as Paul Schweizer demonstrated in his

classical paper.34

Instead of the familiar body/mind dualism, we have here a ‘new’ type,

mind/consciousness dualism. Schweizer showed that “the ancient Sānkhya-Yoga version of dualism

provides a more felicitous dividing line between substances than does the Cartesian parsing of mind

and matter”, because it “avoids one of the most serious pitfalls of Cartesian dualism, since on the

Indian account, mental causation does not violate physical conservation laws”. This is because the

mind (the internal instrument), in itself unconscious, is a subtle, but material organ, while

“consciousness plays no causal role in the transformation of mental structures, but rather is a passive

‘witness’ to some small portion of these”.35

Another, equally important feature of this analysis is that it neatly separates the two salient

problems of the magic of our internal experience, which are often considered two sides of the same

coin: subjectivity and intentionality. Intentionality, or ‘intrinsic aboutness’, or the ‘semantic content’

of our minds’ information-processing will largely appear as an illusion.

It is the conscious, subjective aspect of visual perception which serves to motivate the

introduction of a distinct metaphysical category, not the causally induced representational

structure of perception, since it is theoretically feasible that the latter can be explained in terms

of unconscious mechanisms, of generally the same sort that would be applied in the case of

robotic ‘vision’. … It is consciousness, rather than content, which provides the most

compelling impetus for dualism.36

It is worthy of noticing (as Schweizer does) that this concept of consciousness does not automatically

entail a substance dualism. One might be inclined rather to follow Searle, who in his Chinese room

thought-e periment suggested that consciousness is the result of the brain etc. having special “causal

powers”.37

Since consciousness in this interpretation is detached from intentionality, it seems logical to

construe it as completely without content. Indeed, that is what happens in later Sāṁkhya; this tendency

is already dominant in the commentaries of the SK. Now this rather peculiar notion was perhaps best

described by Gerald Larson, so I will quote him at length:

[Sāṁkhya is] a dualism between a closed, causal system of reductive materialism

(encompassing “awareness” or the “private” life of the mind), on the one hand, and a non-

intentional and contentless consciousness, on the other. … [C]onsciousness (puruṣa) cannot

think or act and is not ontologically involved or intellectually related in any sense to

primordial materiality other than being passively present. Consciousness, in other words, is

sheer contentless presence (sākṣitva).38


It is outside the realm of causality, outside space and time, completely inactive, utterly simple,

unrelated apart from its sheer presence, uninvolved in emergence or transformation, without

parts, completely independent … neither an object nor a subject (in any conventional sense),

verbally uncharacterizable, a pure witness whose only relation to primordial materiality is

sheer presence, utterly isolated, completely indifferent, … a nonagent…39

Where can this disquieting, anomalous conception of the subject come from? It is difficult not to

recognise the Vedāntic idea of absolute pure consciousness, i.e. ā man=Brahman, and I think this

influence must have been overwhelming in the long run. In Advaita Vedānta, however, quite logically

there is only one of this pure abstraction of consciousness shared by all sentient beings, while in

Sāṁkhya each person has their own unique soul.

In the Sāṁkhya-Yoga tradition, however, there is a strong introspective evidence for a concept

like this, since here meditation is over-important. The fundamental form of meditation is emptying the

mind, which means completely relinquishing the internal stream of thought, abandoning the normally

never-stopping silent debate inside. In this state the meditator experiences nothing, thinks nothing,

feels no change at all – yet they still remain themselves. “ oga is the suppression of the functions of

the mind. Then the soul remains in its own form.”40

Therefore while for us a non-thinking self is a

very difficult and perhaps unnatural idea, something like this was almost self-evident in the Indian

tradition.

The timeless, causally unrelated, contentless consciousness characterised by Larson above,

unfortunately, can have no function in the system (or in a person), and therefore practically destroys

the Sāṁkhya position. (Historically it did disappear.) As Śāntarakṣita, the great Buddhist scholar in the

8th century objected in his Tattva-saṁgraha: “if consciousness endured always in the same form, how

could [it] be the enjoyer of many kinds of objects?”41

And there can be no doubt that in Sāṁkhya the

soul is the “enjoyer”, the e periencer (bhok r ), for it is one of the key arguments used by śvarakr ṣṇa

to prove the soul’s e istence (in SK 17). In fact his concept of the soul was far less abstract than that

of the commentators.42

śvarakr ṣṇa clearly maintained that the soul is inactive (a-kar r , SK 19–20), but only in the sense

that it does not move in space43

and it cannot move a physical object. It is also “qualityless” (not tri-

guṇa, SK 11), but only in the very special sense that it does not have the three guṇas of nature, which

are but the fundamental aspects of materiality. So it means only that the soul is immaterial; but it can

have individual features and changing states. “There are many souls; for birth, death and the

instrument are regulated individually, and we do not act at the same time.”44

This would be clearly

meaningless, if the souls were not responsible somehow for the individual acts.

The soul is the subject – an isolated, neutral spectator or witness.45

This aloofness means only that

the soul cannot be killed or objectively harmed, but it can really feel bad: “In this world the conscious

soul suffers from the pain caused by aging and death.”46

Like someone on learning the loss of their

riches from the news can really be pained without any physical harm done. The soul identifies with the

body-mind complex and therefore feels the processes of life as its own. It is clearly stated to be the

knower and experiencer.47

Although it is repeatedly said that the puruṣa is not the agent, this can mean only that it lacks the

ability to physically move an object. The terminology of the two great systems of the material world –

the “instrument” (karaṇa), the thirteen psycho-physiological entities; and the “field of activity”

(kārya), the ten physical entities – seems to require an agent (kar r ), but we are told that “no-one

operates the instrument”;48

only “the passive one seems like the agent, although the guṇas are the

agent”.49

At another place, however, the soul seems to govern or superintend (adhi-ṣṭhā, SK 17) the


person. How is this possible, since it cannot move or change anything that is material? The only

answer that we get again and again is that nature follows the soul’s aim or purpose (SK 13, 17, 31, 42,

56, 58, 60, 63, 65, 68, 69).

