Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/431

 x] Sii1?zkhya Epistenzology 4 1 5 relates itself to knowledge, and how knowledge itself takes it up into itself and appears as conscious, is the most difficult point of the Sarpkhya epistemology and metaphysics. The substance of knowledge copies the external world, and this copy-shape of knowledge is again intelligized by the pure intelligence (purzta) when it appears as conscious. The forming of the buddhi-shape of knowledge is thus the pramal)a (instrument and process of knowledge) and the validity or invalidity of any of these shapes is criticized by the later shapes of knowledge and not by the external objects (S'vata{z-priil1Ui?lya and svata!l-apni11liilJ'a). The pramal)a however can lead to a prama or right knowledge only when it is intelligized by the purua. The purua comes in touch with buddhi not by the ordinary means of physical contact but by what may be called an inexplicable transcendental contact. I t is the transcendental influence of purua that sets in motion the original prakfti in Sarpkhya metaphysics, and it is the same transcendent touch (call it yogyata according to Vacaspati or sarpyoga according to Bhiku) of the transcendent entity of purua that transforms the non-intelligent states of buddhi into consciousness. The Vijf1anavadin Buddhist did not make any distinction between the pure consciousness and its forms (iiktira) and did not therefore agree that the akara of knowledge was due to its copying the objects. Sarpkhya was however a realist who admitted the external world and regarded the forms as all due to copying, all stamped as such upon a translucent sub- stance (satt'va) which could assume the shape of the objects. But Sarpkhya was also transcendentalist in this, that it did not think like Nyaya that the akara of knowledge was all that know- ledge had to show; it held that there was a transcendent element which shone forth in knowledge and made it conscious. With Nyaya there was no distinction between the shaped buddhi and the intelligence, and that being so consciousness was almost like a physical event. With Sarpkhya however so far as the content and the shape manifested in consciousness were concerned it was indeed a physical event, but so far as the pure intelligi7.ing element of consciousness was concerned it was a wholly transcendent affair beyond the scope and province of physics. The rise of consciousness was thus at once both transcendent and physical. The Mlmarpsist Prabhakara agreed with N yaya in general as regards the way in which the objective world and sense con-