Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/254

 23 8 The Kapila and the PiUaiijala Sii1!zkhya [CH. a stage that they would not like to borrow from one another. As this can only be held true of earlier Buddhism I am disposed to think that the date of the first three chapters of the Yoga siUras must be placed about the second century B.C. Since there is no evidence which can stand in the way of identifying the grammarian Patanjali with the Yoga writer, I believe we may take them as being identical I. The Sarpkhya and the Yoga Doctrine of Soul or Purua. The Sarpkhya philosophy as we have it now admits two prin- ciples, souls and prakrti, the root principle of matter. Souls are many, like the J aina souls, but they are without parts and qualities. They do not contract or expand according as they occupy a smaller or a larger body, but are always all-pervasive, and are not contained in the bodies in which they are manifested. But the relation between body or rather the mind associated with it and soul is such that whatever mental phenomena happen in the mind are interpreted as the experience of its soul. The souls are many, and had it not been so (the Sarpkhya argues) with the birth of one all would have been born and with the death of one all would have died 2. The exact nature of soul is however very difficult of compre- hension, and yet it is exactly this which one must thoroughly grasp in order to understand the Sarpkhya philosophy. Unlike the J aina soul possessing ananta/halla, anantadarsana, a1lanta- sukha, and allallta'vlryya, the Sarpkhya soul is described as being devoid of any and every characteristic; but its nature is abso- lute pure consciousness (cit). The Sarpkhya view differs from the Vedanta, firstly in this that it does not consider the soul to be of the nature of pure intelligence and bliss (ii.nallda)3. Bliss with Sarpkhya is but another name for pleasure and as such it belongs to prakfti and does not constitute the nature of soul; secondly, according to Vedanta the individual souls (/i'va) are 1 See S. N. Das Gupta, Yoga Philosophy ill relation to other Indian systems 0/ thought, cb. II. The most important point in favour of this identification seems to be that both the Patafijalis as against the other Indian systems admitted the doctrine of spho!a which was dcnied t:ven Ly SiiI}1khya. On the doctrine of Spho!a see my Study oj Patll1lja!i, Appcndix I. 2 Kiirikii, IH. 3 See Citsukha's Tatlvaprczdipikii, IV.