To sum up: śvarakr ṣṇa’s soul or consciousness, the source of subjectivity and inherently private

experiences is an immaterial entity not in space, but in time. It has temporal states, it is conscious of

our experiences: it reacts to materiality (more exactly, to understanding or perhaps the whole of the

mind). It “sees” and it suffers. It cannot move physical objects, but nature (more e actly,

understanding) reacts to its states, “follows its aim”.50

Materiality, the three qualities and the unmanifest

The Sāṁkhya analysis of matter is another highlight of the system. Prakr i, ‘nature’ is not like the

everyday European mechanical concept of dead matter, modelled more or less on billiard balls. It is

not dead stuff, rather an alive creative process: it is essentially productive. It is not a loose heap of

individual substances like atoms but continuous or inseparable. Most importantly it is made up of the

three qualities.51

The theory of the three guṇas or qualities is the most important contribution of Sāṁkhya to Indian

culture. In śvarakr ṣṇa’s presentation it is a refined, grand vision of everything there is, e cept for the

soul. It is a relevant description of everyday physical processes as well as mental phenomena. Here

again we meet with the problem: are the guṇas psychological or cosmological? In this case, however,

the answer is clearly “both”. And it is not due to śvarakr ṣṇa’s failure to grasp the difference, rather to

a deep insight into the fundamental, common structure.

The three qualities, tamas, rajas and sattva52

represent three aspects of any material phenomenon;

as some reflection shows, it is impossible to conceive of any material object where any of the three is

missing. Tamas is inertness, the tendency to remain the same; therefore mass, conservation and

stability, rigidness. Rajas is energy, mobility, the impulse to move and change, repulsion and

separation. Sattva is information, ordering, structure, coherence, cohesion and attraction. These are the

three threads (another meaning of the word guṇa) of which reality is spun. They are omnipresent, but

not distributed equally – lightning is more rajasic than a tree, a book is more sattvic than a stone. Their

inherent dynamism, cooperation and rivalry drives all processes from evolution to decay.

There is a facile, ubiquitous tendency to identify the guṇas (at least as psychic factors) with the

triad happiness, pain and bewilderment (sukha, duḥkha and moha). Although the commentaries

frequently do this, thereby divesting the theory from much of its explanatory power (but making it

easier to grasp), there is nothing in the SK that could justify or even allow this simplification.

There is another material entity beyond the twenty-three already discussed, namely the unmanifest

(avyakta; or principal, pradhāna). This is a theoretical construct, it can never be experienced. Its

supposition is necessitated by the unity of the world: there must be something invisible that keeps the

whole thing together, that guarantees that everywhere the same things or events are possible, that

provides for the universal validity of natural laws. The idea is somewhat similar to empty space, but

more alive, perhaps it could be compared to a physical force field, especially a gravitational field in

the general theory of relativity.

Since the unmanifest is the underlying cause of all material entities, its properties can be deduced

from its effects. The Sāṁkhya theory of causation is about the relation of two things (not events). It is

a mildly deterministic theory stating that nothing “une pected” appears in the process, the features of


the effect are grounded in the features of the cause(s). Basically this is a rejection of the possibility of

emergence (in the strong sense).53

This theory necessitated the acceptance of the non-material soul:

since there is no consciousness in the guṇas, but we are conscious, without the soul it would be a case

of emergence.54

As all material entities are characterised by the three qualities, the same must be true of the

unmanifest: “the unmanifest is proven to be such [as described in SK 11, see note 51], since the effect

consists of the qualities of the cause”.55

Perhaps the difference is that since the unmanifest is

unmanifest (i.e. imperceptible), here the guṇas must be present in their potential form.

Substance reductionism

The three qualities are not properties or attributes of something else (a substance or substrate):

forgetting about the soul for the moment, there is nothing beyond them. They do not characterise an

object different from them – they themselves make up the whole word and all the things within it. This

well-known position of Sāṁkhya is, in fact, not distinct from the basic concept of the three qualities. It

logically follows from the statement that everything is characterised by the three guṇas. For if they

were properties of a substance different from them, that substance in itself should be without the three

qualities, and that is ex hypothesi an impossibility.

So the three qualities do not qualify substances, they constitute them. There is nothing in the

substances but the three guṇas. This seems to be a particularly clear case of a strong substance

reductionist theory, yet Sāṁkhya is not normally understood in this way in modern research. The

reason is not very clear for me; I suspect that perhaps the very idea is so alien to our regular European

ways of thinking that most students could not take this statement at face value. Since the position of

Sāṁkhya (stating that everything is the three guṇas and nothing else) could not be called into question,

the only way open was to reinterpret the guṇas as not qualities at all. Perhaps few scholars would now

go so far as directly stating that they are substances (as Dasgupta or Hiriyanna did56

); rather they opt

for an innovative terminology, like Eliade’s ‘modes of being of prakr i’ or Larson’s ‘constituent

process’. The most widespread solution is to use the word ‘constituent’.57

One difficulty with this approach is that constituents can occur singly, and you can mix them, but

in standard Sāṁkhya there is no such thing as “pure sattva” to which some “unmi ed rajas” could be

added. The guṇas always appear together; they could be called ‘constituent qualities’ (for qualities

cannot appear alone), but perhaps ‘aspects of materiality’ is more directly illuminating.

In any case, if the guṇas were something else and not qualities (in some sense), why would they

be called that? The usual answer is similar to Wezler’s: “The conception of the three guṇas … was

developed at a time when Indian thinkers ‘had not yet learned’ to distinguish between substance as

such and i t s qualities or properties.”58 I find this suggestion implausible, considering śvarakr ṣṇa’s

extremely refined conception of the three guṇas and at the same time the plain impossibility of the

supposition that he was not perfectly aware of the Vaiśeṣika analysis of substance and quality (dravya

and guṇa).

This consensus of modern scholarship started to change with Wezler’s fundamental paper from

1985 quoted above, where he identified some Sāṁkhya tradition where substance is considered

nothing but a combination of qualities – this time, however, of undisputable qualities, i.e. the sensibilia

colour, sound etc. He found this doctrine mentioned both after śvarakr ṣṇa (in the Jaina Mallavādin’s

Dvādaśāra-Naya-Cakra and its commentary by Siṁhasūri) and also much earlier (2nd cent. BCE) in


Patañjali’s Mahā-Bhāṣya. Patañjali’s commentator, Kaiyaṭa even connects this theory with the three

standard qualities of Sāṁkhya: “Sattva, rajas and tamas are the qualities. The five qualities sound etc.

are developed from them and so consist of them. Pots and the like are compounds made of the [five],

and there is no substance as a whole beyond them.”59

Bronkhorst in two papers60 added further witnesses of the doctrine (Bhartr hari, his commentator

Puṇyarāja, Vasubandhu and Dharmapāla), and connected it to an earlier phase of Sāṁkhya where the

sensibilia were among the twenty-five entities. He suggested that possibly even śvarakr ṣṇa belonged

to this phase, provided that he understood the anmā ras as the sensibilia.61

Alex Watson in his 2006

book aptly summarized previous research, adding Rāmakaṇṭha (10th century) to the known witnesses.

