Yoga Philosophy in Relation to Other Systems of Indian Thought

The present work on yoga was written ten years ago as a doctorate thesis of the Calcutta University and referred to in some of my later published works. As I have stated elsewhere, each system of Indian philosophy has been deeply influenced at the various stages of its growth and development by other systems of Indian thought which grew side by side with it: Yoga is often regarded as a system of practical discipline and its claims as a system of philosophical thought are often ignored. It therefore appeared profitable to me that some of the central concepts of the Yoga philosophy should be compared with or contrasted to similar concepts of other systems of Indian thought. If the work could now be re-written it could have been made more exhaustive and the historical perspectives could have been made clearer. But my hands are now so full that this hope cannot now be fulfilled. Yoga is a fruitful study and it can be approached from several other directions. Continued illness often interfered with my proper revision of the proof sheets and mistakes must have escaped my eyes, for which I crave the kind indulgence of my readers.

vil PREFACE

I beg to acknowledge my gratefulness to Mr. Haridas Bhattacharyya, M.A., P.R.S., of the University of Dacca who very kindly helped me in correcting some of the proof sheets and also to my friend and pupil Dr. Mircea Eliade Licéncié es lettres, doctorand en philosophie of the University of Bucharest, who helped me in preparing the index. It gives me also a great pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Dr. E. J. Thomas, M.A., D.Lit. who during my residence in Cambridge went through my manuscript and made many corrections of transliteration and other suggestions. My general indebtedness to Dr. Thomas however extends very much further than this. I cannot say how much I must have unconsciously received from him in maturing my thoughts and ideas through his constant friendly companionship as he was my onc friend in Cambridge with whom I could talk on Sanskritic matters and who was always ready with his friendly advicc and criticism whenever I was in any difficulty. It gives me the greatest pleasure in acknowledging this vidyá-rna and the maitri which was associated with it.

PRESIDENCY COLLEGE, S. N. DASGUPTA. CALCUTTA. January, 1930.

CONTENTS

PAGE Introduction T oo kak 1

CHAPTER I The Germs of the Samkhya and Yoga Philosophy in the Earlier Upanishads .. 13 CHAPTER II

Yoga and Pataūjali bs .. 42

CHAPTER III

The Guna Theory was .. 10

CHAPTER IV

Some Important Ontological Problems in the Light of the Guna Theory .. 112

CHAPTER V

Tne Theory of Soul Vs .. 136

CHAPTER VI

Yoga Cosmology ... sv .. 172

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE Yoga Physics T v. .. 200 CHAPTER VIII

Samkhya Atheism and Yoga Theism .. 231 CHAPTER IX

Yoga Psychology ... is .. 259 CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

The Yoga Practice 330

Yoga is generally understood to mean certain practices by which, it is believed, one can attain supernormal powers through concentration. [t is as such often associated with hypnotism, clairvoyance, clairaudience and similar other occult phenomena. Better informed persons know that it accepts the Sinkhya system of philosophy, but believes in God (īsvara) and adopts a body of practices for the attainment of its ultimate goal—emancipation. But the difference between Yoga and the Sānkhya of Kapila has never been satisfactorily explained, and we often hear it asked in the puranas, the compendia of mythology and religion, * What is the difference between Sankhya and Yoga? Who knows it is wise indeed.” Yoga is counted as one of the six orthodox systems of philosophy, but if its philosophy is identical with that of the Kapila Sankhya, it would be meaningless to call it a system of philosophy merely for the sake of its code of disciplinary practices. Thus we find that though the influence of Yoga on Hindu thought and life has been very great, the

position of Yoga as a system of philosophy has always been misunderstood. Itis probably for this reason and for the stress that it laid on its disciplinary course of practices that it sometimes wandered from its true ideal and became associated with magic, medicine and occultism. It is true that Yoga owes much to the Sankhya philosophy, but it is doubtful whether the obligation is due to the Kapila Sankhya as we have it now. My supposition is that we have lost the original Sankhya texts, whereas the systems that pass now by the name of Sūnkhya and Yoga. represent two schools of philosophy which evolved through the modifications of the original Sankhya school; Yoga did not borrow its materials from Kapila Sànkhya, but, being itself a modification from the original stock, has as much right to pass by the name of Sankhya as Kapila Sankhya. Conformably to this we find that both the Kapila Sankhyasitra and the Patafijala Yogasūtra call themselves, * Sankhya-pravacana" (an exposition of Sankhya). It will also appear, as I shall show in detail, that though the Yoga and the Kapila Sankhya are fundamentally the same in their general metaphysical positions, yet they hold quite different views on many points of philosophical, ethical and practical interest. It has been a long-felt need that the Yoga philosophy should be studied in all its

metaphysical, ontological, psychological, theological, physical and practical bearings in such a manner that its different parts could be understood in their mutual relations. Yoga may be admired or ridiculed for the practices it imposes, but it cannot be called a system of philosophy until it is understood as a systematic school of thought. There are the practices which are peculiar to and unique with Yoga, there is the ground which it traverses in common with Kapila Sankhya, there are many divergences of views as well; but in the interests of philosophy it is necessary that these should be properly welded together and the parts duly subordinated and inter-related with one another in such a way that Yoga might stand as a system of philosophy and not as a branch of occultism, magic, or nervous exercise.

Almost all the principal Indian systems of thought probably originated within the first few centuries of the Christian era and continued to develop side by side for hundreds of years. Adherents of different schools often discussed and disputed with one another, and these

' Professor Lanman says in the Harvard Theological Journal— “ Yoga is accordingly ono of the most ancient and striking products of the Hindu mind and character. It is therefore a little strange that, while the labours of Deussen and Garbe and others have done very much to open up the Vedanta and Sāhkhya systems to the Ocoident, the history of Yoga as a body of practices and as a religio-philosophio aystem is yet to be written, "

discussions left their permanent stamp not only on the doctrines of the different systems, but also upon the style and method of their exposition. To understand the full significance and value of the doctrines of any Indian system of thought, if is necessary that these should be taken in connection with the corresponding doctrines of other ludian systems. Most of the doctrines have a history behind them and they reflect the views of other systems on kindred points of interest and anticipate their objections. Their expositions are often in the form of debates with some imaginary opponents belonging to other schools, and without a previous acquaintance with these, it is impossible to follow these subtle discussions.

In the field of philosophy India underwent such an insular development that we can hardly trace any foreign influence. The modes of conceiving philosophical problems are therefore quite different from the current philosophical conceptions of the West. This fact causes additional difficulty for a modern student of philosophy in penetrating into the spirit of Indian philosophy, for, steeped as our minds are in modern thought, we cannot leap back into the old and unfamiliar atmosphere of Indian thought without straining our imagination. Similarities there are indeed between Indian and European thoughts, but such is the difference

in the mode of expression and in the general

ideal of life between ancient India and Europe,

that these become altogether lost to our view.

The present work is an attempt to reconstruct the system of Yoga philosophy from materials collected from Hindu philosophical works in general and especially from works on Kapila Sankhya and Yoga. It has been my object here to show that Yoga is not merely a system of practices but a system of philosophy as well. It is a modification of the old Sankhya doctrines parallel to that worked out by the Kapila school, and as such traverses in many respects the same grounds with it and differs from it in other respects. The disciplinary practices no doubt form the special feature of the Yoga system, but, as it will appear, it holds independent views on many other matters such as psychology, ethics and theology. I have arranged the materials as far as possible in accordance with the requirements of a modern system of thought and have avoided the peculiar dialectical style of Hindu thinking which is bound to be oppressive to western minds. Whenever I have had to deal with any important Yoga doctrine, I have not only contrasted or compared it with the kindred Kapila doctrine but also with the corresponding views of other systems, so that the Yoga ideas might stand in their true setting in relation to the views of those systems. I have always

kept close to the rational parts of the system and have not laid any particular stress on the experimental portion of the practices, because though some of the phenomena, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, ete., have been verified in some guarters in modern times, many of the other phevomena described in Yoga are of so mysterious a nature that people are rightly sceptical about them until they can be verified by the testimony of our own times.

My task here being limited to a reconstruction of the Yoga doctrines as a systematic philosophy, I have played the part of an advocate and not of a critic who sits in judgment. The Yoga system of thought remains altogether unrecognised in the modern world. I owed it therefore to this system to offer first a comprehensive and faithful exposition from a modern point of view before subjecting it to criticism.! If the system succeeds in attracting any notice, partial and impartial criticisms from many hands will not be lacking.

Speaking of philosophy in general, I cannot think of any system which can give entire satisfaction. Each proceeds well for some distance and then breaks down suddenly.

! See my Yoga as Philosophy and Religion published by Kegan

Paul Trench and Trabner, London, 1924, and also my A Study of Patarijali published by the Calcutta University, 1920.

Nothing proves so much a bane to itself as philosophy. It starts off, rouses expectations and then suddenly returns to say that it has failed. But man cannot remain ever at war with himself, and though philosophy may ultimately end in proving nothing, he cannot keep his mind a blank sheet all through life. Sooner or later the psychological temperament of the enquirer makes suitable compromises, and he ends as a sceptic, a dogmatist, an atheist, or a theist. Philosophy rose to conquer faith but stooped again to allow itself to be reconquered in its turn by a newer type of faith. The Yoga system of philosophy is no exception and it has its own defects, but these are probably not greater than those of other systems. The Yoga, however, unlike other systems, does not base its claims merely on the consistency of its speculative reasonings but also on a system of practices by which the speculative results at which it arrived can be directly verified. In fact the history of Yoga philosophy shows that the speculative part of the theory was probably supplemented latterly because it supplied a rational groundwork and basis to these body of Yoga practices. The value of the metaphysical part is that of a hypothesis, which, according to Yoga, enjoys the patronage of the Upanishads and serves to explain the results of the performance of Yoga practices.

Yoga is thus formed of two inter-related parts,—firstly, the theoretical part which formulates philosophy and supports it by cogent reasoning like any other system ; and secondly, the practical part embodying a code of practices by which the truths arrived at by the theoretical part can be verified. Yoga affirms that this verification is a direct experience of the same nature as perception only much more perfect than it and as such it possesses much greater validity than reasoning or testimony. We hear of Yogins who have actually experienced this superior vision and we find that all the disputing systems of Indian philosophy are in unanimous agreement about the superexcellence of this superior vision ( Yoga-prajita). Under these circumstances we can neither uncritically accept their experience as true without testing it ourselves nor dismiss it unceremoniously as untrustworthy assumption.

The ancient Indian view of life as depicted in philosophy differed in a very striking manner from our own view of it. Life itself was misery ; all feelings were ultimately sorrowbegetting. In our view of life pleasures and sorrows alternate with one another and on the whole we want to live because we think that pleasures so far outbalance the sorrows that they render life worth living. The Indian sage took into account our efforts and sufferings for

attaining pleasures and our sufferings when we lost them and thought that pleasure was really no pleasure but only veiled pain. The wiser the person, the more sensitive did he grow and the more did the so-called pleasures grow distasteful to him.

But side by side with this pessimism there was optimism in the sense that though sorrow formed an integral part of all experience, it was not associated with the nature of our own essence, and it was possible for us to get rid of it. Sorrow is extraneous to us and if all our experiences are ultimately associated with sorrow, our experiences are also extraneous to us. But what then are we apart from our experiences? Here comes in the Hindu soul theory. Most systems think that the soul is of the nature of transcendent pure intelligence, while there are some which think that the soul is like a neutral qualityless atom in which our consciousness inheres. What the soul as pure intelligence is, philosophy cannot explain, for though it is presupposed in all experience, it cannot itself be explained by any phenomenal experience. Hindu philosophy assumes that this entity as pure intelligence remains ever in its purity and only through a transcendent beginningless illusion appears to take part in or become associated with our experience. True knowledge or emancipation consists in the apprehension of

the soul or self as pure intelligence and all else as extraneous to it. When this knowledge dawns, the illusion with which the pure intelligence appeared to be associated breaks down. Sucha view considers our conscious experience as the product of an illegitimate or illusory association of pure intelligence with a stuff which is the root of matter and world-experience. All the Hindu systems agree generally on these points. But few western thinkers will find it easy to acquiesce in any of these. To them the self as pure intelligence must appear inconceivable and hence the assumption of emancipation also unwarrantable.

The doctrines of mukti and karma are the two fixed postulates which Hindu philosophy could not disavow even in its highest soarings. In spite of many divergences of views, this agreement lends a uniformity to the different systems of Hindu philosophy, such as cannot be found anywhere else. These two doctrines, taken along with their necessary corollaries, sum up all the important peculiarities of tbe Hindu mind as it manifests itself in philosophy. These doctrines are regarded so cardinal and inviolable that there was hardly any voice (except that of the Carvakas) in India that protested against them. But, side by side with the general agreement in

favour of these doctrines, there are divergences in other matters which each system developed for itself. It is for this reason that scepticism or criticism could not be the last word of any system of Hindu philosophy. Buddhism had indeed advanced extreme sceptical and critical modes of thought but even these had been true to nirvana and karma.

It was believed that the truths laid bare by philosophy were such that all earthly misery was due to ignorance of them and that as soon as this ignorance could be removed and the truths perceived, there would be a complete and perfect cessation of all pains and afflictions. Craving for worldly pleasures or for happiness in heaven is at the root of all mischief, and this proceeded from ignorance of the truth that philosophy revealed. The value of all moral conduct, self-abnegation, purity of heart, passionlessness, ete., is to be found in the help that they offer in preparing the mind for accepting the teachings of philosophy. For as long as the mind is stained with passions and worldly desires, philosophy can make but little impression upon it. When the mind is once purged of all impurities, truths arrived at by philosophical discussions carry whole-hearted conviction. Yoga holds that discussions are not enough for the purpose, for in order to be assured that our minds would not be attracted by worldly

temptations, certain psychological exercises should be undertaken in order to move the mind in a direction, the reverse of ordinary experience. When we compare, however, the solutions of many ontological and metaphysical problems proposed by Indian philosophy with those of western philosophy, we note many striking similarities which bring-home to us the fact that the development of philosophy is to a great extent uniform throughout the world. The real barrier between East and West is a distrust of each other’s morality, philosophy and culture. Such a distrust, ill-founded as it is, cannot remain long in existence and the clouds of ignorance are gradually passing away ; the East and the West are gradually moving towards each other for understanding the respective values of their cultures and contributions to human progress and will ultimately unite and co-operate for each other’s benefit. The unseen Architect of human destinies is building the massive hall of this momentous union, the greatest event of the world. I shall deem my labours thoroughly recompensed if by His grace they can render even the smallest assistance to the consummation of that end.

CHAPTER I.

Tur GERMS or THE SANKHYA AND YOGA PHILO- SOPHY IN THE EARLIER UPANISHADS.

The Upanishads reveal to us for the first time in the history of Indian thought an earnest enquiry after truth. In the later parts of the Rg Veda there are hymns which indicate that the sages had already begun to conceive the world as a connected whole with established laws (rta) which could not be overstepped.’ They even wondered what there was in the beginning before creation, or whether the world was at all the result of creation or not.’ Amidst all the diversities of cosmic change they sought to find out the ultimate and unchangeable truth. Sacrifices could no longer satisfy the minds of the thinking few. They had begun to feel that ceremonies and rituals were only intended for the mass and to substitute symbolic forms of meditation as the true worship in

1 Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 11.

2 * From where did this creation spring, was it created or not? He who is its master in the sky beyond may know it or he even may not,"—Rg Veda, X. 129.

place of the elaborate sacrifices of earlier times. But gradually, as time went on, even the symbolic forms of worship could not satisfy them, and they sought to discover the eternal and unchangeable truth. The Upanishads are replete with anecdotes and stories of the sages searching after truth. They sometimes regarded the sun as the ultimate reality, sometimes the life-breath, or space (ūkāsa) or the like, but none of these could satisfy them or reveal the truth they wanted till they hit upon the self or ātman. Truth began to dawn amongst the thinking section of the Kshattriyas and Brahmins alike. People were possessed with the spirit of seeking it and giving itan utterance. This enquiry extended over a long period and must have been prosecuted on diverse lines by different persons, It thus did not run a course of development in one line but in divergent directions. At different stages they got different glimpses which were sometimes faint and at other times brilliant ; and the Upanishads are a record of these glimpses just as they came. Not to speak of any system, there are not even any great attempts at olassification. The ideas were not sufficiently definite and concrete, the problems were few and the necessity of establishing relations amongst the ideas was not often felt ; and even when it was occasionally found necessary, the concepts, as

they had no well-shaped corners, easily fitted in with one another. The philosopher who approaches them with a true critical spirit, expecting to find in them a well worked-out system of philosophy, cannot but be disappointed. For they are mot the works of a single hand or of a single age, and the concepts of philosophy, such as we understand by them, did not evolve atthe time. They were generally the untested conceptions of poets and seers ; the germs from which the later systems of philosophy developed were in them, but they themselves could hardly be identified with any of the developed products of a later age. All attempts at the identification of any of the systems of Indian philosophy with the philosophy of the Upanishads must necessarily be attended with some violence upon the Upanishad texts and it must be confessed, we have had it in abundance at the hands of commentators of a later age who always tried to identify the Upanishads with this or that system of philosophy by explaining away some texts of a refractory nature and laying undue stress on others. From a philosophic point of view the texts are of a homogeneous and undifferentiated character. They generally reveal the universal perception of the Upanishad age, of a reality which lies deep beyond the mere individual experiences of our ordinary everyday life and is supremely

abiding, as the unchangeable amidst all that is changeable.

