219

_Mahabhasya_ of Patanjali the grammarian (147 B.C.) [Footnote ref 1].
The subject of the two passages are the enumeration of reasons which
frustrate visual perception. This however is not a doctrine concerned
with the strictly technical part of Sa@mkhya, and it is just possible
that the book from which Patanjali quoted the passage, and which
was probably paraphrased in the Arya metre by Is'varak@r@s@na
was not a Sa@mkhya book at all. But though the subject of the
verse is not one of the strictly technical parts of Sa@mkhya, yet
since such an enumeration is not seen in any other system of
Indian philosophy, and as it has some special bearing as a safeguard
against certain objections against the Sa@mkhya doctrine of
prak@rti, the natural and plausible supposition is that it was the
verse of a Sa@mkhya book which was paraphrased by Is'varak@r@s@na.

The earliest descriptions of a Sa@mkhya which agrees with
Is'varak@r@s@na's Sa@mkhya (but with an addition of Is'vara) are to be
found in Patanjali's _Yoga sutras_ and in the _Mahabharata;_ but we
are pretty certain that the Sa@mkhya of Caraka we have sketched
here was known to Patanjali, for in _Yoga sutra_ I. 19 a reference is
made to a view of Sa@mkhya similar to this.

From the point of view of history of philosophy the Sa@mkhya
of Caraka and Pancas'ikha is very important; for it shows a
transitional stage of thought between the Upani@sad ideas and
the orthodox Sa@mkhya doctrine as represented by Is'varak@r@s@na.
On the one hand its doctrine that the senses are material, and
that effects are produced only as a result of collocations, and that
the puru@sa is unconscious, brings it in close relation with Nyaya,
and on the other its connections with Buddhism seem to be nearer
than the orthodox Sa@mkhya.

We hear of a _Sa@s@titantras'astra_ as being one of the oldest Sa@mkhya
works. This is described in the _Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhita_ as
containing two books of thirty-two and twenty-eight chapters [Footnote
ref 2]. A quotation from _Rajavarttika_ (a work about which there is no
definite information) in Vacaspati Mis'ra's commentary on the Sa@mkhya
karika_(72) says that it was called the _@Sa@s@titantra because
it dealt with the existence of prak@rti, its oneness, its difference
from puru@sas, its purposefulness for puru@sas, the multiplicity of
puru@sas, connection and separation from puru@sas, the evolution of

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