“Despite all these references in the te ts of other schools, neither Wezler nor Bronkhorst were able to

find a statement of this view in a surviving Sāṅkhya source. It is a measure of how much that was

central to this tradition is lost… [I]t is striking that an author as late as Rāmakaṇṭha refers to this as

Sāṅkhya view centuries after it had been abandoned by Sāṅkhyas.”62

Now it seems that this idea was not at all given up by Sāṁkhya, at least not before Vijñānabhikṣu

in the 16th century. In the Yukti-Dīpikā itself there are at least four references to precisely this form of

the doctrine, i.e. where it is stated that substances are but combinations of the qualities and these are

not the usual Sāṁkhya guṇas (tamas, rajas, sattva).63

So now we see that this sort of substance

reductionism is proper Sāṁkhya, well attested in the classical period – still, it is atypical. It is like

saying that a house is made of clay. A house is built of bricks, and bricks consist of clay; and clay is a

kind of matter. So it is true, a house is made of clay, but Sāṁkhya normally would say that it is made

of bricks. Or, of matter.

Sāṁkhya, like most Indian traditions, thinks that everyday objects are made up of the five

elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether).64

What is peculiar to Sāṁkhya is the position that the elements

consist of the five sensibilia.65

This is a surprising theory; however, it is perfectly convincing, as can

be seen through the following argument: All that I know of the world I learn through the senses. So I

have absolutely no ground to suppose that there is anything in a pot beyond its sensible qualities,

colour, shape, sound etc.

This theory is unambiguously present in the SK “emanation theory” where it states that the five

elements arise out of the five anmā ras, which clearly stand for the sensibilia.66

Therefore it is not

particularly important to state separately that everyday objects (as consisting of the elements) consist

of the sensibilia.

Once we have convinced ourselves that substance reductionism is an important element in

Sāṁkhya, we are prepared to realise that the guṇas are indeed what their name says – they are

qualities. Sāṁkhya is substance reductionist at the deepest level: matter itself, prakr i, is nothing but

its constituent qualities, the three fundamental aspects of any material reality, inertia, energy and

information.

Not only nature itself, but all its manifestations, all material objects and phenomena are reducible

to the three qualities. “Therefore, recognising that bodies, even up to Brahmā, cannot abide, for they

are but compounds of sattva etc., like pots…”67

Now this is the fundamental insight of Sāṁkhya,

compared to which the particular cases (like the reduction of the objects to the elements, or directly to

the sensibilia; or the reduction of the sensibilia to the three guṇas68

) are of little importance and are

therefore seldom mentioned in Sāṁkhya texts proper. Perhaps some of these seemed more unusual to

other traditions and therefore they remarked on them pointedly, making these particular forms of

Sāṁkhya reductionism more conspicuous in non-Sāṁkhyan texts.


śvarakr ṣṇa himself was a conscious and consistent substance reductionist: he never uses a word

denoting substance, like dravya, vastu, dharmin or svabhāva.69

The tattvas, ‘entities’ are again either

not substances or clearly reducible; even their names are often action nouns like buddhi,

‘understanding’ or adjectives like avyakta, ‘unmanifest’. We have seen that he derives the elements

from the sensibilia, and he defines all the psycho-physiological factors as functions, not things.

Understanding is judgment, egoity is appropriation etc. He even says that the three factors of mind can

be viewed either separately or as a unit: “The particularity of the three is their function; this is not

common. Their common function as an instrument is the five winds (breath etc.) [i.e. the life

functions].”70

And this is not an exception – in the table of the entities above it is clear that there are

several functional groups among them and most of these can be seen as a unit (while distinctness is

supposed to be a characteristic feature of substances). Only nature as a whole, the Universe, or its

abstraction, the unmanifest could be seen as proper substances: but they, too, are nothing but the

combination of the three qualities. Even agency, which is normally thought to be a privilege of

substances, is attributed to the qualities (SK 20, guṇa-kar r ve).

Substance reductionism is an idea that is difficult to grasp for most people in the European

tradition while it is a fundamental and stable feature of Sāṁkhya, Śaiva Siddhānta and Buddhism.

Why could these people accept this concept so easily? Since these philosophies seem to be

independent of the Vedic tradition, it is tempting to speculate that a different linguistic background

may have been at work here. In most European languages and also in Sanskrit the opposition noun–

adjective is particularly strong. We can only speak in substance–quality language, and it makes it next

to impossible to think in another way. In the Dravidian languages (as in Tibetan and Chinese: that may

be relevant for Buddhism) there is no separate grammatical category for adjectives, so for people who

can think in these languages substance reductionism (to qualities) is no more alien than analysing a

substance in terms of its components, e.g. elements.71

The Buddha’s master

Insubstantialism is a very characteristic philosophical doctrine; and we see now that it is shared by

Sāṁkhya and Buddhism.72

Is this a mere coincidence? Clearly not, for there are a lot more identical or

similar teachings in the two systems. The innumerable common points between early Buddhism and

classical Yoga – which is, after all, a version of Sāṁkhya – have been repeatedly pointed out.73

Let us

mention a few central features shared by the SK and the Buddha.

The starting point of both philosophies is the universality and unavoidability of suffering, duḥkha.

This is the first noble truth (ārya-satya) of the Buddha, and the very first word of the SK; its ground is

the transience of all existence: aging and death.74

And, of course, both traditions promise to show the

way out.

They give an analysis of the world only in as much it is essential for liberation. They do not give a

description of the cosmos, the Earth, the Sun or the seas; they do not talk about the gods, although

their existence seems to be naturally accepted.75

In fact their description of reality is basically an

anthropology only. Clearly the picture is almost identical (with the obvious difference of the puruṣa,

the non-material soul in Sāṁkhya), although the terminology differs. Both analyse the human being as

a compound of five entities; listing these, I first give the Sāṁkhya concept, then the Buddha’s term

taken from the frequently mentioned group of the ‘five skandhas’. 1. Body (and all e ternal physical

realities): kārya–rūpa; 2. the connection between external and internal: bāhyakaraṇa–vedanā;76

then


the mind analysed into three factors, i.e. 3. coordinator: manas–saṁjñā; 4. personal colouring:

ahaṁkāra–saṁskārāḥ; 5. conceptual thinking: buddhi–vijñāna.