When the orthodox atmosphere of the country required that for the validity of any system of philosophy it should be necessary for it to eoniorm tu the doctrines and views taught in the Upanishads, the adherents of those systems spared no pains to show by turns that they and they alone were the true followers of the Upanishads. Personally I do not think that the Upanishad texts are a connected whole which can be identified with any of the systems formulated at a later age, although I think that we can trace in the Upanishads many cf the rudimentary elements of them all. With the growth of philosophic thought the germinal differences became more and more marked, and thus gradually, with the growth of a feeling of heterogeneity among them, similar ideas began to be grouped together like homeomeries to form separate systems.

Proceeding with our enquiry and tracing some of the root ideas of the Sankhya-Yoga philosophy in the Upanishads, we find first that the sages, having become impressed with the presence of one supreme reality, had at first set out on their quest to discover it; after testing many of the external powers, such as the sun, the wind, etc., and many of the inner functions, such as the senses, vital life (prāņa), etc., they

discovered the true reality in the inmost sheath of the self,the sheath of supreme happiness (ānandamaya koša). Beginning with the famous hymn of the Rg Veda X. 129: * There was neither Being nor Non-being,” tending towards the attainment of the consciousness of unity one can trace the progress of this guest not only in the Purusha-sükta R. V. X. 90, Visvakarman R. V. X. 81, 82 and Brahmanaspati R. V. X. 72, but also in the Vàk, Aditi, Skambha and Yaksha R. V. X. 125. It is said in the Rg Veda I. 164: “Of the one existence, the sages speak in diverse ways." Again in the Atharva Veda: «They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; so also is he the heaven-winged eagle ; that which is one, the seers name variously ; they call bim Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” And in the Satapatha Brahmana, 2. 2.1, we read: “ The soul is everything.” Thus we see that gradually there was growing a current of thought tending towards the consciousness of the reality of the manifold as being unity in itself. This thought found its strongest expression in the Upanishads, when not only through a general elevation of philosophie enquiry but also from the deeper experiences of the meditative process and by a negative process of elimination, through failures of lower conception of Brahman both by religious practice and by learning the sages became convinced of an all-embracing

reality and identified it with the deepest self, the Brahman, as has already been pointed out. It is indeed needless here to cite examples indicating indisputably distinct monistic tendencies in many of the passages of the Upanishads as shown by the monistic (advaita) school of Sankara, and bis followers. So far as one can understand them, it seems certain that the Upanishad texts do not formulate any well-formed system of philosophy, but represent the philosophic culture and speculations of an early age. The tendencies which are represented by these speculations can indeed be classed together to indicate the main currents of thought and their mutual connections, though taken alone by themselves they may not often be differentiated from one another in a marked manner. They do not contain only pure monistic ideas, as the followers of Sankara claim, but there may also be detected a dualistic vein working in association with the uncompromising monistic ideas, which gradually developed and grew into the Yoga, Sankhya, Vaishnava and Saiva systems. Thus in examining the Upanishads we find that sometimes the same concept of Brahman appears in association with ideas which may be regarded as characteristically distinct. There are some texts in which the idealistic bias seems to be so predominant that they are readily recognised as laying

the foundation of the Vedanta system as expounded by Sankara and his followers. In others the conception appears to be analogous to that of an Absolute which has yielded forth the real material order and the real mental order. Itis probable that the concept of the Absolute was conceived in the earliest Upanishads on two characteristically different lines, one of which set in motion the Vedantic line of thought and the other, Sānkhya-Yoga and the Vaishnava systems of thought. The stray elements of the latter type, scattered as they are in the earlier Upanishads, may briefly be classified under two groups, namely, those in which our everyday world is spoken of as real and as having emanated from the ultimately real, which was originally in an unmanifested condition, whence it desired to manifest itself and become many, and those in which the self is spoken of as being different from the creation (consisting of the world and the living beings) in the heart of which it resides. A few of these scattered ideas may thus be illustrated.

This is true, as from a blazing fire sparks, being like unto fire, tly forth a thousandfold, thus are various beings produced from the imperishable and return therein... That which is brilliant, smaller than small, that on which the worlds and their inhabitants,

are founded, that this immortal Brahman, that speech and manas,—that is this real, this immortal, that is to be achieved, O friend, know.!' He wished, may I be many, may I produce forth. He performed penance, and having performed penance created all this, whatever there is. Having created he entered into that, and having entered became he sat (manifestly existing) and tyat (that which is unmanifest), defined and undefined, the supported and the unsupported, conscious, and unconscious (stones, etc.), real and unreal. The true (satya) became all this whatsoever, and therefore that is called the true.” Name and form are the true, and by them this prana is covered? There are two forms of Brahman, the material and the immaterial, the mortal and the immortal, the solid and the fluid, the manifest and the unmanifest.* ‘This was originally one solitary pure being, it desired to be many and became many. That immortal Brahman is before, that Brahman is behind, that Brahman is to the right and to the left. It has gone forth below and above; Brahman is all this; itis the best.” 5

Thus the truth of the visible world is not denied but rather the reality of the changing

and the mutable is reinstated by tracing its origin to an unchangeable entity.

“ The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor lightnings, much less this fire. Itisafter his shining that everything else shines. By his light all this is lighted." * Brahman is described as * the substratum, the ground, the last resort, where the many and the differences are submerged.” ‘ Brahman is without sound, without touch, without form, without taste, without smell, without beginning and without end, beyond the Mahat, without decay, eternal and unchangeable.”* Thus it is that a characterless substance is spoken of as the reality which upholds the visible world.

A further characterisation of this substance is found in such passages of Brhadaranyaka® as “In the beginning there was nothing here whatsoever. By death indeed all this was concealed ; by hunger, for death is hunger. Death thought, * Let me have a self” Then he moved about worshipping. From him thus worshipping water was produced.” Again in the Taittirīya,* * It was rather non-existence which was in the beginning. Out of that came the existent. That itself made its self...When

one finds his own nature in this invisible, in this incorporeal, undefined, unsupported, then he has obtained the fearless.”

If we now try to systematise these thoughts (keeping the “self” texts outside their pale), we

"find that these reflect the consciousness of one reality as existing here and there beyond, in the phenomenaas well as in the noumena, the upholder of the exterior as well as the intcrior order, not only controlling the physical forces but forming their very substratum. The mental and the material worlds are but its two forms. None of the qualities of the sensible or of the intelligible world can be found in this supreme reality, though all sensible and intelligible objects are dominated by it.

That such an undifferentiated semi-Spinozistic position was the germ from which tho Kapila-Pataífijala prakrti developed, can be inferred both from its geueral resemblance with the Sànkhya prakrti and also from the evidence of Sankara himself who says that passages of a monistic nature were often explained by the commentators of the Sankhya school as referring to prakrti? Even now many of the modern students of Sankhya, without an eye to these Upanishads but simply from the texts of Sankhya, are inclined to find much resemblance between the uncompromising monist Spinoza and the

proclaimed dualist Kapila or Pataüjali. Davies has devoted a whole chapter to the finding out of this connection and Burns-Gibson does the same.’

In considering some of the Atman texts we find that the self is spoken of as the controller within. Thus Yājnavalkya says, “He who dwells in the earth and within the earth, whom t he earth does not know, whose body the earth is and who controls the earth from within, he is thy self, the puller within, the immortal.” This is then repeated of water, fire, atmosphere, wind, sky, sun, quarters, moon, stars, space, darkness (tamas), light (tejas), and also of breath, speech, eye, ear, mind, skin and knowledge. In mauy other places also we find that the controller of the exterior order, the macrocosm, and the controller of the interior order, the microcosm, have been identified. Thus almost the

1 Thus Gibson writes (1) : ‘‘Of course we must take Kapila as we

find him... Yet a very little gentle manipulation might exhibit his implicit monism and bring him nearer to Spinoza. As existents, tho many souls and one prakrti are one co-existence, the unity of Being and Knowing, and as pure beings thoy are absolutely indistinguishable from one another and from naught. For thought, they collapse into ono, and that one sinks into non-being. What then remnins is Vyakta, the phenomenal world of subject and object, co-existent, co-essential and inseparable in their utter central-distinction. And this residuum of Kapila exactly corresponds with the residuum of Spinoza, when his infinito attribute of thought or consciousness has absorbed and superseded all the other infinite attributes, rendering them gratuitous and otiose hypotheses—a result that is inevitable in the dialectio of reflection.” —Mind, 1881, October.

whole of Brahmana 7 of Adhyaya III of the Brhadaranyaka has been devoted to this purpose.

The ātman in some of the passages of the Upanishads is spoken of as having various sheaths or parts some of which are gross and even material. It is the last and the inmost kernel which is of the nature of pure bliss (anandamaya) apart and distinct from all mutation and change. Itis thislast part on which our experiences of the dream state and the ordinary conscious states are based.! Again we hear of two kinds of ātman, of which one enjoys experiences and the other remains satisfied without doing any thing. This superior ātman is often spoken of as “the supreme reality, the only truth of the inner and outer orders, that in which the world rests. When the phenomenal self perceives Īsvara, he is released. The self is the source from which all experiences emanate. The self cannot be cognised by any ordinary perception, it is above all changes, old age, etc. It is the self which was in the beginning, and which identified itself and brought about the whole creation?

Holding before us these different ātman texts, it is possible for us to see how the later Vedantic doctrine of ātman and the purusha doctrine of

Sankhya gradually grew out of them. With the ascendency of the monistic tendency, with the growth of the supreme importance of the Brahman as the ultimate reality, the side of the many and the conercte, both as the external world appearance, and as the sheaths of self which were spoken of as being material or belonging to the sphere of mutation or change, began to be relegated to the sphere of the non-being, maya or illusion; only the inmost sheath of the self as the “supremely blissful ” (ānandamaya atma) began to be held as the one unchanging reality.

But parallel to this Vedantic current of thought another current of a different type began to appear. The new tendency did not minimise difficulties by dropping the side of the concrete as mere non-being or illusory and having only a relative existence so long as it is not finally destroyed by the pure vision of the self as the only reality, A start was made from the supposition of self as being a combination of two distinct natures,—a materialistic nature which differed from the exterior material world only in being subtler and finer, and a non-material nature as pure intelligence, beyond the scope of any mutation or change, and the conclusion reached was that these were two distinct types of reality, one pure intelligence and the other the ultimate matter, which was the root

substance of ordinary matter in its most primary state of subtle development. Thus it was the same subtle matter which developed in one chain as the mental materiality of sensations, perceptions, manas, etc., on one side, and the grosser materiality of the exterior world on the other. The intelligence, though inactive in itself, was the real upholder of the macrocosm and the microcosm, for everything was for this self. For in the Sānkhya, as elaborated in the Sūtras, we find that though the Sānkhyists agreed with the monistic doctrine that this ātman was essentially of the nature of pure intelligence, yet they held this intelligence, purusha, to be different with different persons and considered that monistic thoughts could only be tolerated in a general way, in so far as all intelligences or purushas could be spoken of as one, distinguished from prakrt? or matter, the mutable. The Upanishads themselves had no detinite systematic views on the matter, and so monistic and dualistic ideas took two different lines of development.

When we come to the Maitri Upanishad we find that the loose ideas of the earlier U panishads are gradually taking a definite Sankhya form. It is indeed difficult to ascertain the age of the Maitri Upanishad, but from the manner in which Sānkhya ideas are found to be grouped together

in different parts of the work, we find ample evidence of crude as well as developed stages of Sankhya thought in a process of evolution towards the formation of a coherent system. The Maitri Upanishad, as we have it, is probably the result of à putting together of ideas of. varying types, but it does not seem to us that any part of it is such as could be imagined to have been borrowed from a well-articulated system of Sāūkhya philosophy, existing before, We have seen that in the earlier Upanishads, the traces of the elements of Sabkhya thought consisted mainly in the realistic attitude of some of the texts, which regarded the world as real and attributed its origin and evolution to the unfolding of the ultimate reality—the unmanifested or undifferentiated being, which desired to split itself up into many, and, when once it had finished the creation, entered into it. In the first part of the Maitri Upanishad, we find however that though the supreme and transcendent soul retains its unique importance, yet an empirical ego (such as was alluded to in Svet. 4.6 and Mund 3.1.1), is spoken of as having come forth by the shrouding over of the transcendent self by the natural qualities, (prakrtika guna), such as passions, antipathies, etc.,of man. Itis here that we notice for the first time that the psychological qualities of man are spoken of as standing in opposition to the

transcendent self and as generating an empirical ego of experience by shrouding the translucent one. The translucent self is still one here, though it appears as many in different persons in connection with different groups of psychological qualities (prakrtika guna). Later on, we find that the psychological qualities are spoken of as being of three different types and as being derived from a primal being technically called pradhana or prakrti. From the doctrines of Maulikya Sankhya (original Sankhya school), as referred to by Gunaratna in his commentary on Shaddaréanasamuccaya we find that originally it was held that each person had a separate prakrti for himself which dissolved at the time of his emancipation. But it is difficult to ascertain when and under what influence the many prakrtis became one, and the one transcendent self came to be regarded as many transcendent purushas behaving in their turn asso many empirical egos in association with different groups of the eyolulos of the prakrti.

It will not be out of place here. to refer to some other specimens of Sankhya ideas as we find them in the Maitrāyaņa.'

! Max Müller agreeing with L, Von Schroeder holds, on the basis of pre-Paninian characteristic sandhi of the Maitrāyaņa Sakh5, which is adhered toin the MSS. of this Upanishad, that there is good reason to ascribe the Maitrāyaņa to an early rather than to a late period (as maintained by Cowell), possibly to an ante-Pāņinian period, ©

Thus we read that it is for the enjoyment of the purusha that all the senses of the body have been formed. The purusha, however, is attached to nothing ; therefore, he seeming to be changing, an agent in that which is not (ie. prakrti), is in reality not an agent and is unchanging. Having concealed himself in the cloak of the three qualities he appears as the enjoyer. Two kinds of selves are spoken of, the pure and the elemental (bAhatütma) who is overcome by the five infra-atomie particles of matter (taumātra) and the five grosser elements of matter (makā- bhūta) ; but it is the pure self which being bewildered becomes the elemental self and suffers. Thus we find “his immortal self is (really) like a drop of water on a lotus leaf, but he was overcome by the qualities of nature. Then because he was thus overeome, he became bewildered, he saw not the creator, the holy Lord abiding within himself."' Again, the evolution of the prakrti in conjunction with the purusha is described : ** Even as a ball of iron pervaded by fire and hammered by smiths becomes manifold, so the elemental self pervaded by the inner man and hammered by the qualities becomes manifold."? The different kinds of mental qualities are classified according as they are due to sattva, tamas or rajas. "The evolution of prakrti

1 Maitr., III, 2

and the reflection of the purusha in buddhi are again described thus :—“ In the beginning tamas alone was this. It was in the highest, and moved by the highest it became uneven. "Thus it became rajas. Then the rajas being moved became uneven. Thus it became sattva. Then the sattva being moved, the essence flowed forth. Thus is that part which is entirely intelligent, reflected in man, knowing the body.” Again in another place (Maitr., VI, 10) there is an attempt to speak of the relation of the pradhana and the purusha in an argumentative manner. * The thinking purusha, when he abides within the pradhàna, is the eater who feeds on the food supplied by prakrti. The elemental self is truly his food, his maker being pradhàna. Therefore what is composed of the three qualities is the food, but the person within is the eater. And for this the evidence is supplied by the senses. For animals spring from the seed, and as the seed is the food, therefore it is clear that what is food is pradhana (the seed or cause of everything). Therefore, as has been said, the purusha is the eater, prakrti the food, and abiding within it he feeds. All that begins with the mahat and ends with viseshas, being developed from the distinction of nature with its three qualities is the sign (that there

must be a purusha, an intelligent subject) „This world is indeed the food called pleasure, pain, and error; there is no laying hold of the taste of the seed (cause) so long as there is no development (in the shape of effect). And in its three stages also it has the character of food, as childhood, youth and old age; for because these are developed, therefore there is in them the character of food."

And in the following manner does the perception of pradhana take place, after it has become manifest: ‘Intellect and the rest, such as determination, conception, consciousness, are for the tasting (of the effects of pradhana). Then there are the five (perceptive organs) intended for tasting the five objects of senses; and thus also are all acts of the five active organs and the acts of the five pranas or vital airs (for the tasting of their corrresponding objects). Thus what is manifest is food and what is not manifest is food. The enjoyer thereof is without qualities, but because he has the quality of being an enjoyer, it follows that he possesses intelligence.” (Maitr., VII, 10.)

That the Sankhya doctrine had been growing in the Upanishads is further testified to by the mention of many Sankhya terms and references to the modes of the evolutionary series, which Sankara of course tried to explain away in his commentary on the Yedānta-sūtra in many

cases. Thus, in Katha., T. iii. 10, and II. iii. 7 the categories (tattvas) of Sankhya, such as mahat, ete, have been mentioned and the order of evolution there from the subtler to the grosser is almost the same as the Sānkhya form of evolution. In the Svetasvatara again we find

The one she-goat, red and white and blackish, Casts many young, which are fashioned like to her ; Tho one ram leaps on her in ardour of love, The other ram abandons her, his companion.” !

