Hello there,
I’d like to initiate to Samkhya philosophy.
Please recommend something [B]hardcore[/B].
Thank you
Hope you will enjoy the attached article.
Thank you so much.
I haven’t looked at the the links already provided. I started out reading a couple of books I got from the library, under the category of Introductions to Indian philosophy. It’s helpful to know a little about how Samkhya fits into the whole scheme of the darsanas. If you want something hardcore, then I recommend a book called “The Samkhya Philosophy”, by Nandalal Sinha. This was originally published in 1915 but I believe it’s still available on Amazon.com. It contains all of the important Samkhya literature, with Devanagari text, Roman transliteration, and English translation. The most important and extensive work is the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram, which contains the two important commentaries. It’s a difficult read, so be prepared. There’s another version of this book that you can find online. It’s an older translation by an Englishman, but not quite as good.
Thanks
not sure what you mean by hardcore… but Samkhyakarika is the earliest extant text of the Samkhya school of Indian philosophy. Available at amazon i think,pricey thought…
also, i’m selling off my library…and this one is very hardcore:) http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f20/shri-aurobindo-book-9289.html
I would not recommend the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram either. It is a very late Samkhya text and contains a lot of ideas which are not representative of Samkhya. The oldest extant text of Samkhya is the Samkhyakarika. A paperback copy is available from the Ramakrishna Math.
Some web resources:
http://www.archive.org/stream/samkhyakarikasof00weldrich/samkhyakarikasof00weldrich_djvu.txt
http://www.easterntradition.org/samkhya%20karika.html
http://ssubbanna.sulekha.com/blog/post/2009/10/samkhya-part-one-the-beginnings.htm
http://www.cix.co.uk/~mandrake/samkhya.htm
http://www.santosha.com/moksha/witness1.html
Ok, I’ll get the Samkhyakarika.
Thank you all.
I just want to make a comment here about the Samkhya Karika versus the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram. The Samkhya Karika is an abridgement of an earlier text. How do we know this? The Karika itself says so. The Karika says that it has left out the ‘controversies’ and also names two chapters that were left out.
The Samkhya Karika is excellent and I don’t want to diminish its importance, but since it is a condensed version, you cannot get the full depth of the philosophy from it. It is purported to have been written by Krishna himself. To my way of thinking, the leaving out of the ‘controversies’ and the claimed authorship by Krishna was a clear attempt to sanitize the philosophy and to establish the officially recognized Hindu version of Samkhya.
On the other hand, the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram contains the complete version of the philosophy. It contains all of the controversial material that was omitted from the Karika, and it contains the two chapters that were left out of the Karika. If you read both texts, one can easily see how the Karika could have been derived from the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram. However, it is difficult to see how the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram could have been derived from the Karika, as the Hindu scholars claim.
The Samkhya Pravachana Sutram is instructive not only for the work itself, but also for the commentaries it contains. There are two important commentators, Anniruddha and Vijnana Bhiksu. Vijnana Bhiksu’s commentary is extensive and provides very thorough and complete discussions and interpretations of the material, but it also accounts for a lot of its difficulty, since he apparently was a trained philosopher and his writing often gets technical. It is however, indispensible if you want to obtain a really good understanding of the material.
It is currently in vogue among Hindu scholars to claim that the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram could not have been written before the 13th century, because there were no commentaries on it prior to that time. It appears to me that these so-called scholars have not read the work. They also have overlooked that fact that the Karika itself was a derivative work, although technically not a commentary. Vijnana Bhiksu was one of the most eminent scholars of his time, and he believed the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram to be the work of Kapila. So did Anniruddha. So did Nandalal Sinha, another excellent scholar who wrote the translations I referred to in my earlier post. Also, none of the college-level texts that I read made any mention that the SPS might be a later work, so I have to believe that this assertion is itself a recent development, made by people who probably couldn’t get published anywhere other than the Internet.
As one of the few people who have read both, and reflected deeply on them, I believe that the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram is the earlier work.
Where does Samkhya come from?
http://www.samkhya-yoga.com/about/kapila
This links to a one-page article that summarizes a few of the legendary accounts of Paramarsi Kapila, the originator of the Samkhya darsana.
Okay, I’ll read both then.
Thank you
It is currently in vogue among Hindu scholars to claim that the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram could not have been written before the 13th century, because there were no commentaries on it prior to that time.
This is actually a damn good argument for dating something, because it shows that the philosophical community in India were not in possession of the text prior to the 13th century, otherwise there would have been extensive commentaries on it, as there have been on every other major philosophical text. Even the Samkhya school itself does not comment on it until the 13th century, but only on the Samkhyakarika.
There was indeed an original text called Samkhya sutras, that Samkhyakarika was derivative of, but this text had long been lost. In the 13th century a text appeared within the Samkhya school called the ‘Samkhya sutras’ claiming to be that legendary lost text and was structured in exactly the same way the original was suppose to be. This is also a time when in other schools many legendary and lost texts were appearing all of a sudden ascribed to legendary/mythological figures. Thus one can easily see there is more reason to believe the Samkhya sutras is another case of this.
In any case read both, but the Samkhyakarika will give a more accurate understanding of classical Samkhya philosophy as understood by the scholarly community. The later theories of emergent ishvara, or spontaneous creation of prakriti etc are not a part of classical Samkhya, but were rather attempts by later Samkhya philosophers of answering problems posed at it by other schools.
Spoken like a true Hindu. You are entitled to your opinions and your fantasies, but you should not present them as fact.