In the liberating praxis of both, a key feature is the disidentification of the subject with exactly

these factors.77

Even the wording is practically identical: “Practicing so with the entities: ‘I am not

[this], [this] is not mine, [this] is not the I’…” in the SK; “He considers [the five skandhas] so: ‘this is

not mine, I am not this, this is not my self’” in the e tremely important sermon of the Buddha, The

simile of the cobra.78

Lastly, probably as a logical consequence of their rejecting static substances, both traditions

emphasise causally determined processes of change, in Sāṁkhya called pariṇāma, in Buddhism

pra ī ya samu pāda (typically translated ‘evolution’ or ‘change’, and ‘dependent origination’ or

‘conditioned arising’, respectively).

Now with so many points in common, it is natural to ask: who learned from whom? Although the

two schools must have been mutually influencing each other for centuries, still I think that the basic

direction can be identified. The Buddha was not shy to point out if something was his own discovery

or innovation, like the Middle Way (rejecting ascetic practices) or his gentle meditation technique

(‘letting go’ instead of oga’s ‘oppressing’). In case of his anthropology, the five skandhas, he clearly

uses a system he inherited; for in his very first sermon he merely mentions it without feeling the need

to explain the idea.79

After Gautama had left his home seeking the way to liberation from suffering, he had two

teachers. Arāḍa Kālāma, his first teacher, was – according to his earliest detailed biography80

– a

Sāṁkhya philosopher. Of course, this late tradition could be mistaken; the older sources are less

e plicit. From the Buddha’s account of his own education, we learn only that Kālāma had a school

(gaṇa) with two texts (ñāṇavāda and heravāda, ‘knowledge-speech’ and ‘speech of the elders’,

probably a sū ra and its commentary), where they practised awareness and meditation (sati and

samādhi). The deepest, last teaching, that Gautama himself directly realised (sacchi-kata) was

ākiñcañña-āya ana, that seems to mean ‘the state of not having anything’.81

And this sounds

suspiciously similar to the disidentification-meditation mentioned above.

According to unanimous tradition, Gautama came from Kapila-vastu, ‘the ground of Kapila’ –

and Kapila is, of course, the legendary founder of the Sāṁkhya school. So it seems perfectly

consistent with all that we know of him that the inherited part of the Buddha’s doctrine comes from an

early form of Sāṁkhya.

What remains to be proven is that substance-reductionism is an old enough feature of Sāṁkhya to

make it plausible that this is actually the source of the Buddha’s (and Buddhism’s) insubstantionalist

doctrine. Part of it is already clear, since the five-skandha anthropology (and especially the term rūpa,

‘form’ for the body) is in itself a reductionist approach, dissolving the unified concept of person as one

substance – and we saw that the Buddha inherited this concept.

Pañcaśikha is one of the most famous ancient Sāṁkhya masters. In the Mahā-Bhāra a (12.211–

212) he leads king Janaka to liberation; this text is one of our most important sources for early

Sāṁkhya.82

The text is somewhat unclear (as many philosophical texts in the Mahā-Bhāra a), but the

key motifs of substance-reductionism and of disidentification are unmistakable:

Endless suffering will not cease for him who, through wrong views, sees this collection of

qualities as being himself. But where could the continuous flow of suffering, clinging to the

word, find a place, when the view is ‘not-self’, and also ‘I am not’ and ‘not mine’?83


Janaka, the king of Videha (where the Buddha also spent some time) is more famous as the patron

of ājñavalkya, the sage of the Br had-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad. Many of his questions and even words are

the same as those of Pañcaśikha here. ājñavalkya’s master was Uddālaka Āruṇi,84

the greatest

teacher of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Now Āruṇi’s teaching has many significant Sāṁkhya features,85

most notably a substance-reductionism to three qualities! He calls them ‘forms’ or ‘colours’ (rūpa),

not guṇas, but the idea is exactly the same. They are present in everything, and there is nothing else in

the objects.86

And, as luck would have it, it can be proven that the Buddha knew this teaching. For he refers to a

very unusual view, shared only by Āruṇi and ājñavalkya,87

according to which a person at death

simply dissolves into the Great Being, also called the Self, ā man. The Buddha, of course, thinks that

this is a harmful theory:

There is this wrong view: “The Self and the world are the same. After death I will be that: I

will stay identical for eternal times, constant, stable, eternal, essentially unchanging.” He

considers it so: “this is mine, I am this, this is my self.”88

So the Buddha inherited his substance-reductionist ideas from the proto-Sāṁkhya circles of Āruṇi and

ājñavalkya. What his own innovation was, he made perfectly clear: rejecting their ā man-substance,

he created a system entirely without substances, and so – to the dismay of many – a religion with no

soul.

Bibliography

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Notes

1 McGinn (1993).

2 The SK will be quoted based on my edition, where some text-critical information is also given.

When a variant reading specified in the edition seems relevant for the purposes of this paper, it will be

https://www.academia.edu/4531513/Key_issues_in_Indian_philosophy

http://www.academia.edu/472488/Is_the_Cosmic_Giant_an_Indo-European_myth


marked here with ‘v.l.’ All Sanskrit texts quoted will be standardized, with hyphens, sandhi-markers

and punctuation added. All translations are mine except when noted explicitly.

3 Larson (1987: 77).

4 “[T]hough the Mokṣadharma as we have it offers already a bewildering diversity of often

contradicting views, the historical reality at the time of its first composition was still more complex –

each ashram, so to speak, having its own competing version of proto-Sāṁkhya philosophy and being

keen on having it canonized.” Bakker et al. (1999: 468).

5 Most scholars consider this text very late (c. 14th century). I have tried to show elsewhere that

this opinion is not well-founded and that in all probability it is earlier than the second century CE.

Ruzsa (2014a: 101–107).

6 At least the Nyāya-Sū ra is clearly referred to.

SK 5: trividham anumānam ākhyā am, “it has been e plained that inference has three kinds.”

SK 6: sāmānyatas tu dr ṣṭād atîndriyāṇām prasiddhir anumānāt, “Things beyond the senses are

proved through inference by analogy”.

Nyāya-Sū ra 1.1.5: atha tat-pūrvakaṁ trividham anumānam: pūrvava , śeṣavat, sāmānyato

dr ṣṭaṁ ca, “Then inference is based on that [i.e. perception]; it has three kinds: like before, like the

rest, and by analogy [lit. seen by genus].

A quasi-quotation from Nāgārjuna’s Mūla-Madhyamaka-Kārikā (16.1&5) again seems

unmistakable:

1 saṁskārāḥ saṁsaranti cen, na ni yāḥ saṁsaranti te;

saṁsaran i ca nâni yāḥ. sattve 'py eṣa samaḥ kramaḥ.

5 na badhyante, na mucyanta udaya-vyaya-dharmiṇaḥ

saṁskārāḥ; pūrvava sa vo badhyate na, na mucyate.