The manifold relations of the many purushas to the one prakrti cannot be more effectively illustrated than by the manifold relations of the many rams to the one she-goat; under these circumstances the reference of the description of the she-goat as “ red, white, and blackish ” to the three gunas of which Prakrti consists, is inevitable. The Svetasvatara also speaks of prakrti and calls it the maya, and speaks of a great lord eternally associated with it (cf. the Yoga idea). “ Maya is prakrti and the upholder of this maya is the great lord.” The gunas are also spoken of in various places of the Svetasvatara in all probability in the Sankhya sense of the term. Thus we find

1 Deussen', Philosophy of lhe Upanishads p. 251.

references to the Sankhya term guna in many of the passages of the Svetasvatara Upanishad, such as “ guņānvayo yak phalakarmakarta”’ (Svet., 5. 7.), * arabhya karmāņi gunanvitini” (Svet., 6. 4.), * gunaméca sarvān viniyojayed yah” (Svet., 5. 5), * buddhergunenatmagunena caiva” (Sevt., 5.8), and in all these places the purusha is distinguished from the guņas as being their enjoyer, absolutely separate though mixed up with them. Living in the guņas he produces works which bear fruits and also enjoys them.” The origin of this guna theory had probably an earlier form in the Chandogya vi. 4, which states that all things of the material universe are composed of the three elements—heat, water and earth. From the list of the examples given there we find that there had already grown up a mode of thought which sought to discover the qualities of the cause in the effect in order to prove the relation of cause and effect ; in accordance with such an idea the sage there tried to show that not only were different stages of a substance characterised by the predominance of any one of those qualities, but all the properties of a substance, together with its very essence or constitution, were formed by the combination of three primary forms, red (lohita), white (sukla) and black (krshna), and from that he concluded that all substances were composed of those things. There is however another

current of thought, such as “ My dear, as by one clod of clay all that is made of clay is known, the differences being only in name, arising from speech, soit is only the clay that is true." * If we compare these two, with a view to arriving at the idea of causation underlying them, and combine them, we come practically to the evolution (pariņāma) theory of the Sānkhya school.

It is clear that in the examples in Chandogya VI. 4, etc., the red (lohita), white (sukla), black (krshna) or heat, water, and earth, are used as principles which form the composition of different substances and generate their diverse properties. So according to it, all substances are but a product of the combination of these three, just as much as all substances, according to the Sankhya theory, are regarded as the product of the combination of the gunas. Those primary three are the only essential realities, while all the other variations are mere varieties of forms corresponding to their names.

The other passage often cited as demonstrating the causation theory of the monism of Sankara Vedanta, is that which asserts that the unchangeable reality is the only truth, whereas all forms are unreal and illusory. The difference between this appearance (vivartta) of the Vedanta theory and the evolution (pariņūma)

theory of the Sankhya has been defined in the Siddhāntaleša * as follows :—

The appearance (vivartta) theory of the Vedantists holds that the attributes and forms and changes have not the same reality as the substance and are mere impositions and appearances on a reality unalterable in itself, whereas the Sankhya view of evolution (parinama) holds that the appearances have a real basis in the gunas or some ultimate entities in as much as they are in essence the same as the gunas and are therefore real. The gunas themselves hold together and form one composite entity, the prakrti, and thus all forms are but the different manifestations of prakrti. The Sankhya system of thought is so far in harmony with

the Vedantic position that it also holds the forms to be comparatively non-essential, since the true reality attributed to the gunas is noumenal. The Vydsa-bhashya on the Yogasutra quotes a passage which it believes to be the same as the Yoga doctrine of gunas, in which it says that the ultimate nature of the guna entities canuot be perceived and what is perceived of them is as unreal as magie.* This is true of Sankhya also. But it does

1 Vastunah tatsamasattüko' nyuthabhavah parimümah — tadas« masattāko vivartah or as “ karanasalakshano! myathübhavah parinamah tadvilakshano vivartah.

2 Guņūnūņ paramam vūpam na drglipathamrcechatt,

Yattu drstipatham práptam tanmayeva sutucchakum,

not agree with the Vedanta in holding that the manifestations have not the same substratum of reality or truth as the substance, for it is the red (lokita), white (šukla), and black (krshņa) which are the essence of all characteristics, qualities or entities. The difference therefore between the Sankhya and Vedanta views of causation is to be found in this that, according to the former, the cause holds within itself the elements of difference, for the highest homogeneity as potentiality consists in the annulment of the actuality of the difference, whereas, according to the latter, difference is an extraneous element of illusion which has no place in the true cause, the pure homogeneity of abstract thought of pure self-affirmation.

It will be seen therefore that the Sankhya view of causation is a reconciliation of the two lines of thought as expressed in the texts already quoted above ; whereas the Vedanta has identified itself so far with the idea of one view that it has ignored the other position altogether.

Coming to the question of god (Zévara) we find that there are some texts in the U panishads which describe a great being as the creator of the world. But Sankhya in constructing a

1 The Brahman is also spoken of in the Svetāšvatara Upanishad as the object of Yoga meditation and this corresponds with the meditation of God or resignation of everything to God (Īšvarapraņidhāna).

system of duality with souls and matter had ignored this doctrine, which, to judge from the paucity of clear and distinct texts on the subject, was probably weak at the time of the early Upanishads. Yoga however took hold of this idea and gave it a distinct place in its system, as it differed from Sānkhya principally in the admission of God as a third principle of the system. The primal matter (prakyti) being a state of pure potentiality, God is introduced as the agent who, in harmony with the actions of men, will remove the barriers of prakrti and help the free flow of energy in the directicn thus regulated by him.

Yoga however as a system of thought or discipline, apart from the general metaphysical position which it holds in common with Sankhya, cannot be traced before the Švetāšvatara Upanishad in a marked way. In Prasna Upanishad it is said that the vital principle (prüna) derives its existence from the self and that it is from it that the other functions of upward, downward and balancing activities of the body derive their power. In other places we find that the different vital powers all owe their existence and capacity to

It is very probablo that this Brahman of meditation was changed into T§vara when Yoga doctrines were organised into a systematic philosophy.

the main vital principle (prana) to which they all ultimately return. These dependent vital activities called apana, samāna, udāna and vyāna as performing the different motor functions of the body are also spoken of in the same strain in Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya. From this it is clear that in the Upanishads the idea of a single vital principle (p7āxa) which derives its existence from the self and which superintends the other functions had already gained ground.

Another passage in Katha reminds us of the process of concentration in Yoga by which a man passes from a grosser stage to subtler and subtler stages until he reaches the supreme essence, the purusha.'

In another place in Katha we find that Yoga is spoken of as restraint of tbe senses through which the final realisation could be achieved. Thus we find:—* When the five instruments of knowledge stand still together with the mind, and when the intelleet does not move, that is called the highest stage. This, the firm holding back of the senses, is what is called Yoga.” ?

We also find from the testimony of many Upanishads, such as Aitareya, Brhadaranyaka,

etc., that the differences of the diverse psychological states were already discovered, for mental states are named and differentiated from one another.

But we can notice nothing further in these Upanishads than this until we come to Svetasvatara which is later than the other Upanishads already referred to. It is when we come to this that we reach a stage where Yoga has come to be regarded as a method of attaining salvation ; here for the first time we hear of a meditative (dhyana) Yoga and Sinkhya-yoga by which the final truth could be known, and we find, with the description of Yoga, its posture, its breathcontrol and the different psychical states preceding the final illumination. In the Maitrayana, however, Yoga is described as the. method of fixing our thoughts on the object of meditation and most of the characteristics of this science have been mentioned there in this connection. It seems therefore that this discipline had already developed at the time as a means of meditation. It is very probable that at the time of the Upanishads this discipline had not associated itself with the Sankhya doctrine of metaphysics and was resorted to dy all those who wanted to attain a control over their senses and fix themselves on the object of meditation It seems therefore that these disciplinary measures were grafted on the Sankhya metaphysics

and thus originated the Yoga philosophy. As for the Sankhya and the Vedanta, the method of obtaining true knowledge was to be found in theoretic philosophy and discussions pertaining thereto. According to them the Yoga method as such was unnecessary ; philosophic enquiry and philosophic consciousness were deemed quite sufficient to dispel all darkness of ignorance, and flash upon the mind the separateness of the self from prakrti or the unity of the self and the Brahman. Even in later times these two methods have often been described as the Sankhya and the Yoga methods. Thus, Vidyā- ranya says in Citradipa : ‘ Those whose minds are engaged in diverse things cannot attain philosophie knowledge through discussion. ‘the Yoga method is therefore important for them as destroying the pride of intellect. But for those clearer minds which are merely clouded with a thin veil of darkness, the discussion known as the Sankhya brings immediate emancipation.” In the Upanishads, the Yoga doctrines have no such special association with the Sānkhya metaphysics as we find in the Yoga philosophy as enunciated later on by Pataūjali and interpreted by commentators. This hypothesis finds further corroboration in the fact that we find a whole series of Upanishads which grew up after the Maitrayani, and dealt exclusively with the Yoga

discipline with little or no reference to the Sānkhya metaphysics. Thus Sandilya, Yogatattva, Dhyānabindu, Hamsa, Amrtanāda, Varāha, Mandalabrahmana, Nādabindu and Yogakuņdalī are all busy in describing the Yoga physiology and the practical methods of attaining concentration. In these the philosophical aspect has been largely subordinated to the elaborate physical processes of Yoga, which began to grow almost independently of Pataūjali's treatment of the subject, and were accepted and assimilated later on by the sectarian schools of the Saktas, Saivas and also by some later schools of Buddhism.

The doctrine of transmigration, the moral qualities necessary for a philosopher and the condition of the philosopher after emancipation are all found in the Upanishads, and the fact that these are almost the same in both the systems, the Vedanta and the Sankhya, goes to show that they were accepted by the Vedāntins and the Sankhyists alike, before these two systems were completely developed and formulated.

Thus at the end of this brief review we find that the Upanishads contained in them the germs of thought to which are to be traced the roots of many of the important points of difference between the Sānkhya and the Vedanta, as regards both metaphysics and many doctrines contingent upon it.

CHAPTER II. YoGA AND PaATARJALI.!

The word Yoga occurs in the Rgveda in various senses, such as yoking or harnessing, achieving the unachieved, connection and the like. An examination of the passages referred to in the footnote shows that the sense of yoking was not so frequent as the other senses; but it is nevertheless true that the word had been in use in this sense in such later Vedic works as the Satapatha Brāhmaņa and the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad.

The word yuga in the sense of yoke is used in many places in the Rgveda? and the Brahmanas and this word with its derivative yugya (carrier of the yoke, the animal) is quite familiar to us in the later Sanskrit literature. They represent a very old word of Aryan stock which can be traced in such words as the

! Portions of this chapter have already appeared in a nimilar section of my “A History of Indian Philosophy." The MSS. of tho present work was ready several years before my History of Indian Philosophy was composed,

German joch, Anglo-Saxon geoc, iuc, ioc, Latin iugum. The word ‘yoga’ however became gradually rarer and rarer in its original meaning, as it began more often to be used in the sense of yoking the senses.

With the growth of religious and philosophic ideas in the Rgveda we find that religious austerities were gaining a prominent place among thinking people. Thus we find in the Rgveda X.129 “ the one which in the beginning breathed calmly, is developed by! religious fervour and austerities (tapas).” In the older Upanishads,” such as the Chandogya, Brhadā- ranyaka and Taittiriya, we get this word in the sense of austerity and meditative abstractions productive of mighty achievements; in the Taittiriya Brāhmaņa* also we hear of such a tapas, and the commentator assures us there that tapas does not mean any such thing as asceticism, expiatory penances or the like, but devoted meditation upon the particular objects which would have to be created. Brahmacarya and tapas are also highly praised in the well-known

t For an elucidation of the idea of tapas see “ Hindu Mysticism,” Lecture IV by the present writer.

Chandogya, 3.17.4, Brh. 1. 2. 6: sa tapo atapyata. tapastapycte bahüni varshasahasrāņi. Brh. 3.8. 10: yajūena danena tapasā Brh. 4,4. 12, Tait. 1.9. 1: tapašca vādhyāyapravacane ca. 3.1.1: sa tapo atapyata, sa tapastaptvā. Tait. 3. 2. 1: tapasā brahma vijijūāsasva. 3. 3.1: tapobrahma.

hymn of A.V. XI. 5. 1 and also in the Taittiriya Brahmana III. 10. 11. 3, where we are told that Bharadvāja had practised religious austerities (d7ahmacarya) during three lives, and decayed and emaciated his body, but was still willing to continue it.

In the light of the growth of these ideas of asceticism and self-control, it is easy to understand that when the force of the flying passions was felt to be as uncontrollable as that of a spirited steed, the word yoga which was originally applied to the control of steeds was applied to the control of the senses. That the senses were regarded as uncontrollable horses is evident from such passages of Katha and Maitriyani as * the senses are called the horses and the sense objects are those which they run after ” (Katha III. 4), * the active senses are its horses" (Maitr. II. 6), and our expectation is satisfied when, quite in harmony with such an idea, we find yoga defined in Katha II. 6. 11 as * this, the firm holding back of the senses, is what is called Yoga.”

It is probable that the root *yujir" in the sense of connection as given in Panini’s list of roots is a root-form derived later from the nounform * yoga" (yoking), or that yoga also was originally formed from *''yujir yoge” but as yoga had taken a technical meaning in Panini’s time he made a confusion and invented à new

fanciful root “ yuja” in the sense of concentration. In Panini we find that the word yoga had already attained its technical meaning, for he distinguishes between the root yuj in the sense of concentration (samadhi) and yujir in the sense of joining or connecting. I have not yet found any use of *yuj" the root as verb; it only oecurs in the derivative forms as yoga, yogin. Panini has himself used the word many times in his grammar ; ! but the sense in which it has been used in those places is that of “connecting or joining." In III, 2. 142, however he allows the formation of the word yogin to mean à man who practises religious austerities. The fact that there is no verbal use of the root * yuj"' in the sense of concentration ° goes a great way to show that the root in *yuj samādhau ” was only an imaginary analysis of a root-form which had no use as a verb and was only found in the noun

> The example in the Mahābhūshya, yujyate Brahmacars yogam in III. 2, 87, should not mislead us as being an use of yuj is yujir yoge in the passive-active voice (karmakarirvücya) and not yuj samādhau. The same remark applies also to such passages as sarvāņi hüsmai bhutani éraishthyaya yujyante (Kuushitaki, 2. 6).; prane hīmāni sarvans bhūtāni yujyante, yujyante cāsmai sarvāņi bhūtāni šraishthyāya (Brh. 5. 13. 2); yadyad šarīramādatte tena tena sa yujyate (Svet. 5. 10) nahi sadhyasamo hetuh aiddhau sādhyasya yujyate (Gaudapāda 4. 20) ; tato yuddhāya yujyasva (Gita 2. 38.), etc., etc.

Satapatha Bráhmapa, 14. 7. 1. 11.

and adjective forms of yuga, yugya, yoga and yogin. A consideration of the rule of Pāņini's Grammar * tadasya brahmacaryam " shows that notonly different kinds of asceticism and rigour which passed under the name of brahmacarya were prevalent in the country, but, associated with these, had grown up a definite system of mental discipline which passed by the name of yoga and whose adherents were called yogins. The earliest Sanskrit records where we hear of such regular adherents of yoga practice or yogins are the Maitràyani Upanishad and Pāņini's Grammar.

In the Bhagavadgita which was probably pre-Buddhistic we find that the word yogin has been used not so much in conformity with *yuj samüdhau" but rather with **yujir yoge.” This has often been a source of confusion: But a pretty large. number of Gita passages show that a yogin, in the sense ofa person who lost himself in meditation, was regarded with extreme veneration,’ In fact the importance of the Gita lies in this that it has tried to chalk outa middle path between the austere discipline of a meditative abstraction on the one hand and the gross practices of a Vedic worshipper on the other, in the life of a new type of yogin who should combine in himself the best parts of the two paths, devote

himself to his duties and yet abstract himself from any selfish motive or passion.

Again Kautilya in his Arthasastra, when enumerating the philosophic sciences of study, names Sankhya, Yoga, and Lokayata.' The Buddhist texts speak of character (sila), concentration (samadhi), superior intuition (panna) and meditation (ghana) and if the verdict of the Lalitavistara be of any value in determining the state of philosophic elevation at the time of Buddha we find that jhana and samadhi had not only been firmly established, but the forms and methods of concentration had much in common with the forms which we find in Pataūjali's Yogasūtra. It can therefore be assumed that it is very probable that at Buddha’s time and even before him, self-concentration had developed as a technical method of mystic absorption which was practised with slight variations by diverse classes of people and * yogin ” was the technical term which was used to denote them.’

