Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/407

 notions are, however, everywhere in the Purāṇas obscured by Vedānta doctrines, especially that of cosmical illusion. A peculiarity of the Purāṇic Sānkhya is the conception of Spirit or Purusha as the male, and Matter or Prakṛiti as the female, principle in creation.

On the Sānkhya system are based the two philosophical religions of Buddhism and Jainism in all their main outlines. Their fundamental doctrine is that life is nothing but suffering. The cause of suffering is the desire, based on ignorance, to live and enjoy the world. The aim of both is to redeem mankind from the misery of mundane existence by the annihilation of desire, with the aid of renunciation of the world and the practice of unbounded kindness towards all creatures. These two pessimistic religions are so extremely similar that the Jainas, or adherents of Jina, were long looked upon as a Buddhist sect. Research has, however, led to the discovery that the founders of both systems were contemporaries, the most eminent of the many teachers who in the sixth century opposed the Brahman ceremonial and caste pretensions in Northern Central India. Both religions, while acknowledging the lower and ephemeral gods of Brahmanism, deny, like the Sānkhya, the existence of an eternal supreme Deity. As they developed, they diverged in various respects from the system to which they owed their philosophical notions. Hence it came about that Sānkhya writers stoutly opposed some of their teachings, particularly the Buddhist denial of soul, the doctrine that all things have only a momentary existence, and that salvation is an annihilation of self. Here, however, it should be noted that Buddha himself refused to decide the question whether nirvāṇa is complete extinction or an unending state of unconscious bliss.