“1. If composites transmigrate, they do not transmigrate as eternal; but temporary things do not

transmigrate. The logic is the same with a living being. 5. Composites, whose nature is to rise and pass

away, cannot be bound or freed. Similarly a living being is not bound and not freed.”

Compare SK 62: asmān na badhyate 'ddhā na mucyate nâpi saṁsarati kaś-cit. “Therefore no-

one is bound, nor freed, and also does not transmigrate.”

Also the fact that the plurality of souls needed proof (SK 18) indicates that a system of Vedānta

was known to śvarakr ṣṇa.

7 I have argued for this in Ruzsa (2010: 428–430), and in more detail in Ruzsa (1997a). A possible

reconstruction of the core text will be found in my edition of the SK.

8 A particularly nasty example from SK 41: vinā viśeṣair na tiṣṭhati nir-āśrayaṁ liṅgam. “The

transmigrating entity cannot stay with no substrate, without the elements”, i.e. without a gross material

body. The message is perhaps that even gods must have a gross body and there is no Bardo, antara-

bhāva, intermediate existence between dying and rebirth. But if we read it as vinâviśeṣair (i.e. sandhi

of vinā + aviśeṣair), the meaning will be “without the subtle elements”, which is but a scholastic

insistence on the precise build-up of the liṅga, the transmigrating entity.

9 Larson (1987: 18–19); Bronkhorst (1994: 315); Ruzsa (1997b), in more detail in Ruzsa (2014a:

97–114).

10 In many traditions, including many commentaries of the SK, the elements are called mahā- or

s hūla-bhū as (great or gross elements), while the anmā ras are referred to as sūkṣma-bhū as, ‘subtle

elements’. These subtle elements are theoretical entities (although advanced yogis supposedly can see


them) with no clear function or justification; they are subtle earth, subtle water etc. They make up the

subtle body, which we carry on while transmigrating, while the gross elements (the gross body) is left

behind.

This interpretation is alien to the SK and therefore it is seriously misleading to translate – in this

text – these entities as ‘gross and subtle elements’. Although no list of the anmā ras is given, it is

perfectly clear that they are the sensibilia:

28 rūpâdiṣu pañcānām ālocana-mā ram iṣya e vr iḥ

34 buddhîndriyāṇi teṣām pañca, viśeṣâviśeṣa-viṣayāṇi

“The function of the five [senses] is merely observing colour etc. … Among them [i.e. among the

“powers”] there are the five senses; their objects are the elements and the aviśeṣas [= anmā ras].”

This makes sense only if the end of the list of the twenty-five entities, the last ten, i.e. the anmā ras

and the elements, starts with ‘colour’, and further, the list should contain the objects for the other

senses as well. It follows that the anmā ras refer to the sensibilia.

But śvarakr ṣṇa, as discussed above in note 8, with one of his characteristic ambiguous phrases

makes room for the approach where the anmā ras are constituents of the transmigrating entity (liṅga),

and are therefore best understood as subtle elements. In SK 40 the ambiguity remains: mahad-ādi

sūkṣma-paryantam saṁsara i … liṅgam, “the liṅga [consisting of the entities] from the Great (i.e.

buddhi, understanding) down to the subtle [elements] transmigrates”. However, the sentence could

also mean only that “the liṅga transmigrates from the great down to the tiny”.

11 SK 28: vr iḥ / vacanâdāna-viharaṇô sargânandāś ca pañcānām.

12 I am not aware of any philosophical tradition where manas would be a regular term for ‘mind’.

In Yoga citta is used, in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika ā man (working together with manas) is the mind.

Vedānta seems mostly to follow Sāṁkhya usage.

13 Saṁkalpaka, ‘who fits together’, ‘who joins’, ‘connector’ is often misunderstood (already by

the Indian tradition), based on the everyday meaning of saṁkalpa, ‘intention’, leading to an

interpretation of manas as volition.

14 This is the less frequent, but probably more original version of SK 27:

saṁkalpakam atra manaḥ, ac cêndriyam ubhaya hā samākhyā am.

antas tri-kāla-viṣayaṁ; asmād ubhaya-pracāraṁ tat.

15 Quite independent of the Indian tradition, Wilhelm Dilthey’s (1890) unique analysis seems to

grasp the problem in some of its depth. He substitutes for the usual model (the I, the subject, as already

given cognises the external world) a dynamic approach where the I arises in the process of frustrating

interactions with external reality; the frustration defines it as alien, as not-I, as object.

16 In the SK we have only ahaṁkāra, but the expression in SK 64 clearly shows that at least these

three aspects, but most probably also the three terms were known: evaṁ a vâbhyāsān:“nâsmi, na me,

nâham” i y, “Practicing so with the entities: ‘I am not [this], [this] is not mine, [this] is not the I’.”

17 SK 23: adhyavasāyo buddhir. dharmo, jñānaṁ, virāga, aiśvaryam

sā vikam etad-rūpaṁ. āmasam asmād viparyas am.

It is interesting to note that the four sattvic forms of buddhi are the four basic religious aims (as

clearly spelled out in SK 44 and 45): dharma for Vedism, knowledge for Sāṁkhya, dispassion for

Buddhism and the other śramaṇa religions, sovereignty (or magic powers) of Yoga.

18 SK 37: sarvam pratyupabhogaṁ yasmā puruṣasya sādhaya i buddhiḥ


sâiva ca viśinaṣṭi punaḥ pradhāna-puruṣân araṁ sūkṣmam.

19 The last example is somewhat hypothetical, suggesting that egoity adds the colouring of our

personalities (saṁskāras: past impressions, memories, inclinations, unconscious traumas, instincts) to

the information processed. This idea was inspired by Tibor Körtvélyesi’s (2011: 49–50) analysis of the

fourth Buddhist skandha, i.e. saṁskāras.

20 This information-processing series is not my idea, it is śvarakr ṣṇa’s. He uses the verb ‘to see’

(dr ś) in connection with both the senses (SK 4, 5, 30) and the soul (19, 21, 65, 66, 59, 61). He calls the

external instrument (which includes the senses) the sense object (viṣaya) of the mind (the internal

instrument; SK 33). The whole idea is nicely expressed in SK 35–36. See also the quotation in note

42.