As regards the connection of Yoga with Sankhya as we find it in the Yogasūtra of Pataüjali, it is indeed difficult to come to any definite conclusion. I have already noticed in the last chapter that the science of breath

1 “Sankhyam yogo lokāyatam cetyānvīksikī”” Arthasastra of Kautilya. 2 Compare the texts of Satipatthāna sutta.

attracted notice in many of the Upanishads, though there had not developed any systematic form of prāņāyāma. It is only when we come to Maitrayani that we find that the Yoga method attained a systematic development. The other two Upanishads in which the Yoga ideas can be traced are the Svetasvatara and the Katha. It is indeed curious to notice that these three Upanishads of Black Yajurveda, where we find reference to Yoga methods, are the only ones’ where we find clear references to the Sankhya tenets, though the Sankhya and Yoga ideas do not appear there as related to each other or associated as parts of the same system. But there is a remarkable passage in the Maitrāyaņī in the conversation between Sākāyanya and Brhadratha where we find that the Sankhya metaphysics was offered in some quarters to explain the validity of the Yoga processes and it seems therefore that the grafting of Sāūkhya metaphysics on the Yoga system as its basis was the work of the followers of this school of ideas which was subsequently systematised by Pataiijali. Thus Sakayanya says, * Here some say it is the guna which through the differences of nature goes into bondage to the will, and that deliverance takes place when the fault of the will has been removed, because he

1 Of the minor Upanishads the Sarirakais a medley of Sāhkhya and Vedanta ideas.

YOGA AND PATANJALT 49

sees by the mind; and all that we call desire, imagination, doubt, belief, unbelief, certainty, uncertainty, shame, thought, fear, all that is but mind. Carried along by the waves of the qualities darkened in his imagination, unstable, fickle, crippled, full of desires, vacillating, he enters into belief, believing I am he, this is mine, and he binds his self by his self as a bird with a net. ‘Therefore a man, being possessed of will, imagination, and belief is a slave, but he who is the opposite is free. For this reason let à man stand free from will, imagination, and belief. This is the sign of liberty, this is the path that leads to Brahman, this is the opening of the door, and through it he will go to the other shore of darkness. All desires are there fulfilled. To illustrate this, they quote a verse: ‘ When the five instruments of knowledge stand still together with tbe mind, and when the intellect does not move, that is called the highest state’ (Max Müller)." '

! Vatsyáyana however in his Bhāshya on Nyayasutra I. i. 29, distinguishes Sahkhya from the Yoga in the following way :—The Sātkhyas hold that ‘‘ nothing cannot come into being nor can being be destroyed. there cannot be any change in the pure intelligence (nirati$ayah cctanüh). All changes are due to changes in the body, the senses, the means aud the objects. The Yoga holds that all creation is due to the karma of the purusha and that doshas (passions) and pravrtti (action) are the causes of karma, The iutelligences or souls (cetana) are associated with qualities, non-being can come into being, and what is produced may be destroyed.” This is indevd quite different from Patafjali’s school of Yoga. It is closer to Nyáya in ita. doctrines,

An examination of such Yoga Upanishads as Sandilya, Yogatattva, Dhyānabindu, Harisa, Amrtanāda, Variha, Maņdala-Brāhmaņa, Nādabindu, and Yogakundali, shows that the yoga practices had undergone diverse changes in diverse schools, but none of these show any predilection forthe Sankhya. Thus, the Yoga practices grew in accordance with the doctrines of the Saivas and Saktas and assumed a peculiar form as the mantrayoga; they grew in another direction as the Hathayoga which was supposed to produce wonderful bodily feats of breathcontrol and control of involuntary muscles and organs through constant practices of elaborate nervous, muscular and breath exercises which were also associated with the art of healing diseases, keeping the body free from all kinds of diseases and supernatural powers. The Yogatattva Upanishad says that there are four kinds of yoga, the Mantra Yoga, Laya Yoga, Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga.’ In some cases we find that there was a great attempt to associate even Vedantism with these mystic practices. The influence of these practices on

The Yoga writer Jaigishavyn wrote ** Dharanafastra " which

dealt with Yoga more in the fashion of Tantra than that given by Patatījuli. Te raentions different places in tho body (eg., heart, throat, tip of the nose, palate, foreheud, centre of tho brain) which are centres of ricinory where concentration is to be made,

See Vacaspati’s Tátparyyatikà on Vàtsyaynna's Bhüshya on Nyàya. sūtra, III, di, 42.

the development of Tantra and other modes of worship was also very great, but these we have to neglect as they have little philosophic importance.

Pataiijali was probably the most notable representative of the Sankhya school of Yoga, which forms the subject of our present enquiry. Pataüjali not only collected the different forms of Yoga practices, and gleaned the diverse ideas which were or could be associated with the Yoga, but grafted them all on the Sankhya metaphysics, and gave them the form in which they have been handed down to us. Vācaspati and Vijfiana Bhikshu, the two great commentators on the Vyasa Bhashya, agree in holding that Patafijali was not the founder of the Yoga but rather its editor. An analytic study of the sütras also brings conviction that they do not show any original attempt but are a masterly and systematic compilation, supplemented with certain original contributions. The character ofthe Yogasütras asa compilation is evident from its division into chapters (pada) accordiog to the main topics of discussion instead of the usual divisions into books (adhyaya) and chapters (pada) as in the works of Jaimini, Badarayana or Panini, or into books (adhya@ya) and lessons (ākņika), as in the Nyāya-Vaiseshika schools, which were the general forms of division of original writings. The systematic manner also

in which the first three chapters are writtea by way of definition and classification’ shows that the materials were already in existence, and that Pataiijali only systematised them in an orderly form. This explains also why we find no missionary zeal, no attempt to overthrow the doctrines of other systems, except so far as might be useful in explaining the system. Pataüjali is not even anxious to establish the system, but he is occupied only with systematising the facts as he had them. Most of the few remarks that he had to make he reserved for the last chapter: the Yoga having already been described in the first three chapters, he distinguishes the existent Yoga ideas which he thus collected from his own remarks by putting an “it” (the word

1 An example of this method (which is indeed different from that of enunciation (uddeša), definition (lakshana) and examination (pariksha) of Nyāya may be given by a skort analysis of the first chapter. Thus Yoga is defined as cittavritinirodha (2). In (3) and (4) the nirodha and anirodha stages are distinguished. Vrtti is then divided into kligta and akligta and these again into pramāņa, viparyaya, vikalpa, nidrā, and smrti, and these are then defined. Then Pataūjali divides the means of nirodha as abhyāsa and vairāgya and classifies vrttinirodha as asamprajiiata and sumprajtiata of four kindsas savitarka, savicāra, sānanda and sāsmitā, Vrttinirodhasamādhi is again further classified as upāyapratyaya and bhavapratyaya and the upāyas are šraddha, virya, smrti, samādhi and prajūa, The upāyapratyaya yogins are again further divided into those who are engaged in isvarapranidhana ` and others of nine kinds according to the strength of their devotion. God is delined, and the nature of his favour is then described, The means of the removal of obstacles is then further divided according to vīrya, fraddhā, aud samadhi, Then tho chapter closes with a description of prajiia and asamprajhàta or nirbiju samādhi.

to denote the conclusion of any work) at the end of the third chapter, evidently to denote the conclusion of his yoga compilation. There is of course another “zi” at the end of the fourth chapter to denote the conclusion of the whole work. Another legitimate hypothesis which may be formed iu this connection is that the last chapter is a subsequent addition from a hand, other than that of Pataüjali, anxious to supply some new links of argument felt as desirable for strengthening the Yoga position trom an internal point of view, as well as for securing the Yoga from the supposed attacks of Buddhist metaphysics. ‘There is also a marked change (due either to its supplementary character or the manipulation of a foreign hand) in the style of the last chapter as compared with the style of the other three chapters of description, enumeration and classification. The sūtras 30-34 of the last chapter seem to repeat what has already been said in the second chapter, and some of the topics introduced are such that they could well have been described in a more relevant manner in connection with similar discussions in the preceding chapters in a systematic work like this. The extent of this chapter is also disproportionately small as it contains only 34 sūtras, whereas the number of sütras in other chapters is between 51 to 55,

We have now to meet the vexed question of the probable date of the famous Patanjali, the reputed author of the Yogasutra. Weber had tried to connect him with Kāpyapātaūcala of Brhadaranyaka. In Katyiyana’s Varttika we get the name Patañjali, which is explained by later commentators as he for whom the hands are folded as a mark of reverence (patantah aijalayah yasmai) but it is difficult to come to any conclusion merely from the similarity of names. ‘There is however another theory which identifies the writer of the great commentary on Panini, called the Mahabhashya, with the Pataūjali of the Yogasutra. This theory has been accepted by many Western scholars, probably on the strength of some native commentators who seem to have identified the two Patafijalis. Of these one is the writer of Pataijalicarita (Ramabhadra Dikshita) who could not have flourished earlier than the 18th century. The other one is cited in Sivaràma's commentary on Vāsavadattā which Aufrecht assigns to the 18th century.” The other two are King Bhoja of Dhara and Cakrapāņidatta, the commentator of Caraka, who belonged to the lith century

| Pātatījalamakābkāskyacarakapratisamskrtaiļ

munovākkāyadoshūņām hautre 'hipataye namah.

2 The Sloka cited in Sivariima’s commentary occurs in some MSS.

just before the opening words of the Mahabhashyu, but that can give us no clue to the date of the éloka as it may be & late interpolation,

A.D. Thus Cakrapāņi says that he adores the Ahipati (mythical serpent-chief) who removed the defects of mind, speech and body by his Pātaūjala, Mahübhashya and the revision of Caraka. Bhoja says :—* Victory be to the luminous words of that illustrious sovereign Ragarangamalla who, by composing his grammar, by writing his comment on Pataünjali aud by producing a treatise on medicine called Ratamygātka has, like the lord of serpents, removed defilement from speech, mind, and body,” These remarks are however based upon an old tradition that Patatijali, the grammarian, was the incarnation of Sesha (the mythical serpent) who fell upon the palms of Panini (pata talling and aitjalihands). The adoration hymn of Vyasa, which is considered to be an interpolation even by orthodox scholars, is also based upon the same tradition. It is not impossible therefore that the later native commentators should make a confusion between the three Patañjalis, the grammarian, the Yoga editor, and the medical writer to whom is ascribed the book known as Pataajalatuntra and who has been quoted by Sivadasa in his commentary on Cakradatta in connection with the heating of metals.

Professor Woods of Harvard University is therefore quite justified in his unwillingness to identify the grammarian with the Yoga editor

on the slender evidence of these commentators. It is indeed curious to notice that the great commentators of the grammatical school, such as Bhartrhari, Kaiyata, Vāmana, Jayaditya, Nāgeša, etc. should be silent on this point! Though Prof. Woods does not notice it, I think this is indeed a very strong point against the identification of the two Patafijalis by a few Yoga and medical commentators of a later age.

It will not however be out of place here to notice that Prof. Woods supposes that the philosophical concept of substance (dravya) of the two Pataiijalis differs, and that therefore they cannot be identified. He holds that substance (dravya) is described in Vyaisabhashya in one place as being the unity of genus and specific particularities whereas Mahabhashya, the work of the grammarian Pataūjali, holds that a dravya denotes a genus and also specific qualities according as the emphasis or stress is laid on either side. I fail to see how these ideas can be held to be totally antagonistic. Moreover we know that these two views were held hy Vyādi and Vājapyāyana

1 This is particularly suspicious as Bhartrhari gives in the second kinda of Vakyapadiya an account of the composition of Muhābhāshya aud its later history till it came over to him, but does not make any suggestion as to the identity of the two Patanjalis. In the Brahmakünda also there was a suitable opportunity for such a reference but no reference has been made and Puņyarāja uud Hel6raja are also silent on the point.

(Vyadi holding that words denoted qualities or dravya and Vajapyiyana holding that words denoted species). Even Panini himself had these two different types of ideas, as expressed in the rules jü/yalhyayamekasmin bahuvacanamanyatarasyūm and sarūpāņāmekašeshamekavibhaktau, and the writer of the Makabhashya only combined these two views. ‘This does not show that he opposes the view of Vyasahhashya, though we must remember that even if he did, that would not prove anything with regard to the author of the Sūtras. Moreover when we find in the Mahabhashya dravya spoken of as the object (e.g., the cow with its tail, hoofs, horns, ete. —“ yat sasnalangulakakudakshuravishanyartha rūpam) we arc reminded of its similarity with the definition of dravya in the Vyāsabhā- shya as that where the parts cannot be considered apart from the whole (ayutasiddhavayavabhedauugatah samūho dravyan). I have assured myself by an examination of the Mahābhāshya that there is nothing in it which can warrant us in saying that the two Patafijalis cannot be identified. There are, no doubt, many apparent divergences of view, but even in these it is only the traditional views of the old grammar scholars that are exposed and reconciled, and it would be very unwarrantable for us to infer anything as to the personal

views of the grammarian from them. It may

also he supposed that the writer of the Mahabhashya was acquainted with none at least of the important points dealt with in the Sànkhya- Yoga metaphysics; asa few examples I may Saukhya dicta of ex nihilo nihil fit, to 1 to 56, the vivarta and parinàma ideas, the idea of time of similars into similars (1. 1. 50), the idea of change as production of new qualities, effect and cause as manifestation (5. 1. 2, 5. 1.3, 3. 8.13) and the idea of the changing states of the intellect (buddhiparinima). About the obstacles of perception it seems that Tsvarakrshna borrowed the idea of one of his karikas from the Mahabhashya 4. 1. 3. We may add to it that the Mahabhashya agrees with the Yyāsabhashya as regards Sphotavada; there is also this external similarity that unlike any other work they both begin in a similar manner (atha yoganu$üsanam and atha šabdānušāsanam).

It may further be noticed in this connection that the arguments which Mr. Woods adduced to assign to the Yogasütra a date between 300 and 500 A.D., are not at all conclusive, for, firstly, ifthe two Pataūjalis cannot be identified, it does not follow that the editor of the Yoga should necessarily be pushed down to a lower date. Secondly, the supposed Buddhist reference is mainly found in the 4th chapter

which, as I have shown above, may be a later interpolation!; thirdly, even if it was written by Pataūjali, it cannot be inferred that because Vacaspati describes the opposite school as being of the Vijianavada type, we are to infer that the sūtras refer to Vasubandhu or even to Nāgārjuna, for such ideas, as have been refuted in the sutras, have been developing even long before the time of Nagarjuna.’

Thus though we cannot accept the tradition of later commentators as a sufficient ground to identify the two Patafijalis, we cannot at the same time discover anything from a comparative critical study of the Yogasūtras and the text of the Afakābhāshya, which can lead us to say that the author of the Yogasūtras flourished at a later date than the other Pataiijali.

It is indeed curious to notice that there is another work called Kitab Patanjal of which Alberuni speaks in his Jndia. Alberunī considers this work asa very famous one and he translates it along with another book called

! It is important to notice that the most important Buddhist reference '' nacaikacittatantram vastu tadapramūnakam tadā kim syāt " (TV. 16) was probably a line of tho Vyàsabhüshya. Bhoja who had consulted many commentariez, as he says in the preface, does not count it as a sūtra.

It is interesting to notice a passugo in tho Mahabhashyc which may be compared with the criticism of the concept of time by Nagarjuna. Thus the Mahübhüshya aays in ILI, ij. 123, the future, past and present—in none of these three can wo locate motion : what thon is meant by saying that “he goes” signifies present tense ?

Sankhya ascribed to Kapila. This book Kttāt Pātaūjal was written in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil and it is certain that this book was not the present Yogasūtra of Patafijali though it had the same aim as the latter, namely, the search for liberatien and for the union of the soul with the object of meditation. The book was called by Alberuni Kitāb Patonjal which is to be translated as the book called Pātaūjal, because in another place, speaking of its author, he puts in a Persian phrase, which when translated stands as **the author of the book of Patafijal.” It had also an elaborate commentary from which Alberuni quotes many extracts though he does not tell us the name of its author. It treats of God, soul, bondage, decds (karma), salvation, eto., as we find in the Yogasūtra, but the manner in which these are described (so far as we can judge from the copious extracts supplied by Alberuni) shows that these ideas had undergone some changes from what we find in the Yogasūtra. "The idea of God in Alberuni’s Kitab Patafijal retains its character as a timeless emancipated being ; God is spoken of as handing over the Vedas, and showing the way to yoga and inspiring men in such a way that they could obtain by cogitation what he bestowed on them. The name of God proves his existence, for there cannot exist anything of which the

name exists but not the thing. The soul perceives him; and thought comprehends his qualities. Meditation is identical with worshipping him exclusively, and by habituating it uninterruptedly comes in the supreme absorption in him, and beatitude is obtained.’

The idea of soul in this work is the same as we find in the Yogasūtra. The idea of metempsychosis is also the same. He speaks of the eight miraculous powers (siddhi) at the first stage of meditation on the unity of God. Then follow the other four stages of meditation corresponding to the four stages as we have in the Yogasūtra. He gives four kinds of ways towards the achievement of salvation, of which the first is the practice (abhyasa) of Pataiüjali, though the object of this practice is union with God. The second stands for vairāgya, the third is the worship of God with a view to seeking his favour towards the attainment of salvation (cf. Yogasūtra Y. 23 and I. 99). The fourth is a new introduction, namely, rasayana or alchemy. As regards liberation, the view is almost the same as in the Yogasūtra II. 25 and IV.34; but the liberated state is spoken of in one place as absorption in God or being one with him. The Brahman is conceived as a tree with its roots upwards and its branches downwards, after

the Upanishad fashion; the upper root is pure Brahman, the trunk is the Vedas, the branches are the different doctrines and schools, the leaves are the different modes of interpretation. Its nourishment comes from the three forces (probably the three gunas); the object of the worshipper is to fell the tree and go back to the roots.

The differences of this system from the Yogasūtra are: (1) the conception of God has risen to such an importance here that he has become the only object of meditation, and absorption in him is the goal; (2) the importance of the two methods of Yoga self. control as vama and niyama has been reduced tothe minimum; (3) the value of the Yoga discipline as a separate means of salvation, apart from any connection with God, as we find in the Yogasütra has been lost sight of; (4) liberation and yoga are defined as absorption in God; (5) the introduction of Brahman ; (6) the very significance of yoga as cittavytti-nirodha is lost sight of ; and (7) rasā- yana is introduced as one of the means of salvation.’