I don’t know why you blame this on the Hindu scholars, dating texts is the work of indologists, not Hindu scholars. Dating Sanskrit text is always very speculative, since the Hindu scholars have had very little interest in history. Vijnanabhikshu was also a Hindu scholar, in fact he is called the first modern Hindu by some scholars. He drew extensively from Hindu sources like the itihasas and puranas to build his philosophy. He attempted to reconcile the philosophy from the scriptures and vedanta with that of the Sankhya sutras. In this sense, he was a Hindu revivalist, since most Hindu text are talking about an integral metaphysics, not the compart mentalised polemic philosophies of medieval debate clubs.
Please, don’t use Hindu as a swear word.
Quoted from the article from the article you posted.
Kapila himself would probably reject the claim of divinity, since reliance on evidence and reason was a key feature of his philosophy, as opposed to reliance on scripture and divine revelation.
In the Mahabharata, Bhisma explains the difference between Sankhya and Yoga in the following way:
“The followers of yoga rely on experimental methods (pratyaksha hetava) and the followers of Sankhya on scriptural interpretation (shashtra vinishcaya). I consider both of these views true: followed by their instruction, both lead to the ultimate goal.” ~Mahabharata XII.304.1-4
That is a bit of an understatement. Vijnana Bhiksu went to great lengths to try to show that the philosophy does not conflict with the Vedas. Now you may ask yourself, why did he think it was so important to do so? Because prior to his time the work was considered to be contrary to Vedic teachings and was not made available for general use until Vijnana Bhiksu was able to convince the authorities that it was OK.
“The followers of yoga rely on experimental methods (pratyaksha hetava) and the followers of Sankhya on scriptural interpretation (shashtra vinishcaya). I consider both of these views true: followed by their instruction, both lead to the ultimate goal.”
Yes, everybody has an opinion. And if you read through the Srimad Bhagavatam you will find many instances of words attributed to Kapila that are in direct conflict with the accepted authoritative texts. Indian scriptures are full of these kinds of contradictions. What bothers me is why would you attempt to call into question what is well established as one of the hallmarks of Samkhya philosophy? Samkhya is famous for being the first attempt to explain the working of the natural world on the basis of evidence and reason.
[QUOTE=Asuri;71377]That is a bit of an understatement. Vijnana Bhiksu went to great lengths to try to show that the philosophy does not conflict with the Vedas. Now you may ask yourself, why did he think it was so important to do so? Because prior to his time the work was considered to be contrary to Vedic teachings and was not made available for general use until Vijnana Bhiksu was able to convince the authorities that it was OK.
[/quote] Vijnanabhikshu was a very late scholar, he did not have to convince anyone, since Samkhya metaphysics is found in Hindu literature since the upanishads. The reason that he attempted to reconcile different philosophical traditions that existed in medieval times, is simply because an integrated whole of yoga, samkhya, vedanta and bhakti has always been a part of Hindu literature and Vijnanabhikshu thought that the other acharyas have not done justice to this fact with their polemics.
Yes, everybody has an opinion. And if you read through the Srimad Bhagavatam you will find many instances of words attributed to Kapila that are in direct conflict with the accepted authoritative texts. Indian scriptures are full of these kinds of contradictions. What bothers me is why would you attempt to call into question what is well established as one of the hallmarks of Samkhya philosophy? Samkhya is famous for being the first attempt to explain the working of the natural world on the basis of evidence and reason.
The hallmark of Sankhya is simply that it is based on scriptural interpretation and reasoning, while yoga is about direct experimentation and techniques of meditation. This is not in conflict with each other, but the ancient Sankhya doctrine has long been lost and is different from what was known in medieval time as Samkhya, this is recognised by all modern scholars, Hindu or not. Remnants of the ancient philosophy of Sankhya are found spread throughout the ancient Hindu literature, like the upanishads, mahabharata, pancaratra agamas etc.
As I think about this a little more, I realize that the quote is not referring to the differences between the two darsanas, but rather to the methods used by the adherents. Yogis focus more on practice, while followers of Samkhya tend to focus more on knowledge. But his real point is that both are true. And in reality the yoga and samkhya darsanas are closely related.
That is indeed what it says, in the ancient literature yoga and sankhya were simply considered as different MODES of reaching the final goal, not as different metaphysical systems.
You and I both know that this is not true, so the question becomes why are you Hindus so intent on creating conflict and confusion?
Remnants of the ancient philosophy of Sankhya are found spread throughout the ancient Hindu literature, like the upanishads, mahabharata, pancaratra agamas etc.
This again is imprecise and the errors it contains only serve to confuse people. The upanishads are the earliest documents to contain Samkhya thought, but it is scattered about in bits and pieces. These are not remnants of Kapila’s philosophy. At the time of the Upanishads Kapila’s work had not yet been written.
Kapila is universally recognized as being the first to organize Samkhya philosophy in a systematic way. It may be true that the original texts have been lost but his work is well known. There is another text also attributed to Kapila called the Tattva Samasa in addition to the Samkhya Pravachana Sutram.
The Mahabarata, at least the part containing the Bhagavad Gita comes after Kapila. We know this because it mentions Kapila by name. The bits of samkhya contained in the Gita are not remnants of some ancient philosophy. The original texts would have been intact at the time it was written, if you believe that Krishna wrote the Samkhya Karika using the original text as the source, as stated in the Karika.
Of course Hinduism has attempted to integrate samkhya, vedanta, yoga, and bhakti. But there are differences of opinion and belief, especially between samkhya and vedanta, that cannot be fully reconciled. This is a lot like the difference between judaism and christianity. I don’t know why you people can’t accept that.
but the ancient Sankhya doctrine has long been lost and is different from what was known in medieval time as Samkhya, this is recognised by all modern scholars, Hindu or not.
As I said previously, the original texts may have been lost, but the work of Kapila is well known. The academic texts that I studied made no mention of this controversy. That is why I think this is a Hindu thing, and a fairly recent thing. I know you modern scholars think your pretty smart, but I’m going with Vijnana Bhiksu on this one.