21 Ruzsa (forthcoming).

22 Ruzsa (2007).

23 Szegedi (2009: 42–52).

24 Hulin (2007: 59).

25 Franco (1991: 123).

26 Hulin (2007: 60).

27 Bronkhorst (1999: 683).

28 nanu liṅgaṁ ced ekaṁ, tarhi kathaṁ puruṣa-bhedena vilakṣaṇā bhogāḥ syuḥ? a râha: ‘vyakti-

bhedaḥ karma-viśeṣā . 10.’ yady api sargâdau Hiraṇyagarbhôpādhi-rūpam ekam eva liṅgam, a hâpi

asya paścād vyak i-bhedo, vyakti-rūpeṇâṁśa o nānā vam api bhava i; ya hêdānīm ekasya pi r -

liṅgadehasya nānā vam aṁśa o bhava i pu ra-kanyâdi-liṅgadeha-rūpeṇa. a ra kāraṇam āha: karma-

viśeṣād i i; jīvân arāṇāṁ bhoga-hetu-karmâder i y ar haḥ. (p. 90)

Bronkhorst (1999: 688) also refers to this example.

29 SK 21, 22, 24 and 38. – The highly suspect verse 25 would even more increase the cosmogonic

feel of the te t: “The sattvic eleven proceeds from the Vaikrita (‘Modified’) egoity; the group of the

sensibilia from the Bhūtādi (‘Beginning of the Elements’); both from the Taijasa (‘Brilliant’)”. – The

Sanskrit original:

21 puruṣasya … pradhānasya … saṁyogas: a -kr aḥ sargaḥ.

22 prakr er mahāṁs, tato 'haṁkāras, asmād gaṇaś ca ṣoḍaśakaḥ;

asmād api ṣoḍaśakā pañcabhyaḥ pañca bhū āni.

24 abhimāno 'haṁkāras. asmād dvi-vidhaḥ pravartate sargaḥ:

aindriya ekādaśakas, ānmā raḥ (vv.ll. ekādaśakaś ca gaṇas, anmā raḥ) pañcakaś

câiva.

25 sā vika ekādaśakaḥ pravar a e Vaikr ād ahaṁ-kārā ;

Bhū âdes ānmā raḥ (v.l. anmā raḥ), sa āmasas; Taijasād ubhayaṁ.

38 tan-mā rāṇy a-viśeṣās; ebhyo bhū āni, pañca pañcabhyaḥ.

30 Not surprisingly, the regular counterpart of creation, i.e. an apocalypse or cosmic dissolution,

pralaya is not even mentioned. SK 69 is clearly a later addition; in any case, it does not speak about

the dissolution of the world, but of the beings or elements (bhū a), and it says only that it occurred in

the system of the highest r ṣi (Kapila): sthity-utpatti-pralayāś cin yan e ya ra bhū ānām, “where the

abiding, arising and dissolution of the beings are thought of.”


31 Verses 21 and 24 have been quoted above, note 29.

46 eṣa pratyaya-sargo: viparyayâśak i-tuṣṭi-siddhy-ākhyaḥ.

guṇa-vaiṣamya-vimardā asya ca bhedās u pañcāśa .

52 na vinā bhāvair liṅgaṁ; na vinā liṅgena bhāva-nirvr iḥ.

liṅgâkhyo bhāvâkhyas asmād bhava i dvidhā (v.l. dvividhaḥ pravartate) sargaḥ.

53 aṣṭa-vikalpo daivas, tairyagyonaś ca pañcadhā bhava i,

mānuṣyaś câikavidhaḥ – samāsa o bhau ikaḥ sargaḥ.

54 ūrdhvaṁ sattva-viśālas, amo-viśālaś ca mūla aḥ sargaḥ,

madhye rajo-viśālo: Brahmâdi-stamba-paryantaḥ.

66 dr ṣṭā mayê y upekṣaka eko. dr ṣṭâham i y upara ânyā.

sati saṁyoge 'pi tayoḥ prayojanaṁ ṇâs i sargasya.

32 This shows, incidentally, that it is somewhat superficial to call understanding or mind (buddhi

and antaḥkaraṇa) material entities. Without the soul there is no mind: “buddhi and ahaṁkāra …are

mixtures of matter and consciousness.” “The buddhi, the first material product, has two causes, the

prakr i and the puruṣa principle, and is like a knot made of two ropes.” Jacobsen (1999: 225–226).

33 At death only the gross body made up of the five elements dies. The subtler, invisible parts of a

living being (the subtle body, sūkṣma-śarīra or liṅga) move on to build a new gross body. So this

transmigrating entity is immortal; and it consists of material entities (tattvas of prakr i) – the 13-fold

instrument (i.e. understanding, egoity, manas, the 5 senses and the 5 active powers) and perhaps the 5

anmā ras.

34 Schweizer (1993).

35 Schweizer (1993: 858, 849, 850).

36 Schweizer (1993: 852).

37 Searle (1980: 422). Searle, however, focuses on intentionality, not on consciousness.

38 Larson (1987: 77).

39 Larson (1987: 81).

40 Yoga-Sū ra 1.2–3: yogaś ci a-vr i-nirodhaḥ. adā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe 'vas hānam.

41 Eka-rūpe ca cai anye sarva-kālam avas hi e / nānā-vidhârtha-bhok r vaṁ kathaṁ

nāmôpapadyate? (Tattva-saṁgraha 288.) The translation and the sanskrit text is taken from Watson

(2010: 92). This paper is an excellent comparison of four positions about the eternal, immaterial self:

Nyāya (self without essential consciousness), Sāṁkhya (self as pure consciousness), Vedānta (self as

unchanging knowledge) and Śaiva Siddhānta (active self).

42 Candrakīrti, another great Buddhist scholar in the 7th century, still knows this more natural

idea, for he writes about the Sāṁkhya theory of cognition: “When the sound etc. has been grasped by

the hearing etc. superintended by the manas, understanding makes a judgment. Then the soul becomes

conscious of the object as judged by the understanding.” (śabdâdiṣu śro râdi-vr ibhir

manasâdhiṣṭhi ābhiḥ parigr hī eṣu buddhir adhyavasāyaṁ karoti. tato buddhy-avasitam arthaṁ

puruṣaś cetayate. Lang, 2010: 56).

43 So it does not transmigrate (na saṁsarati, SK 62).

44 SK 18: janma-maraṇa-karaṇānāṁ pra i-niyamād, a-yugapa pravr eś ca

puruṣa-bahutvaṁ siddhaṁ; tri-guṇâdi (v.l. trai-guṇya)-viparyayāc câiva.


45 Viṣayin and vivekin, SK 11; kevalin, madhya-stha, sâkṣi, and draṣṭr , SK 19.

46 SK 55: a ra jarā-maraṇa-kr aṁ duḥkham prâpnoti cetanaḥ puruṣaḥ

47 jña, SK 2, and bhok r , SK 17, 37, 40.