Cf. Vogusūtra II. 1. Alberuvī iu his account of the book of Süükhya gives a list of commandments, which is practically the sane as yama und niyama but it is said that through them one cannot attain salvation,

Cf. the sccount of Paéupatadarfana in Sarvadoršanasamgraha. where Yoge is deGncd us the relation of individual soul with God

From this we can fairly assume that this was 2 new modification of the yoga doctrine on the basis of Pataūjali's Yogasūtra in the direction of Vedanta and Tantra, and as such it probably stands as the transition link through which the yoga doctrine of the Sūtras passed over in a new channel in such a way that it could be easily assimilated from there by later developments of Vedanta, Tantra, and Saiva doctrines of a later age. As the author mentions rasayana as a means of salvation, it is very probable that he flourished after Nagarjuna and was probably the same person who wrote Pātaījalatantra and who has been quoted by Šivadāsa in connection with alchemical matters and spoken of by Nagesa as Pataūjali in Caraka (Carake Pataüjalih) It may also be supposed that Cakrapani and Bhoja made the confusion of identifying this Pataüjali with the writer of the Mahabhashya. It is also very probable that Cakrapāņi by his line “ pataitjalamahibkashyacarakaprativamskrlaik” refers to this work, which was called " Pātaāhjalas” The commentator of this work gives some description

of the lokas, dvipas and sāgaras which run gounter

to the description as given in the Vyasabhàshya

through mind. The Kulūrņavatantra also says that Y

t crose-legped posture of sitting or steadfaat gi nose but it is the

ore is not i wing at the tip of the true union of the individual with the self,

III. 26, and from this we can infer that it was probably written at a time when the Vyasabhashya had not attained any great sanctity or authority. Alberuni also described the book as being very famous at the time, and Bhoja and Cakrapāņi also probably confused him with Patanjali, the grammarian. From this we can fairly assume that this book “ Patafijal " was probably written by some other Patafijali within the first 200 or 300 years of the Christian era; and it may not be improbable that when Vyāsabhā- shya quotes in II. 44 as iti Patanmjelih, it refers to this Patatijali.

Next to this we find that Caraka devotes the whole of the first chapter of the book of Sarira to proving the existence of the Purusha, as against the Buddhists who did not believe in the separate existence of souls. The description given here is so vivid and clear, and the amalgamation of the Sànkhya metaphysics with the Yoga doctrine as the way of salvation is so perfect that it may not be wrong for us to expect that Caraka had probably seen the Yogasutra of Pataūjali.

This may well serve as a guidance on the negative side against assigning any date to the author of the Yogasūtra which may be later than that of Caraka, who is held to have been the court-physician of Kanishka. The study of the Yogasutra, however, furnishes us with

such other internal evidence that on the basis of them it may be said that the Yogasūtra was written shortly after the close of the epoch of the early Upanishads, under the influence of old Buddhism and Jainism, or when all the three had not sufficiently separated themselves and stood out from the original melting pot of ideas.

In dealing with this part of the evidence we see first that the conception of yoga as we meet it in the Maitrayani Upanishad consisted of six atūgas or accessories, namely, breath-control (pranayama), restraint (pratyüliara), meditation (dhyana), holding fast (dkāraņā), thinking (tarka) and concentration (samādhi). Comparing this list with the list in the Yogasūtra we find that in the latter two new elements have been added and tarka has been replaced by āsana or posture. Now, from the account of the sixty-two heresies given in the Brahmajalasutta, we know that there were people who either from meditation of three degrees or, fourthly, through logic and reasoning had come to believe that both the external world as à whole and individual souls were eternal. From the association of this last mentioned logical school with the concentration (samādhi) or meditation (dhyana) school as belonging to one class of thinkers professing eternalism ($āšvatavāda) and from the inclusion of tarka as an accessory (aga) in concentration (samadhi),

we can fairly assume that the list of the accessories (aga) given in the Maitrayana Upanishad represents the oldest list of the Yoga doctrine when the Sāūkhya and the Yoga were in a process of being grafted upon each other and when the Sankhya method of discussion had not stood as a method independent of the Yoga. The substitution of postures (Gsana) for thinking (arka) in the list of Pataūjali shows that the Yoga method had now grown into a method separate from the Sankhya. The introduction of non-injury (ahimsā), truthfulness (satya), non-stealing (asteya), sex-contro] (brakmacarya), satisfaction with the little that one has (aparigraha) as control (yama) and purity (éauca), and contentment (santosha), among others as superior control (niyama), into a system of morality, without which yoga is deemed impossible, for the first time in the philosophical sūtras, probably marks the period when the discussion between the Hindus and the Buddhists and Jains had not become so keen. The introduction of friendship (mattrī), kindness (karuņā), contentment (muditā), nonapprehension of other's riches (upekskā) is also egually significant as we do not find them mentioned in such à prominent form in any other literature of the Hindus dealing with the subject of emancipation. Beginning from the Acārāngasūtra the Uttaradhyayanasutra,

and the Sūtrakrtāngasūtra and passing through 6Umāsvati's — Tattvarthadhigamasutra to Hemachandra's Yogašāstra we find that the Jainas had been founding their Yoga discipline merely on the basis of a system of morality indicated by the yamas, and the opinion expressed in Alberunis Sankhya that these cannot give salvation marks the divergence of the Hindus with the Jainas in later days. Another important characteristic of Pataüjali's work is its thoroughly pessimistic tone. Its treatment of sorrow in connection with the statement of the scope and ideal of Yoga is the same as that of the four sacred truths of the Buddhists, namely, suffering, origin of suffering, the removal of suffering, and the pathto the removal of suffering. Again the metaphysics of the samsāra cycle in connection with sorrow, origination, disease, rebirth, etc., is described with a remarkable degree of similarity with the cycle of causes as described in early Buddhism, though there is not the slightest ‘reference to the doctrine of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) and other. Buddhistic developments of a later age. Igno-: rance (avidyā) is placed at the head of the group; yet this avidya should not be confused with the Vedāntic view of the avidyā of the Upanishads, as it is an avidyā of the Buddhistic type. It isnot declared to be anything in the

way of a cosmic power nor anything like a mysterious original sin, but it is within the range of earthly tangible reality. The ignorance here is the same as with the Buddhists, the ignorance of the four sacred truths, viz., the consideration of the momertary, impure, sorrow and the non-self as the eternal, pure, happiness and the self. Again we may take the example of the will to live (abhinivesa). The ground of our existence is our will It is our besetting sin that we will to be, that we will to be ourselves, that we fondly will our being to blend with other kinds of existence. The negation of the will tobe cuts off being for us at least. This is true as much of Buddhism as of the Yoga “ will to live ” (abhinivesa) which ia term coined and used in the Yoga for the first time to suit the Buddhist idea, and which has never been accepted in any other Hindu literature in this sense. It is needless to multiply examples. But my sole aim in pointing out these things in this chapter is to show that the Yogasūtra proper (first three chapters) was composed at a time when the later forms of Buddhism had not developed and when the quarrels between the Hindus and the Buddhists and Jains had not reached such a stage that they could not borrow from one another in a clear and evident manner. As this can only be held of earlier Buddhism, I am disposed to

think that the date of the first three chapters of the Yogasūtra must be placed somewhere between the 4th century B. C. and the 2ud century B. C. Whether Patafijali the grammarian can be identified with Pataijali the writer of the Sütras is more than I can say, though I have already tried to emphasise the fact that there is nothing in the Mahübhaskya which could conflict with such a hypothesis.

In the above discussions I think I must have suggested more than once that the Yoga doctrines had undergone changes in different schools of thought, but my treatment of the subject in the following pages will be restricted to the traditional interpretation of the Yogasūtra as has been accepted from Vyàsa to Nāgeša though I may in passing notice the other developments, whenever these may prove to be of interest in connection with the elucidation of the Yoga ideas.

CHAPTER III. Tae Gouna THEORY.

The characteristic mark of the Sankhya and Yoga schools of philosophy is their guna theory, which holds that all things (mental or material) except the pure self are made up of an admixture, or rather a combination in different proportions, of three classes of reals technically called gunas. It is indeed difficult to ascertain the reason why these ultimate reals were called gunas, The word guna in Sanskrit means (1) qualities, (2) subordinate or inferior and (3) string. Later commentators have tried to justify the use of the term from the point of view of all the three meanings. The ultimate reals are called gunas (qualities) because each and every quality of things is due to the existence of a corresponding real, for, as we shall see later on

in detail, the reals and qualities are identical in Sankhya philosophy. Again the ultimate reals are called gunas in the sense of inferior or subordinate as well, for these possess a lesser degree of constancy than the purusas; for, though indestructible, the reals are in a state of constant flux and change, whereas the purusas are ever constant and unchangeable. Tt is on this account that the purusas are given the first

place, and the ultimate reals are looked upon 18 gauna or guna (possessing an inferior value). The other justification offered is that these are called gunas as they behave like strings in binding the translucent purusas to transitory objects of interest.

But whatever may be the reason why the gunas were so called, it is evident from the considerations we have set forth in the first chapter, that the theory itself was the result of a long process of growth, and not the work of a mythical Kapila as tradition would have it. It is, of course, quite probable that Kapila laid hold of the loose materials and built them up intoa complete and coherent system, so that though he might not have been a discoverer of the root’ ideas of Sānkhya philosophy he might justly be regarded as the founder of the Sankhya scbool as Pataūijali of the Yoga.

To look at a system of Indian philosophy from the historical or chronological point of view has no doubt its value, but the more important thing is to take an estimate of the philosophic construction in the light of the analysis of aur experience. It is true that none of the extant Sankhya works reveal to us any such analysis of experience as might lay bare to us the inner reason of the guna theory, but yet we may supplement it from the point of view of modern thought and criticism. It does not

T2 YOGA PHILOSOPHY

matter in the least if we cannot guarantee the historieal correctness of such an analysis, for it is through such procedure mainly that the philosophie value of the guna theory may be rightly estimated.

Philosophy, we know, is a science of abstraction which seeks to rise above the contingent aspects of things to à common platform from which it again descends to explain all phenomena of mind, life and nature. It is, therefore, expected of any system of philosophy that it should vindicate its right to acceptance by showing how its analysis of experience could lead it to the necessary formulation of its theory. In India, however, this necessary duty of philosophy was often felt as relatively unimportant, because its claims to acceptance amongst the masses of people depended not so much upon the reasonableness of the theory as upon the patronage of the Upanishads. Butit is expected from an interpreter of Sankhya of modern times that he should give his own construction of how abstraction from experience can lead to the doctrine of the gunas as a plausible explanation of all phenomena.

To do this let us begin by abstracting from experience all those aspects which may be regarded as contingent or non-essential. We may take any experience and try to conceive how far it is possible for us to abstract, and beyond

which it isnot possible for us to go without sacrificing experience to logical consistency. Analytic reflection shows that being and movement are the two irreducible ultimates, beyond which further abstraction is not possible. It is true that Vedantism regarded being (sat) only as true, and Buddhism regarded movement as true. But when we inspect closely the progress of Buddhism or Vedāntism we find that as they gradually moved towards a reconciliation of philosophy with experience, the former had to assume the “deep ” (gabhira) or the “ essenceless ” (sunya) as the goal of all movement and the latter the māyā as the principle of movement by the influence of which the being resolved itself, or rather appeared to do so, into a manifold of experience. But here a question may arise as to what “being” means. “ Being”

In Buddhism, as we find ib in its early stages, we find that the causal nexus such as ‘ from ignorance comes consciousness, from consciousness comes name, otc.," represent being only as a moment in the everchanging process. The world is the world’s procoss. Beings are the points of the procession regulated by the law of causality, of continuous being at every moment, self-consuming and self-begetting. What we term a souled being is only an individual member in the line of this procession, ono flame in this sea of flames. Being is only a moment in the process of becoming. When we come to Inter Mahayana Buddhism, we see that the doctrine of causal determination (pratityasamutpāda) cannot satisfy the mind, und the void (šūngya) is put forward by Nāgērjuna as the substratum and goai of all causal determination (pratītyasamutpāda). Chandrakirtti holds that what suffers all change and transformation must itself be the colourless void ($ünga), inasmuch as it is the ground of all change. It is the void which fora moment reaches the stage of being or knowledge through the principle

T4 YOGA PHILOSOPHY

is not here an empty abstraction representing merely the common trait of all existences, but the universal or ultimate mode of intelligibility ; as such Being is the fundamental fact of the selfposition of thought which comprehends within it the positing of all objects of thought. It is the quality by virtue of which all objects become related to consciousness as a fact of consciousness. It is this element which forms the main constituent of consciousness. Without it thought could not have affirmed itself or anything else and everything would have been blind. This characteristic primarily belongs to thought and secondarily to all other things since they also can be related to thought and become its objects. This aspect of things

of causal determination (pratītyasamutpāda) and then sinks back to void again. It was void in the beginning and will be void in ihe end. Void is the only substratam—the “deep” (gambhira). It is the expression of the series as well as the colourless depth where the series of existence has ceased (see Chandrakirtti on Mādhyamikasutra, Chapter 18, and Satasāhasrikā Prajtaparamita).

Looking at Vedāntism, we find that Gaudapada held that pure being was the only metaphysical category, whereas all multiplicity and change were absolutely false. Sahkara agreed with Gaudapida that the world wasas unrcal asthe dream world, but ho advanced the conception of maya by emphaaising the distinction of relative (vyāvaharika) and real (pāramārthika) existences. Vacaspati regardéd maya, the principle of change, as an accessory (sahakāri) cause working in conjunction with Brahman. Sriharsha and Citsukha describe maya asa beginningless, positive entity and yet destructible hy true knowledge. But when we come to Dhermarāja, Rāmkrishņa, etc., maya has already come to be looked at as three ganas after the Sankhya fashion.

in Sankhya is called sattva. The self-shining

and lightness, or the power of being easily chang-

ed or shifted, are inseparable from the being of

ideas. It is the being which in one aspect is

regarded as shining (prakāšaka) and in another

as plastic or light (laghu). In the objective world

however this plasticity or fluidity of thought is

almost lost and submerged in mass or materia-

lity. But this positing of thought requires, as is easy to see, a subject which is to be posited. When I say “ the table is,” the fact of positing or relationing with consciousness is affirmed of the table. That the table can be related to consciousness as a fact of the latter’s positing characteristic shows that it has in common with consciousness that attribute or substance by virtue of which it becomes a part of it. But what is posited in “the table is” is not a mere positing, but also the mass or materiality of the table. The Vedanta asserted that the positing is the only true substance, but whatever character or matter appears as posited is mere form and name and therefore unreal. But the Sankhya, as it took its inspiration from experience, held fast to the principle of mass or materiality as an irreducible ultimate ofexperience side by side with intelligible being or sattva. The difference between the phenomena of the external world and those of the mental world, the phenomena of material things and ideas, is that the preponderating

constituent of the former is the element of mass (famas) whereas that in the latter is being (sattva). The ideas themselves, though we cannot attribute mass to them in their translucent character as the different determinations of being, may yet be held to have some tenuous quality of mass, because they can assume the form of material objects, where mass predominates. Mass can be identified in the thought world with that element which gives thought its static character. For with the element of being as shining or plasticity we can only expect a flux of shining and not clear-cut limited concepts. This hardness of concepts is similar to what we would call the impenetrability of matter. The difference of the function of this element in thought and that in matter lies in this that in the former it is extremely subordinated and submerged in being (sattva), whereas in the latter it is predominant. Thus the essential substance of all intellectual phenomena is sattva as that of all physical phenomena is mass or tamas.

Side by side with intelligence-stuff (sattva) and mass (tamas) we find another factor which is present in all intellectual as well as physical phenomena, namely energy (rajas).

It may not be out of place here to point out that in determining the relation between experience and reality, the Sankhya was probably

inwardly guided by the same sort of axiom as the Buddhists, namely, that each diversity of experience or sensation presumes the existence of a corresponding diversity of realities or reals.’ The Sankhya, we see, holds that corresponding to any and every affection of the sense or experience there is a real. But it classifies the infinite number of these reals into three different types, sattva, rajas and tamas, which according to Sankhya analysis represent the ultimates of experience in three directions. These three the Sāūkhya and the Yoga call the three gunas, sattva (intelligence-stuff), rajas (energy) and tamas (mass or the factor of obstruction). It is by the union of these three in different degrees and according to their mutual superiority or inferiority that all things mental or material are generated. These three are the ultimate substances (dravya) and all the rest are but their modifications.

From what we have stated above two objections naturally arise ; (1) the analysis of consciousness, which cannot find out other ultimates than being, mass and energy, is imperfect, firstly because it is not complete, as it does not take any account of the “feeling” side of our consciousness which is quite as pervading as the plane of consciousness, if not more; secondly, the ultimates generalised from consciousness

1 Cf, “ Yo yo viruddhadhyasavan sa sa nānā.”

can hardly be put down as reals and substances. The other objection is that such a position seems to avoid the difficult problem of the correlation of mind and matter without proposing a solution for it, for the objections of the idealist (vijianavüdin) are not dispensed with by any supposition of irresistible convictions or ultimate necessities of thought.

The consideration of these objections again brings us to that old and tattered question * what must the nature of things be in order that they may be known?" The answer generally given is that they must be in some way akin to the mind which knows them, for the mind can only know that which is in some sense or other within the mind or is an idea, which comes to the same thing as to say that the mind can only know its ideas. Any assertion, therefore, about things is unwarrantable or, in other words, things may not exist. Our experience however tells us that we do not know ideas but things and to have an idea means nothing more than to know objects. "To say that in order to be known a thing must be akin to the mind is no new revelation, as it practically means nothing more than to say that in order to know a thing, it must be capable of being known. The same fallacy of the mental nature of things is found in the doctrine which, starting from sensations as given, postulates the activity

of thought in ordering and correlating the data of sensation in order to make the object: the world of nature is nothing other than the system of relations whicb the mind imposes on the crude data of sensations, still undetermined by relations as * the work of unknown things in themselves acting in unknown ways upon us.” Green, in the interest of the intelligibility of the real world, discards things in themselves as meaningless, because while claiming to be completely independent of our knowledge and themselves never known, they are taken to be the cause of our knowledge ; and causation being a relation is the work of the mind and cannot be predicated of the world of things-in-themselves. This no doubt disposes of Kant but the sensations cannot be arranged by the understanding capriciously at random. If it be not because of the inherent nature of the sensations themselves, why does the understanding give to one set of sensations a particular order different from those of other sets? If again objects of experience are made by the intelligence, we are incapable of accounting for the ways in which these sensations are made. So there must be something “ not made by our intelligence ” upon which our sensations are dependent ; of this entity the idealists are precluded by their own presuppositions from giving any account. Thus we see that Green, after criticising Kant’s things-in-

themselves, is driven to speak of the “exciting cause of sensation." There is therefore an external matter which causes sensations. If it is still maintained that such things-in-themselves can have no relations or qualities, for they are the work of mind, then all the objections against Kant would re-appear. Doubtless we cannot know reality without the mind ; but this cannot imply that it is a general characteristic of reality to be incapable of existence apart from the mind, 4.e., to be a psychical matter merely. It is unnecessary to follow the discussions of the Yogācāra with the Sautrantikas, Mīmāmsists, the Sankhya and the Yoga, as the lines of argument are similar and differ only in details.

Thus we have to admit that there is both an external reality and an inner one of mental states. But then again the question of correlation reappears. It may be held that there is only one unqualified being which is, on one side, the visayachaitanya and, on the other, the pramāņachaitanya, but plurality and diversity remain unexplained. To say that matter is but thought externalised and that it follows the dialectic nature of thought is no explanation of the contingent aspect of nature as the mass, the

1 See Sastradipika-tarkapada, 5th Adhikarana, the Yoga Bhāgya, 4th Book, Safkhya discussions of Vijiānabhikgu, Kumārila's Vārttika, etc., on this point.

impenetrable, the datun: of all change, for it is no better than a bold allegory or metaphor.

The difficulties of unqualified naturalism which would identify matter with thought are also as great as the unqualified monism of the idealistic nature just referred to. Naturalism admits that it cannot bridge the gulf between the physical and the psychical, that, in spite of its best efforts at explanation, something of a riddle remains, though it is inclined to hint that if only our knowledge were more perfect than it is, we should see that no gulf existed and that the continuity of all phenomena whatsoever was unbroken.

Since neither matter can be identified with mind nor mind with matter directly, it remains to be sought if any such things-in-themselves could be found from which both matter and mind could be derived. To find such à common basis it is necessary to lay hold on any thing which may be so crude in its nature as to be undistinguishable from both consciousness and mass and may yet be so constituted that it holds such elements of difference in itself as can explain the growth or development of them both.

Thus the question arises whether consciousness can he analysed to still simpler constituents than itself as it appears in its full development on the foreground of the mental plane. This

is only possible if we can get at any such state when our mental states cannot properly be called conscious but which can be recognised as the beginnings from which later on these states mould themselves into consciousness. We can look for such a stage both as regards individual consciousness and also in the history of the dawn of consciousness in the light of its evolution. As a result of such an enquiry we find that in feeling we can detect such a primitive and crude stuff of consciousness. As we work downwards from higher to lower forms of life, the variety and definiteness of sense impressions both steadily diminish. We can directly observe in our own organic sensations, which seem to come nearest to the whole content of primitive or infantile experience, an almost entire absence of any assignable quale. In our sense experience generally we find the element of feeling at a maximum. Even the unity of apperception, or the comprehension as ego, does not exist in the instantaneous consciousness, for it is only in subsequent reflections upon it that it appears ; a feeling when itexists in an. for itself cannot be called “my feeling”; it is when on reflection there come up not merely faint repetitions of the feeling but, inextricably associated with it a whole set of connections with the general stream of consciousness, that we can associate the mental state with true

notions of class-concept, substance, qualities, actions, names, etc.

Again in answer to the question whether a feeling can exist by itself without forming part of a consciousness we can hold with Clifford that in lower stages of development the complexity of the organism and the nerve action insensibly diminish and the complexity of consciousness insensibly diminishes also; if we descend to the molluses, there is no reason to infer the existence of consciousness at all. There comes, therefore, a point at which one may have to infer facts out of his consciousness corresponding to them. The one way out of this difficulty is to say that consciousness is a complex of ejective facts of elementary feelings, or rather of those remoter elements which cannot even be felt but of which the simplest feelings are built up. Such elementary ejective facts go along with the action of every organism, however simple, but it is only when the material organism has reached a certain complexity of nervous structure that the comple. of ejective facts reaches that mode of complication which is called consciousness. We have therefore to admit that “ a feeling can exist by itself without forming part of a consciousness." It does not depend for its existence on the consciousness of which it may form a part, or, in other words, feelings are things in themselves.

If it is asked how, if in the beginning only feelings existed and these elementary feelings are the only things in themselves, relations between feelings come into existence, the answer to such a question will be that relations are just as fundamental as feelings. All that afterwards becomes thought is implicit not in mere feeling but in the primitive relations between feelings; out of tbe combination of elementary feelings, having at first simple relations to one another, arises all the complexity of actual consciousness. Even when the feelings are manifested in their most developed form on the plane of consciousness it is their remarkable characteristic to be devoid of any objective reference such as is implied in knowing and willing, and therefore more or less like selfsubsisting entities which have, as such, a real similarity with matter, such as cannot be found in knowing.

Apart from these considerations, which come to our mind in trying to comprehend the Sànkhya theory of the guņas, the point which attracted the notice of the Sankhya philosopher and persuaded him to think of the external world as made up of the three primary feelings, is the circumstance that the cognition of all external objects is associated with some kind of feeling or other ; this, they thought, could not be accounted for except on the theory that the

external objects were also but the modifications of some primary feelings. Thus Yoga Vārttika, commenting on Vyāsakāshya 2. 15, says :— “All the mental states as well as all kinds of things are characterised as pleasurable (sukha), painful (dūļkha), and blinding (moka); it is therefore that these gunas, such as sattva, etc., being also transformed as the external objects such as the jug, ete., produce by mutual correlations the feelings of pleasure, pain and blindness. If the objects were not specially modified in that way, there should be no reason why with the merest connection with the objects there should rise painful or pleasurable states in the mind. Itis for this reason that we hold that the modifications in the objects, which serve to determine the mental states in a painful or pleasurable way, are nothing but themselves the transformations of the elementary feeling entities of pleasure, pain, etc., for the cause must correspond with the effect that it produces; so the objects themselves are to be regarded as objectively pleasurable, painful, etc. It is important to see the force of the argument in connection with the Sankhya theory of causation which holds that the effect is but the hidden nature of the cause and the casual movement is only the revelation of the cause in the form of the effect.

Thus, looking at the problem from ail points of view, just as we find that feelings may be

regarded as the crudest and grossest substances from which the consciousness may be thought to be derived, so also from the point of view of matter, feelings may be regarded as the subtle substances from which it has derived its existence. For it is conceivable on the one hand that such a subtle stage of matter should exist in which the elements of matter shouid be devoid of all such characteristics as form, colour, hardness, ete, but shouid at the same time possess the capability of directly assuming them: it will be difficult to distinguish these subtle kinds of matter from the entities of feelings in themselves. On the other hand, it is seen that gross matter, when it rises just a little in the scale of evolution to form the lowest organism, has already begun to generate feelings. Thus the subtler state of matter seems to be akin to that of feeling, its first development as organism produces feeling and its first and instantaneous grasp by a conscious mind reveals its nature as a mere feeling. The objection that the ancients could not have such a scheme in mind, as it involves the results of the achievements of the modern evolutionists, does not affect us in the least, as we are trying to comprehend the theory as a student of the present century should do; but it is important to remomber in this connection that it was widely believed in ancient India that even the lowest

organisms, the trees, plants, etc., were possessed of feelings of pleasure and pain and that knowledge was only a late product as even the animals had only a blind something resembling knowledge.

In addition to these considerations which we may impose upon the Sàükhya from our point of view there seems to be another graver reason of a practical nature which led the Sānkhya to take the feelings as the ultimate things in themselves. The practical motive of all systematic philosophic speculation in India was deliverance from suffering. We know that the cardinal truth of the Buddhists was that every

On account of bad deeds of previous births the plants sre covered with diverso kinds of tamas ; they have inner conscicusness and have pleasures and pains— Manusamhitü, Medhātithi explains it as follows :— Though every thing is constituted of three gunas, yet tamas preponder. ates with the plants and sattva and rajas are at the lowest; on account of the preponderance of tamas due to the effect of their bad deeds in past lives they suffer mostly pains, but on aceount of the presence of some sattva qualicies they may occasionally enjoy somo pleasures algo.

The animals are described in the Viskņupurāņa as being of closed gouls und full of tamas (seivrtübnd) and (tamakpracuràh). Bhā,avata. purāņa describes them as being with knowledge and full of tamas und as discerning things they like by the smell. $ridhara quotes a scriptural passage in which it is said that the animals only know hanger and thirst. They can noither speak of things ag known nor perceive them as Such. They do not know tho past, nor do they know that which is experienced and which is not experienced.

The author of Šāstradīpikā however differs from the above view that the animals can have only instinctive tendencies, and he hold; that though the animals cannot express themselves, yet they acquire knowledge by experience and by a logical reasoning somewhat analogous to ours.

thing was full of suffering (sarvam duhkhamayam jagat). This suffering was more manifest in the knowledge of the exterior world than when we ourselves from it withdrew to the depth of our inner thought through meditation, and Yoga was simply the practical method for such a withdrawal. Now, how could the external world be the source of suffering unless it was but the suffering hypostatised and objectified? On the side of consciousness we find that it is feeling which gives all the interest to our life. Were we incapable of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, were nothing good in our eyes and nothing evil, we should be as stones, nothing could have any value for us, no event any interest, ard life would be bereft of all significance. It is only because we are capable of feeling that we are interested in ourselves, or interested in each other, or have any questions to put about life and the universe, or any reason for desiring any one event to come to pass rather than another. In short, it is feeling alone that stirs to action the whole animated world; itis the root of all ‘our experiences, of the inner as well as the outer world, and it is the sole object of the Yogin absolutely to detach himself from it; pleasure and pain have no meaning with him, for everything is but suffering to him. It is feeling, interest, which is the cause of desire that brings

a man into the changing whirlpool of events the samsara, and generates all experiences feeling therefore is the fundamental thing-initself and what we call consciousness is but its product at a certain stage of its development.

Judging from the analysis of the feelings which reveal themselves in our consciousness and taking into consideration the kinds of feeling which may be inferred from the observation of lower animals and organisms, the Sankhya decided upon three kinds of ultimate and primary feelings, pleasurable (sukha), painful (dukkha) and blinding (moka). All the logical, moral and noble emotions such as sincerity, mildness, shame, respect, forbearance, kindness, etc., or such emotions as are consequent upon knowledge, are regarded as belonging to the first class ; spite, anger and other immoral emotions to the second class ; and fear, scepticism, crookedness, etc., are said to belong to the third class. The three gunas are therefore regarded as primary feeling-substances which hold within themselves the germs of infinite differences and diversities. The emotions specified above are to be regarded as indicating in terms of developed emotions their mutual differences from one another.

In the first part of the chapter, by an analysis of knowledge we had arrived at three irreducible notions. When we enquire into the substances

of these ultimate things in themselves we call these three gunas three ultimate feeling substances or reals, the pleasurable, the painful and the blinding; but when we look at them from the side of knowledge or epistemology we call them sattva, rajas and tamas with the characteristics we have noted before. These three act and react upon one another in different proportions which determine whether one guna should become dominant or inferior in strength; but howsoever that may be there is this harmony amongst them that though they are different primary ultimates yet they combine together to produce the exterior world of reality and the inner states of experiences and through the diverse kinds of feelings produce one fiame of external reality and consciousness which is in substance a flame of feeling or rather of suffering. This harmony amongst them is maintained by the mutual correspondence of the three main functions, namely, illumination of sattva, movement of rajas and obstruction of tamas.

Itis by the functioning of these three gunas as illuminating, moving and obstructing that, the phenomenon of consciousness is produced and it is thus that we find that they are the irreducible ultimates corresponding to the three entities. The external world is also produced by a similar mutual correspondence of functioning, only

with this difference that here the tamas side of mass and obstruction has gained the ascendency, whereas on the side of consciousness, the tamas side has been extremely subordinated to sattva. The solution of the correspondence of the inner and the outer has not been attempted here on the supposition of a doubleness of faces as understood of the mind-stuff theory of Clifford, but by a double line of development from one common basis. Thus on the conscious plane we have the cognitive and conative functions developed with a preponderance of sativa and rajas respectively, ard on the side of matter we have a line of development with a gradual preponderance of tamas. The reality of the plane of consciousness is not only the same in substance with that of the plane of matter, but they both start from the same primal and fundamental studium of cosmic consciousness called Mahat only with a difference in the predominance of one or other of the constituent elements, it is therefore that the conscious plane is the same in * shining " terms as the matter plane in terms of mass. Thus it is that the correlation means nothing more than that in the development in which the cbaracter as being or shining gets ascendency it can assume in terms of sattva-predominance the form corresponding to that in the exterior world in terms of tamaspredominance or mass and. materiality.

But are the reals (guna) only three or are they infinite in number ? This enquiry decides finally that no idealistic exposition of Sankhya philosophy is at all possible, for if the reals are said to be infinite in number, then they have necessarily to be taken as super-subtle substances. A reference to Yoga- Varttika will show that there is an infinite number of reals which probably differ from one another, but which show amongst themselves three distinct types of similarities of characteristics by virtue of which they are classified under three names, namely, sattva, rajas and tamas. The reals which pass by the name of sattva are infinitesimals which have some common characteristics, such as lightness (laghutva) and shining character (prakāšakatva) by virtue of which they are called sattva. These sattva reals have many intrinsic characteristic differences between them, but we are not concerned with these, for so long as they agree with one another in laghutva, prakasakatva, ete., we call them sattva. The same sort of classification holds good with rajas and tamas. The gunas therefore are not three in number but infinite, and the names sattva, rajas and tamas are used only to denote that these reals may be divided into three distinct classes or types and that all these three kinds of gunas must be present in each combination, though in any particular combina-

tion there may be more reals of one class or kind than in any other. An explicit corroboration of this is found in Sīmānanda's Sazkhuatattvavivecana— Though the sattva reals have many properties, such as happiness (sække), complaisance (prasāda) and manifestation (prakasa), yet it is on account of the prominence of happiness (sukha) that it is said to be of the nature of happiness. So rajas also, though possessed of many properties, such as sorrow (duhkha), turbidity of mind (kālusya), movement, etc., yet on account of the prominence of sorrow is said to be of the nature of sorrow. So tamas, also, though possessed of many properties suchas blinding (moha), covering (dvarana), stunning (stambhana), etc., is yet said to be of the nature of moha. The quality of good or being is called sattva, and it serves the purusha the best since it brings piety; rajas is to be considered next since it brings attachment ; tamas is the worst for it hinders piety. The reals, sattva, etc., are innumerable; they are continually suffering transformation every moment and are similar to one another by the qualities of laghutva, etc., and dissimilar otherwise. If each of the gunas was of one kind only, then since creation takes place once with reference to many purushas, the gunas have to be regarded as absolutely all-pervasive (vibhu) ; but in that case the infinite variety of created

things and their limited character could not be explained. Again among created things some are all-pervasive like ākāša or intellect (buddhi) though most other created things are limited and finite. Each of the gunas must therefore "be regarded as a class of reals which has some elements in it that are all-pervasive and others that are infinitesimals so that the former may be regarded as contributing to the all-pervasive nature of certain productions and the latter to the finitude of others. So the reals, such as sattva, etc., are infinite in number; they are called three in number only on account of the three types of their distinguishing characteristics (vibhajakopadhi), just as the Vaiseshikas classify dravyas as nine in number. The sattva reals, however, may some be infinitesimals and others all-pervasive, for otherwise rajas cannot be designated as moving (cala).” For if all guna entities were all-pervasive, movement by rajas would be impossible.