48 SK 31: na kena ci kārya e karaṇam.

49 SK 20: guṇa-kar r ve 'pi a hā kar êva bhava y udāsīnaḥ.

50 The historical process is more complex than an unidirectional movement towards a more

abstract conception of the soul, for Kundakunda, an important Jain author before śvarakr ṣṇa, had a

conception much like him, while already attributing to the Sāṁkhyas the idea of absolutely

unchanging soul: “If the soul does not change by states like anger, then transmigration will be

impossible – or the Sāṁkhya position will be true.”

apariṇamaṁte hi sayaṁ jīve kohâdiehi bhāvehiṁ

saṁsārassa abhāvo pasajjade, saṁkha-samao vā.

Bronkhorst (2010: 219).

51 SK 11: “The manifest is made up of the three qualities, continuous, object, common,

unconscious, essentially productive. The unmanifest also. Soul is its opposite and also similar [to some

other properties of the unmanifest].”

tri-guṇam, aviveki, viṣayaḥ, sāmānyam, ace anaṁ, prasava-dharmi

vyaktaṁ; a hā pradhānaṁ. tad-viparī as, a hā ca pumān.

52 These traditional names are better left untranslated. Tamas means darkness, rajas the

atmosphere, sattva existence, essence or living being.

53 The name of the theory, sat-kārya (‘e istent-effect’) is wrongly construed as “the pree istence

of the effect in the cause”; it could rather be understood as “effect of e istent(s)”, meaning that there

must be a feature in the cause(s) explaining a feature of the effect. Ruzsa (2003a: 286–287).

54 SK 17: tri-guṇā‘di-viparyayād … puruṣo 'sti, “There is the soul, for there is the opposite of

‘made up of the three qualities’ [SK 11] etc.”, i.e. for we find in the world features opposite to those

characterising matter (like ‘unconscious’). – The argument is not begging the question, for it is not an

arbitrary postulate that the guṇas lack consciousness: the guṇas are (abstractions and generalisations)

based on experience, and in non-sentient objects we do not find the slightest trace of consciousness.

55 SK 14 kāraṇa-guṇâ maka vā kāryasyâvyak am api siddham.

The way this inference works has been more fully treated in Ruzsa (2003a: 293–295).

56 Dasgupta (1922–1955: 241–245); Hiriyanna (1932: 271–272).

57 Hacker’s (1985: 112) position may appear representative: “Diese Lehre hat europäischen

Forschern zunächst einmal einige Schwierigkeiten bereitet, weil wir sonst das Wort guṇa überall mit

„Eigenschaft“ übersetzen können, und hier scheint nach unseren Denkmöglichkeiten nur ein Wort wie

etwa „Konstituente“ zu passen … Frauwallner aber, der hier tiefer sah…, hat die Bedeutung

„Eigenschaften“ beibehalten und hat ganz deutlich ausgesprochen, daß eben die Eigenschaften hier als

Substanzen aufgefaßt werden. Das ist uns Fremd, aber wir müssen uns an diese Fremdheit gewöhnen,

sonst können wir eben indische Philosophie nicht studieren.”

58 Wezler (1985: 26).


59 sattva-rajas-tamāṁsi guṇāḥ, tat-pariṇāma-rūpāś ca ad-ā makā eva śabdâdayaḥ pañca guṇāḥ.

tat-saṅghā a-rūpaṁ ca ghaṭâdi, na u ad-vyatiriktam avayavi-dravyam as î i sāṁkhyānāṁ

siddhân aḥ. Wezler (1985: 10).

60 Bronkhorst (1994) and Bronkhorst (1997).

In the second paper he brings to our notice Vasubandhu’s testimony in his Abhidharma-Kośa-

Bhāṣya (III.50a). Although Bronkhorst himself believes that the passage presents “Sāṁkhya in its

classical form, and not in its pre-classical shape, in which no unchanging substrate of properties had

yet been introduced”, he clearly overlooked the unequivocal statement of the Sāṁkhya position

denying a substrate beyond the qualities: kaś câivam āha, dharmebhyo 'nyo dharmîti? “Who said that

the substrate is different from the properties”? Bronkhorst (1997: 394).

61 Bronkhorst (1994: 311–312). I think that it is the only possible reading of the SK (see note 10).

This understanding of the anmātras as the sensibilia lived on in the commentaries at the side of the

new, ‘subtle elements’ interpretation. See e.g. Bronkhorst’s main source for “classical” Sāṁkhya, the

Yukti-Dīpikā on SK 24cd: anmā rāṇāṁ śabda-sparśâdīnām ayaṁ ānmā raḥ sargaḥ, “This ānmā ra

creation is of the anmā ras, sound, touch etc.” Wezler, Albrecht & Shujun Motegi (eds.): Yuk idīpikā.

The Mos Signi ican Commen ary o he Sāṁkhyakārikā, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, p. 195.

Bronkhorst’s key argument for the substantiality of the anmā ras is that they have more than one

quality. This is, however, not standard “classical” Sāṁkhya; it appears only in the Yukti-Dīpikā.

Besides the passage that Bronkhorst and Wezler analysed, it is mentioned cursorily in the introduction

to SK 22 (p. 187): eka-rūpāṇi anmā rāṇîty anye; ekô arāṇî i vārṣagaṇyaḥ. “Others say that the

anmā ras have one form each; Vārṣagaṇya says that each has one more [than the previous anmā ra].”

So this is clearly the unique position of a single master, not accepted by others.

62 Watson (2006: 187–188). In footnote 196 he also mentions (but does not comment on) the

references to the substance reductionist position in later Sāṁkhya that I sent him.

63 Yukti-Dīpikā (YD) on SK 16c (pp. 163–164): āha: … na hi vo dharmebhyo 'nyo dharmī! …

ucya e: … ya hā senâṅgebhyo 'nanya vam senāyāḥ. “Opponent: For you, there is no substrate other

than the properties! … Answer: [True,] as an army is not different from its parts.”

YD on SK 23a (p. 189), a Buddhist objects: dharma-dharmiṇor ananya vād … vânya vam i i

dosaḥ. “… the properties and the substrate are not different. Or … they would be different, and that is

unacceptable [for you Sāṁkhyas].”

YD on SK 15b (p. 144): na câikaiko rūpâdīnāṁ dravyâkāraḥ, samudāya-dharma vā . “Colour

etc. singly do not have the form of a substance, for that is a property of their combination.” – A

note in ms. D adds: rūpâdi-pañcaka-vyatiriktaṁ āvad dravyaṁ nâsti, “there is no substance beyond

the five: colour etc.”