But does this scheme of presentation serve to clear up the position? After all the windings and ramblings does it come to this that consciousness is the subtle aud spiritualised form of some substance of which the grosser form is matter? This is only a modified form

1 For the utility of acknowledging the all-pervasive cburacteristie of the guņas, the derivation of ākūša iu Yoga cosmology is to be referred tc.

of materialism which speaks of thoughts as only forms of matter. For “forms of matter” is a phrase which is for all practical purposes almost as good as “forms of substance ef which the other forms are the matter.’ We may admit that states of mind are but complexes of a substance having the same constituency as matter and are constantly smouldering away like flames;! but that does not explain the fundamental thing, the self-shining, the consciousness. Again, admitting that in the lowest stages of life we come to organisms to which we have to grant some kind of feeling or sensibility without according them any consciousness, can we say that this unconscious feeling is the same as feeling in the conscious stage ? Of course, the gradation of these crude feelings from the unconscious to the conscious plane is continuous and the similarity between the unconscious feelings and the conseious ones is very great, so great indeed that they lose themselves in one another. But this only proves that the matter-stuff can form itself into complexes that imitate intelligence to an extraordinary degree and nothing more; but the fundamental fact of intelligence remains

1 Cittasya vrttayah dīpasya šikhū

iva dravyarüpa bhaügurah avasthaparindmah mūghānishiktadrutatāmravat svasamyuktürtháküráh

trigunakaryetvat sukhaduhkhamohāšrayatayā

Santaghoramughakhya bhavanti (Yogavartiika..:...1. 4.)

unexplained as it differs from all matter-stuff and mind-stuff in that it cannot be conceived as suffering any change; it is the pure effulgence or shining and as such unexplained by the: states through which it is manifested. Moreover, even if it is said that consciousness is nothing mere than the complex made up of the simple feelings, the gunas, how should we account for the motive, the power and the order in which these are to be grouped together ; ' what is to become of the notion of the self which is continuous in all its experiences as a worldly perceiver, as the moral agent or the philosopher seeking salvation ; for whom are the experiences, the order and flow of infinite world-complexes and ultimate salvation sought for in wisdom ? Further, all the modifications of the gunas being complexes of an organic nature (sanghata) it has to be supposed that there must be some one.for whom these exist. If these alone were to exist they would indeed be purposeless. There must be souls who are to enjoy them. Of course the souls cannot have other enjoyers (bhokta) as they themselves are the enjoyers pure and sunple. l

The Sankhya and Yoga thus admit that there are numberless pureshas or souls. The soul is

Qf, Ward on Clifferd, Naturalism end Agnosticism.

of the nature of a pure perceiving entity or pure illumination as such (cf. Vijianabhikshu— drširatra na guņah kintu prakāšasvarūpam dravyam) and knowledge is not therefore a separate quality or attribute of the soul but the soul is an entity of pure knowledge. It is when the states (which are more or less of a material nature) are illuminated by the purusha that they are illuminated as conscious, It is by virtue of the image that there is a reflection of those states on the purusha and these appear as ideas or knowledge of a person. The difference between these states and the purusha is this that they, being of material stuff, are always changing, whereas the purusha is always the unchangeable light, and the fact that things are known and not known depends upon the contingency of the states being illuminated by the purusha. It cannot be held, however, that the states also might be regarded as unchangeable and of the nature of light, and that the contingency of knowledge depends upon the contingency of the external objects being reflected on them ; for the changes of mental states do not depend upon the presentation of externa! objects, as they are undergoing changes ot themselves even without any such external presentation, e.g., in the dream state, the introspection state. ‘Thus we see that it is this

t See Yogavārttika, ii. 20; and also compare Ruasell’s paper on

" Knowledge by acquaintance and Knowledge by description.”

purusha that is the perceiver. Though it is inactive in itself, yet it holds within itself the inner goal and teleology which move both the mental states as well as the external mattercomplexes. It must however be noted in this connection that though the purusha is fundamentally different in nature from the buddhi or the conscious plane (the ground of consciousness holding the states as the various moments of its changes, together with the functions of the senses and the ego), inasmuch as it is the seer and the unchangeable, yet in the aspect of shining or illumination there is a great similarity between it and the purusha. In fact, of the three primal feeling-substances or gunas the sattva is almost the same in point of shining with the purusaa and it is on this account that in the supreme predominance of sattva in the buddhi it can be reflected into the purusha which it resembles completely in its shining character. The illumination of the states is transformed into the knowledge of an abiding person by the reflection on the purusha and it is principally for the sake of such an abiding personality that the world-order moves. Hence the Buddhist position has to be renounced and a soul has to be admitted. These three gunas and the purushas are the only principles which the Sankhya admits. The Yoga however admits in addition to these the

Isvara as a regulator of the world-order by his very proximity. The place of this Isvarain the Yoga system will be described later on more elaborately and can therefore be left out for the present,

To understand the metaphysical position of the guna theory it may be useful to look at it from the point of view of a few kindred systems of thought of modern European philosophy, particularly from the aspect of * the thing in itself.” Thus, according to Kant, the mind presents to itself in thought ** neither itself nor other things but solely and alone that which is neither that what the mind is itself nor what other things are.” The faculty of cognition hovers between a problematical X of the subject and an equally problematical X of the object. The sensibility has nothing behind it and the understanding nothing before it; in a two-fold enchanters’ smoke, called space and time, rise the ghostly forms of phenomena and appearances in which nothing appears. If we assume things, Kant teaches that knowledge has not the least to do with them. Thought moves in a circle out of which there is no access to reality, in an endless series of the conditioned in which no unconditioned is to be found. But overlooking the spirit of this Kantian agnosticism there arose two distinct lines of development which grounded themselves on the certitude of their

inner experiences but arrived at conclusions which have been designated as Idealism in one case and as Realism (though not so appropriately) in the other case as that of Herbart. The teaching of Kant that thought cannot get out of itself took this shape in the hand of the Idealists that consciousness can only be explained out of consciousness and by the fact that consciousness “looks at its own action ” and creates thereby at once the real and the ideal series of experience—the objects as well their subjective knowledge. The fundamental general mode of this idealism is to be found in that triple characterisation of the mind as that which beholds itself. The reason is not only “in itself "as a simple ideal reality but also “ for itself "; it appears to itself as ** something other, alien ”; it becomes for itself an object different from the subject and this otherness is the principle of negation. The doing away, the negation, the annulment of this negation, is the synthesis of the two. Following this scheme of the “ in-itself ” and “in and for itself " Hegel developed his dialectical method by making each conception turn into its opposite: from the contradiction of the two came out however a higher conception as their synthesis which again suffered a similar fate by finding an antithesis to itself, which demanded a still higher synthesis and so on. With Hegel

therefore we find that all that is real or actual is the manifestation of the spirit or mind, and the business of metaphysics is to develop the creative self-movement of spirit as a dialectical necessily. The conceptions in which mind or spirit takes part and analyses its own content are the categories of reality, the forms of cosmic life. Philosophy has not to describe the manifold forms of reality but to comprehend them as moments of a single unitary development. The dialectical method serves * to determine the essential nature of particular phenomena by the significance which they have as members or links in the self-unfolding of Spirit.”

Taking the other point of view, namely that of so-called realism in the case of Herbart, we find that he denies the creative spontaneity of consciousness and finds it determined by and dependent in both form and content upon What is without. The supreme principle of all thought with him is that what contradicts itseļf cannot be truly real or actual. Applying thi, principle he said that our assumption of things as identical with themselves and yet mad a equal to the diversity of their qualities P attributes was wrong. Such a contradictory experience cannot but be a phenomenon ; but this phenomenon must have at its basis some. thing real which is free from all contradictions,

or in other words seeming things must have absolute * reals,’ seeming occurrences and changes a real occurrence and change. Whatever seeming there is, there is just as much proof of being. The fallacy of ordinary thought is that something simple is thought as having differences. This difficulty can be removed only by assuming a plurality of simple beings through the relation of which to one other the “illusion” of the manifold is produced in any particular object. Things in themselves exist, not one but many. There is à simple and unchangeable realas the basis of each of the simplest characters or attributes that we ascribe to the substance. Every real strives to preserve. its identity against disturbances on the part of other reals, One and the same real will therefore behave differently in maintaining itself against others. There is no real change in the real; it asserts its quality or preserves its essence against all disturbances threatening it. « Even if there were no opposition, if it existed alone, it would preserve its quality. The real is constant and unchanging in the face it presents, but various degrees of efforts are necessary for it to preserve its own calm against the different degrees of opposition of other reals. The presence and opposition of other reals do not change the nature and state of any real, but they arouse different degrees of self-

preserving activities. Space, time, motion, matter, all that appear, are not reals but objective appearances of reals due to their different kinds and degrees of self-preservative activities. The being (the reals or absolute qualities) is * absolute position.” Each of these has its own unchangeable determinations but the relation which arises between two reals is not essential to either and has not its basis in either. The Eleatic rigidity of these reals in no wise permits us to form an idea of the kind of actual relation which is held to obtain between them. The soul as a simple substance is naturally unknowable, but the ideas are the self-preservations of the soul against the disturbances by other reals. These ideas exist within the soul which simply furnishes the indifferent stage for their coexistence; they disturb each other, and the whole course of psychical life is to be explained from the reciprocal tension of ideas.

The Sāūkhya is idealistic as far as it accepts the Vedantic Brahman as pure “ jžānamaya ” as its purusha and insists on its permanent and unchangeable character as uncompromisingly as any Vedāntist or Eleatic would do. But it differs materially from the school of idealists we have referred to in that it would deny all change or process as being any part of the shining purusha. All processes and transformations as such belong to matter, and movement

involved in thought must be regarded as alien to the purusha. Their connection with the purusha only takes place by their mystic reflection on the purusha by virtue of which they appear as illuminated by it and as the experiences of a person. The truth of the dialectic method appears here only so far as all objects mental or material are regarded as the development of one mind-stuff, the three gunas in eternal conjunction. The causal movement by diverse kinds of re-groupings of the guņas serves only to actualise the manifold potentialities of the guņas (cf. Aristotle). But there is nothing here of the self-criticism of thought in the sense in which it is used by the modern idealists, and this causal movement is also almost a mechanical necessity of the gunas in accordance with a moral or ethical teleology. The main point of view which has, been emphasised in Sankhya and Yoga is that the ideal content of thought must be distinguished as being essentially different from the knowing principle or the subject. The element of unity must be absolutely distinguished from the element of variety, and itis the confusion of these two parts as together representing the nature of thought as unity in diversity, that is the cause of all mischief. Diversity and change as such belong to matter, whereas thought as pure illumination is the unchangeable subject. It is the object of

philosophy to convince its students that those are essentially different from the purusha, as they are made up of the same stuff of which matter is made.

The realism of Sinkhya consists in the fact that it does not agree with the idealist in holding either that it is only thought which exists or that the world is but the determination of thought objectified, though it holds that the world of matter is bound up with pure thought or purusha, inasmuch as all its changes are guided by an inner purpose, namely, that of bringing about the experiences of the purushas and their final Jiberation. Al! else except purusha are made up of the three guņas or reals which are in a state of eternal movement. Yoga-varttika holds that these are called gunas (cf. Sanskrit, gauna) because they are subordinate tothe purusha and because their identity is less real than that of the purusha, they being always in a state of movement. But so far as the gunas themselves are concerned, they exist as eternally as the purushas. But, in spite of this realism, the idealistic element becomes noticeable when we consider that the gunas in their noumenal character cannot be known. It is true that the modifications of the manifold

1 The word guns is not used in Saükhya and Yoga in the sense of attributes as it is used in the Nyāya and VaiSegika, but ix ueed in the sense of ultimate substances (dravya),

outside are but the modifications of these reals, and that all the affections of the exterior world upon us through the senses are also the modifications of these reals and are therefore also real; but these our affections or impressions of the exterior world are in themselves but phenomena, which do not represent correctly the real modifications of the exterior world. The exterior world is no doubt the common source of all impressions, but the sense-data that each individual receives from it depend to a gr eat extent upon the modifications which are imposed upon the original stimuli by his senses. Thus it is that what we call the exterior world of colour, sound, ete., is but the phenomenal world created by the eo-operation or conjunction of the changes in the reals of the external world and those in the senses of the individual perceiver. Phenomenal experiences cannot therefore be said to represent correctly the true state of things in the exterior world, for they have largely been modified by the elements imparted to it by our senses. From this point of view this realism of Sankhya may favourably be compared with that of Herbart or Lotze.

The reals of Sàükhya however have not much more in common with the reals of Herbart than that they are both real existents. Instead of the infinite number of Herbart's reals corres-

ponding to each and every quality of substance, we have here in Sankhya only three kinds of reals. Each one of these can show an infinite series of qualities or manifestations of a particular type according to the manner or degree in which it dominates the other two reals or is dominated by them. Each one of the guņas is taken as if it were the potential unity of an infinite series of manifestations of a particular type. The appearance of these manifestations is helped or regulated by the various degrees of domination, determined by the other two reals, so that the three gunas being each determined in the presence of the other two show their joint peculiar characters in each and every modification. The phenomena or appearances in Sànkhya however are not as phenomenal as in Herbart, for all determinations have a true reality, inasmuch asthey are the modifications of the three gunas ; space therefore has its external reality, and time also has its basis in the unity of movement of an atom through its own unit of space. Our impressions of external reality are therefore phenomenal only because some new elements have been added to the external impressions from the senses. But these additions are also real additions, and in that sense the world of ideas is not mere phenomenon or illusion in any way. In Herbart the relation is non-essential to the reais, and hence it is difficult to understand how the

reals can come into relation with one another. With the gunas however such a difficulty does not arise, for they are always in eternal relation with one another, or rather they are so intimate with one another that they are three in one, and relation is not therefore a different category but is involved and merged in their reality. What we call relation is but a mode of looking at these gunas.

Herbart’s fictitious psychological calculus of explaining all ideas as being due to the reciprocal tension of the simple essence like other simple essences is fundamentally different from the psychology of Sankhya; for the soul is here essentially different from the gunas and beyond any stress, strain, or change. Here in Sankhya we know that the difference between the mental and the material modifications of the gunas lies in this that in the former case we have a predominance of the sattva and the rajas elements, whereas in the latter it is the tamas which predominates.

The guna theory approaches the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and change so far as the gunas, and with them all substances and qualities and appearances, are in a state of eternal change; but here there is the substratum of change, the gunas, whereas in the earlier Buddhism there is apparently at least no substratum of change or permanent entity. If we

however take tbe doctrine of Šūnya in the light that the sünyais the substratum which undergoes all forms of change but is in itself pure void, we see that it approaches the guna theory only so far that, in the noumenal equipoise of the gunas in the prakrti, the gunas are absolutely colourless and absolutely as devoid of any determinations as void itself. Even then however there is the most important difference that there is no permanent soul in Buddhism, whereas it is the soul which is regarded here as the most fundamental reality.

The guna theory mainly differs fromthe Vaiseshika view in according no separate existence to the attributes, the relation, the universal, or the particular and speaking of the grosser elements as being only the modifications of the primary gunas, but it agrees with itin the recognition of the plurality of souls. But even here the essential distinction must be noted that the Vaiseshika soul is not pure knowledge or intelligence as is the Sànkhya purusha, for knowledge in the Vaiseshika system is only a quality which inheres in the substance of the soul or àtman. Time, space, and mind (manas) are regarded as separate substances in Vaiseshika, whereas in Sankhya they are regarded as evolutes or products of the combination of the guņas. These differences necessarily presuppose a difference in the theory of causation which

appears here as mere actualisation of the potential whereas according to the Vaiseshika it is the formation of a new existence.

Such is its similarity with Vedanta that we find the guna theory accepted in later days by most Vedantists. The main point in which it differs from the Vedanta is its doctrine of the multiplicity of purushas.’ With a liberated person the effect is almost the same in both systems, though Chitsukha finds fault with the Sankhya for the absence of ānanda in the purusha. The subtle point of difference with regard to the manifold lies in this that with Sānkhya the manifold continues to exist independent of the purusha quite as eternally as the purusha, whereas in the Vedanta it bas only a relative existence till salvation is attained. In the noumenal state however prakrti is hardly distinguishabie from maya as it holds within it the principle of the many and is in itself devoid of any character, and we know that the Švetāšvatara actually identified the māyā and the prakrti.

Thus we find that, according to Sankhya, there are two noumenal realities, the purusha and: the prakrti or the unity of the gunas in equipoise. All the manifold is produced out of

]t may be noted iu this connection that the Sānkhya has no nbiection to speaking of une universal Brahman in the Vedsnta fashion in the sense of a clase notion. (See Sénkhya-Sutra.)

this prakrti in conjunction with the purusha or pure intelligence. Sānkhya may thus be characterised as the union of transcendentalism in realism and realism in transcendentalism.

CHAPTER IV.

Some IMPORTANT ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN THE LIGHT OF THE GUŅA THEORY.

The problem before the Sankhya was that of explaining the diverse transformations and changes of this world cf many, as originating from some such ultimate ground as could be demonstrated as the ultimate cause. The realistic tone, which must have been very remarkable even in the case of the earliest Sankhya thinkers, made it difficult for them to agree with monistic ideas which ignored the importance of the ordinary experiences of our everyday life. The Vedanta, so long as it remained in this attitude, either in the later Vedantic Upanishads or even in the Brakmasūtra (which is more a summary of the main contents of the Upanishads than a systematic philosophical treatise), was more a theological or philosophical mysticism than philosophy proper ; for philosophy demands a consistent system of thought which can put diversified experiences on a more stable basis whence it may illuminate the problem of existence from a new angle. The more the speculator strives to lay stress on any particular part of the truth to the negligence of the importance of other necessary parts, the more

defective does this system become from the point of view of systematic philosophy. The Sankhya in its deep insight grasped the problem of philosophy, and accepted the world of change as real, and, following the Vedantic lines of thinking in its own way, argued that since these everyday realities of change and limitation are but modifications of a limited nature they necessarily presuppose an unlimited, infinite, and unqualified principle as their ground and cause. The Upanishads held that in all modifications the substratum alone was true, whereas the Sānkbya declared that in all modifications the substratum underwent change ; the modifications therefore were as much real as the substance itself and they demonstrated only how the substance revealed itself under a variety of forms. The modifications were finite and limited in quantity, character and attributes, and this only showed that they were but finite forms and determinations of a principle infinite in its nature, the prakrti.