YD on SK 34d (p. 218): sabda-sparśa-rasa-rūpa-gandha-samudāya-rūpā mūr īr, “physical

bodies are combinations of sound, touch, taste, colour and smell.”

64 It is so obvious that it is seldom mentioned; one example is Gauḍapāda on SK 17 (p. 91): idaṁ

śarīraṁ pañcānāṁ mahābhū ānāṁ saṁghā o var ate, “this human body is a compound of the five

great elements.”

65 How e actly they are related is not specified by śvarakr ṣṇa. The commentators’ preferred

version is that from sound arises ether, if we add touch, we have air; adding colour, fire; adding taste,

water; and earth has all the five sensibilia.


66 In most commentaries the ‘subtle element’ interpretation of the anmā ras appears only in the

discussion of their role in the liṅga, the transmigrating entity.

67 asmā saṅghā a-mā ra vā sa vâdīnāṁ ghaṭâdiva / ā brahmaṇaḥ parijñāya dehānām

anavasthitim. YD 50cd (p. 248).

68 śabda-sparśa-rūpa-rasa-gandhāḥ pañca rayāṇāṁ sukha-duḥkha-mohānāṁ saṁniveśa-viśeṣāḥ,

“The five (sound, touch, colour, taste and smell) are particular arrangements of the three, happiness,

pain and bewilderment.” Steinkellner (1999: 670, fr. 4).

69 Actually dharmin and svabhāva do occur in SK 11 and 55, but only in the sense of ‘essentially’.

Āśraya, ‘substrate’ or ‘support’ is freely used, but it is not necessarily a substance: in SK 12 we are

told that the qualities are the substrates for each other (anyo'nyâbhibhavâśraya-janana-mi huna-

vr ayaś ca guṇāḥ).

70 SK 29 svālakṣaṇyaṁ vr is rayasya; sâiṣā bhava y asāmānyā.

sāmānya-karaṇa-vr iḥ prāṇâdyā vāyavaḥ pañca.

71 It is not suggested that Sāṁkhya has any particular connection with the Dravidian speaking

South (although many important philosophers writing in Sanskrit, e.g. Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, belong

there). It seems that Dravidian languages were spoken in Northern India before the arrival of the Indo-

Aryans, and the continuous substrate influence of Dravidian is apparent in the development of all

Indo-Aryan languages (including Sanskrit) for much more than a millennium. So there is nothing

inherently improbable in the supposition that some thinkers, known to us only through Sanskrit te ts,

could speak and think in a Dravidian language. – I have argued for the influence of Dravidian on

Aryan languages starting already at the time of the composition of the R gvedic hymns and continuing

at least to the period of late Prakrits (ca. 500 CE) in Ruzsa (2013).

72 That the Buddha himself already had a strong anti-substantialist attitude is clearly shown

beyond the well-known an-ā man, ‘no-self’ doctrine by his philosophical term for the human body:

rūpa, ‘form’ – that is, a quality, not a substance.

73 Tandon (1995).

74 Ruzsa (2003b); Ruzsa (2014a: 97–114), i.e. ch. IX: “Pain and its cure. The aim of philosophy in

Sāṁkhya”.

75 SK 54 mentions Brahmā as the highest being within creation. The Yoga-Sū ra and the

commentators of the SK speak about śvara, the Lord, i.e. God, although he is not the creator. See

Bronkhorst (1983). Brahmā Sahaṁ-pati, Sakka the king of the gods, and Māra the evil appear

frequently in stories about the Buddha.

76 Here, however, the Buddhist approach is more passive. The Sāṁkhya concept includes the

powers of action as well, while vedanā is only sensation.

77 As Marzenna Jakubczak (2012: 42) so clearly emphasized in her nicely perceptive paper, in

Sāṁkhya “the aim is not to identify directly with puruṣa, but rather to keep disidentifying with the

present phenomenal self by means of constant realisation: ‘I am not, not mine, not I’ (nāsmi na me

nāham; cf. SK 64; M[ajjhima]N[ikāya] 109.15–16).”

78 evaṁ a vâbhyāsān: “nâsmi, na me, nâham” i y (SK 64). – rūpaṁ (etc.) “n' etaṁ mama, n' eso

'ham asmi, na m' eso a ā” i samanupassa i (Alagaddûpama-Sutta, Majjhima-Nikāya 22).


79 Saṁkhittena, pañc' upādāna-kkhandhā dukkhā. “Summarily, the five skandhas of appropriation

are painful.” Dhamma-Cakka-Ppavattana-Sutta, Saṁyutta-Nikāya 5.12.2.1 (= 56.11) = Vinaya-Piṭaka,

Mahā-Vagga 1.6.

80 This is Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddha-carita, written half a millennium after the Buddha’s time.

81 Mahā-Saccaka-Sutta, Majjhima-Nikāya 36.

82 Motegi (1999).

83 Mahā-Bhāra a 12.212.14–15:

14 imaṁ guṇa-samāhāram ā ma-bhāvena paśya aḥ

asamyag-darśanair duḥkham anantaṁ nôpaśāmya i.

15 anā mêti ca yad dr ṣṭaṁ, te nâhaṁ na mamêty api:

vartate kim-adhiṣṭhānā prasak ā duḥkha-saṁtatiḥ?

84 Bronkhorst (2007: 226–231). – On the curious inversion of motifs between the two great sages I

have written in Ruzsa (2009).

85 As it was perfectly clear in antiquity: the first important discussion in the Brahma-Sū ra (1.1.5–

11) tries to prove that this interpretation is false – thereby showing that it was widespread to quote the

Sad-Vidyā, i.e. Āruṇi’s teaching to his son Śvetaketu in the 6th chapter of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, as

a scriptural authority for Sāṁkhya.

86 See Ruzsa (2004). It is interesting to note that Āruṇi teaches sat-kārya (‘the effect of e istent’)

in the most literal sense, since his fundamental entity is not called prakr i but sat, ‘e istent’.

87 Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8–10; Br had-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 and 4.5

88 Yam p' idaṁ diṭṭhi-ṭṭhānaṁ ‘so loko so a ā, so pecca bhavissāmi: nicco dhuvo sassa o a-

vipariṇāma-dhammo, sassati-samaṁ tath'eva ṭhassāmî’ i am pi ‘e aṁ mama, eso 'ham asmi, eso me

a ā’ i samanupassa i. From The simile of the cobra (Alagaddûpama-Sutta, Majjhima-Nikāya 22).

Sāṁkhya: Dualism without substances

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