The Sānkhya holds that the effects are not non-existent only because the ground or cause is the only thing perceivable in all changes, for it is the nature of reality to change the states of its existence and reveal itself in diverse forms. The diverse forms or effects are already in existence in the cause and the work of the conditioning factors consists only

in revealing them as different aspects of the cause gradually brought before our view in an unending series. In our ordinary experience also we find that we have a natural expectancy that some effects exist in some causes, which are not looked for in other causes. He who wants oil takes mustard as that in which it exists and not sand for he knows that there is no oil therein. If the oil did not exist in the mustard, no amount of effect would be able to get it out, for ex nihilo nihil fit, out of nothing nothing comes (nàsato vidyate bhūvo nābhāvo vidyate satah). The relation that exists between the cause and the effect is only that the latter exists in the former ; for had this not been the case, we could not have expected to get it from that. The effect, if it is non-existent, is non-existent everywhere, for negation is perfect homogeneity, and there is no reason why we should get curd from milk and not from sand ; for if the curd had been as much non-existent in the milk as in the sand it would not follow that milk should produce it rather than sand ; negation possesses no speciality or characteristic in one case which is absent in the other. If there were indeed differences in the nature of the non-existence in the milk and in the sand this would be tantamount to existence. Thus the reason why some things are produced from some

things and not from others proves that some effects are present in some causes and absent in others. Moreover if the effect had been extraneous to the cause, how could it relate itself with the cause ? The causal movement is only the effectuation or bringing into appearance of such a state or modification of it as had hitherto been concealed, either lost or hidden in the causal form or appearance.

To explain the phenomena of change we find that the appearance of bodies or things changes with the change of the relative position of the atoms amongst themselves. The change of the appearance of things and bodies only shows the change of collocation of the atoms, there being always a change of appearance in the bodies consequent on every change of the position of the atoms. The former therefore is only a manifestation of the change that takes place in the substance itself; for the appearance of a thing is only an explicit aspect of the very selfsame thing, the atoms ; thus the Bhashya says that qualities are nothing but the substance itself,—it is only the changes of the state of the substance that are noted by the manifestation of the qualities. All bodies are continually changing their constituent collocating atoms and their appearance. Therefore in the smallest particle of time or ksana, the whole universe undergoes change. Each moment or smallest particle of

time is only the manifestation of that particular change. The appearance is called the quality (dharma) and the particular arrangement of atoms or gunas which is the basis of the particular appearance is called the dharmin. The change of appearance is therefore called the dharmaparinama.

Two other aspects, which, though not intrinsically different from the change of appearance, have their own special points of view that make them remarkable. These are laksanaparinama and avasthaparinama. Taking the particular collocation of atoms in a body for review, we see that all the subsequent changes that take place in it exist only ina latent way and will be manifested in the future. All the previous changes of the collocating atoms are not lost, but.exist only in a sub-latent way in the particular collocation of atoms present before us. For the past changes are not by any means destroyed, but preserved in the peculiar and particular collocation of atoms of the present moment. For had not the past changes taken place, the present could not have been. The present was hidden in the past, just as the future is hidden within the present. It therefore only comes into being with the unfolding of the past, which therefore exists only in a sublatent form in it. It is on account of this that we see a body come

into being and die away. This birth or death, though it is really subsumed under the change of appearance, has its own special aspect on account of which it has been given a separate name laksaņapariņāma. It considers the three stages of an appearance—the unmanifested which is to exist in the future, the manifested moment of the prescnt, and the past when it has been manifested and now lost to view but conserved in all further stages of evolution. Thus when we say that a thing has not yet come into being, that it has just come into being, and that it is no longer in being, we refer to this laksanaparinima, which records the history of the thing in the future, the present and the past, which are only the three moments of the game thing according to its different characters as unmanifested, manifested, and manifested in the past but conserved. When the changes that a thing undergoes are of so remarkable a nature as to affect the constitution of the body materially we call it new or old, or say that it has suffered growth or decay, and this aspect of the change is called āvasthāpariņāma.

Thus we see that tlie dharmin or substance is that which remains common to the latent (as having passed over), the rising (the present) and the unpredicable (future) characteristic qualities of the substance,

A substance, (for example) earth, has the power of existing in the form of particles of dust, a lump, or a jug by which water may be carried. Now taking the stage of lump for review we may think of its previous stage, namely that of particles of dust, as latent, and its future stage as jug, as unpredicable. The earth, we see here, is common to all these three stages which have come into being by its own activity and consequent changes. Earth is here the common entity which remains unchanged in all these stages and so relatively constant among its changes as particles, lump and jug. This earth is therefore regarded as the dharmin, the characterised one, the jug and its stages as its dharma or qualities. The transformation of the substance looked at from the point of view of change of qualities is called dharmapariņāma ; from the point of view of temporal change as determining present, past and future it is called lakshaņapariņāma ; and from the point of view of the effect on the constitution of the thing (as growth or decay, etc.) as determined by the temporal change of lakshanapariņāma it is called avasthiparinama.

We now see that the substance has neither past nor future. The appearances or the qualities only are manifested in time by virtue of which the substance also is spoken of as varying and changing temporally, just as a

line though unchanged in itself acquires different significances according to the number of zeros that are placed on its right. The substance by various changes of quality appears as the manifold varieties of cosmic existence. There is no intrinsic difference between one thing and another, but only changes of character of one and the same thing, just as water and earth particles acquire various qualities and appear as the various juices of all fruits and herbs.

The gunas are the final or ultimate substratum of all things. They are always ina state of commotion, forming the diverse relative substances, appearances and characteristics. There cannot however result any new kind or existence, but only new attributes and with them relatively new substances.

The Sakti (power, force,) and the Saktiman (the possessor of power or force) are again as undifferentiated and identical as the quality (dharma) and the substance (dharmin) which we have just now discussed. So the prakrti and all its emanations or modifications are of the nature of substantive entities as well as of power or force. Their appearance as substantive entities and their appearance as power or force are but two aspects, and so it will be erroneous to make any real distinction between the substantive entity and its power or force. That which is

the substantive entity is the force and that which is the force is the substantive entity. Of course, for all ordinary purposes we can make some distinction but that distinction is only relatively true. Thus when we say that earth is the substantive entity and its power of transforming itself into the jug or lump as its attribute, we see that no distinction is really made between the appearance of the earth and its power of transforming itself into the jug, as this power of transforming itself into its diverse modifications always abides in the earth ; when the power is in the potential state we say that the jug is in the potential state and when it is actualised we say that the jug has been actualised. The potentiality or actuality of any state is the mere potentiality or actuality of the power which its antecedent cause has of transforming itself into it.

Coming to the other kindred questions of genus and species or of whole and part, we find that substanee is here regarded as the unity of the genus and the species, of the whole and of the parts. There is one universal genus, namely that of the three guņas, and it is these thát in collocations show themselves as the different sub-genera or sub-species in their diverse characteristic qualities. The Sankhya-Yoga holds that in our experience we notice the genus and the species as being quite undistinguished

and undifferentiated from one another in experience. The individual and the parts cannot be ignored for the genus or whole appears to be existing in them, though it must be admitted that we cannot notice any other separate whole or genus which is different from the parts or the individuals. Thus it is that the universal in the jug is its character as the atoms (paraminus) which are the colour, form and other characteristics appearing as the jug; for the colour, movement, etc., are themselves in spite of their individuality also universal substances. It is these individuals that continue to exist in spite of some modifications or changes amongst themselves, which we call the universal. It is not denied that the universal is observed in experience, but it may be asserted that all we can deduce from such an experience is that the universal or genus is the substance, and not that the universality is a quality or attribute of the substance. There is no other substance given in our experience which may be thought of as the residence or vehicle of universality and individuality. There are no hills apart from stones grouped together. Thus substance is to be taken as being of the nature of the universal and the individual together, as there is no contradiction between them. The universal is but a mode of the individual itself.

It is well to note in this connection that conglomerations are viewed from two different points of view, (1) linguistic and (2) constitutional. Thus we speak of a body, a tree, a herd, or a forest, and we speak also of “gods and men.” In the latter case language distinguishes the two parts as being separate though they together no doubt form a conglomeration. Inthe former case, however, though the trees stand apart from one another, yet the word “forest” carries the idea of a whole or conglomeration, as the idea of the parts does not arise in the mind. The forest again may be spoken of with a distinct idea of the separateness of the trees or of the parts as a forest. Thus it is that the unity as a whole, or diversity as parts, depends upon the aspect from which these are looked upon ; the same thing which appears as a whole, when it is looked at from one point of view, appears as the many of the parts from another point of view. When appreciable space-distances exist between things, such a relativity of the notions of “whole” and “parts” becomes quite intelligible but when there are no visible spacedistances (e. g., in the case of ayutasidhāvayava) between things, the group appears as one whole or undivided thing, and not as mere collection of parts. Thus the “body,” the “tree,” or the

, See Nāgeša's commentary, iii. 43. See also Vyūsa Bhashya and Tattvavaisdrad? on Yoga-Sūtra, iii, 44.

“atom” (paramāņu) are all composed of parts. But their distinct appearances not being perceptible for want of visible space-distances, they appear as indivisible wholes or units.

Thus in Yoga-sūtra, ili, 44 we find that the objects of the material world have five forms: (1) as they appear with their diverse physical characteristic qualities or attributes, (2) as things or substances forming the unity of genus and species, or as wholes or unity of parts, (8) as subtle causes, the tanmātras, (4) as the ultimates or universals of the three gunas, (5) in the teleological aspect as conducive to the experience and sakvation of souls. But in all these diverse aspects it is the three gunas which manifest themselves.

The views of Kapila and Pàtaüjala-Sànkhya are probably the same regarding the ontological problems discussed above; the views of other Indian systems on some of these problems deserve special notice in this connection, as they will aid us in comprehending the true Sankhya position with reference to other Indian systems and in forming a right estimate of the value of Sankhya speculations, Let us take the grammatical school first.

Taking for example the question. of genus and species or substance and attribute, the earliest pragmatic answer is to be found in the reconciliation offered by Patañjali (the

grammarian) in accordance with the common sense metaphysics of grammar, of the two extreme views of Vyadi and Vajapyàyana. Thus Pataiijali described substance (dravya) in one place as the visible object (cow) with all its individual peculiarities and yet finds in it a permanent universal aspect, which exists in spite of the changes that the individual may suffer. He says that one and the same word, is used to signify both the uaiversal and the individual. A substance is in one aspect an individual and in another a universal ; the two remain together, and the one cannot be had without the other. But the two have not one identical reality, for the universal rests upon the individual, so that even if the latter be destroyed, the former remains intact (tadyatha vrksasya avatūno vrkge chinne api na vinašyati). This is to be distinguished from the Nyāya view of sāmānya or genus as a special kind of substance; Patafijali would admit grammatically a universal even of the universal, which is impossible with Nyaya, for the maxim of the grammatical school is that whatever seems to have existence in our ordinary common sense experience and corresponding literary usage, must be admitted. Thus Kaiyata says—

The class-concepts “ horse " and “ cow” are different, but yet they are similar, since they are both class-concepts ; so even class-concepts

may have further class-concepts. The Nyaya view that class-concepts cannot have further class-concepts is not admitted by the grammar school which holds that categories have to be admitted whenever they have a legitimate purpose or function to fulfil, Thus in spite of such an extremist view of sāmānuya we find elsewhere that the universal and the individual lie undistinguished from each other! Coming to the subject of substance and attribute he takes the view that in common experience the attributes alone can be noticed; no other thing than these can be got in experience; but in the light of inference we can get at the notion of the thing, It is that which makes the difference between cotton and iron, fragility and hardness, or rather the mass or the materiality that is to be called the things, or that which remains constant amidst the diverse modifications or changes of qualities, the substratum of change and qualities that is to be called a thing or dravya” (Cf. Yoga-sūtra, III, 14 sdntoditavyapadesyadharmanupati dharmi.) There are other passages in which the cause and effect are regarded as being identical, Makabhashya (3, 8,

51.; 1.44. ; 4. 1. 68. &e. See also for further elaboration of the grammar school of ideas in this connection the chapter Jātisamuddeša of Vakyapadtya and Praktrnaprakaéa of Helāraja.

See Mahabhashya, 5. I. 129.

163). These examples go to show that the solutions that the grammatical school of thought proposed, did not enter into subtle metaphysical niceties ; it accepted the points of view which appealed to common sense without trying to reconcile these with a consistent metaphysical theory of a comprehensive nature.

Turning to Buddhism we find that Pandita Ašoka refutes the idea of Nyāya of the existence of a “whole” as separate and distinct from the parts but residing in them in the relation of inherence, and says that there is no separate “whole’’ apart from the individual appearances called the parts. It is theatoms which appear as spreading in space and the notion of grossness (sthūlatva) is nothing but extension in space. So it is that when the many partless ones shine in one knowledge, there comes the appearance of grossness which rises at the time of the appearance but is really non-existent, as it does not exist in any one. of them. Nothing can be argued from the fact that the intervening spaces cannot be perceived, for pure space cannot be perceived. In movement also it is always the movement of atoms that is designated as the movement of the whole. .

Regarding the nature of the universal and the individual also, contrary to the Nyaya-Vaiseshika view, Pandita Ašoka says in his Sāmānyadūshaņadikprasāritā that we always perceive the

individuals ; we have no doubt class notions but these cannot be perceived from outside, but are always generated in the inner consciousness through positive and negative experiences and then superimposed upon external objects. (axtarmütrübhinivesime bhāvābhāvobhayānubhavāhita vüsanaparipakaprabhavasyadhyastabahirvastuno

jāānākārasya dharmitayopayogat.) The supposition that the genus and the individual are given in one act of experience also does not meet with his approval, for in that case both being mixed, none of them would be visible He sums up the debate by saying that among the five fingers that appear before us he who sees the “fingerness” universal, as the sixth, will also probably see a horn upon his own head.

1 It is interesting to notice in this connection the main points of the Buddhist objections as they were taken note of by the Hindu writers. As an example reference may be made to some of the most important points from Jayunta's Nyayamarfijari :—

(1) We cannot experience class-concepts or guns universals by perception, for the essence of the notion of class-concepta consists in the assimilation of the commcs characteristics experienced in the past and in the present, and so it is altogether a mental affair.

(2) There is no mode of any such existence (vrtti) in which the guna universals may be said to reside in the individual, for it could not do so either wholly or in part; forif the claas-concept consisted in one individual wholly how could it apply to other indivi. duals ? If it consisted in part in all individuals having the same class-concept, then the olass-concept being only in part in each individual could not apply wholly to any one of them.

(3) The relation of form and substance does not hold, as also of character and the characterised.

To multiply examples from other systems is needless, as this will be enough for our purposes to show the different points of view from which these problems were looked at by different Indian systems in accordance with the peculiarities of each system.

Returning to the problem of the doctrine of the existence of the effect before the operation of cause ( satkāryavāda ) we find that the Vedāntist could not take change as reality and naturally thought that “being cannot become, for then it were only illusion. Who so lets anything come to be, lets that come to be that was already there.” ' This position is to be distinguished from the Sankhya position of satkaryavada for its special import is that all effect as such is mere illusion and imposition on the cause which alone is the unalterable reality ; it is the cause (karana) or cause which is existent, (sat) whereas all effect (kārya) as such must be taken as non-existent (asat). Plurality or change as such cannot in any way be brought into relation with the unity

(4) Nor can it be noted that both the notions are geuerated without suffering any contradiction, as no such relation ig intelligible.

(5) The notion of jāti has merely conditional subsistence (aupādhika) without any reality behind it; it exists merely from the point of view of a positivity, derived from negative processes of the exclusion of the opposites, There are no positive entities at the back of any classconcept, €. g., horse, but the class-concept horse only subsists by the exclusion of other concepts which it implies,

1 Mandukyakarika.

which is the one reality full and completely relationless within itself.

The other form which some monists hold and which seems to be an attempt at a compromise with the Sankhya view is to define the material cause as the producer of effects which are not different from itself the cause (svabhinnakāryajanakatvam). This, as the meaning signifles, meant that the cause produces the effect, but that the effect is identical, all the while, with the cause. Such a position may in some senses be compared with that of Green in his idea of ground and consequence. This position must however be distinguished from the Sankhya-Yoga position where all the modifications have the same identical reality in their nature as the gunas, yet all the modifications forming the ground of different substances are in themselves real, as much real as the gunas of which they are the modifications. It is for this reason that there is no emphasis here on the identity (abhinnatva) of the primal cause in the causal demonstrations. The effects are as true and real as the cause, and their substantial identity with the primal substratum is not the only remarkable point about them. It is thus that we say here that the effects are existent in the cause and that the causal movement only reveals or.actualises the diverse combinations of the gunas to be designated as effects. So the

main point here as distinguished from the Vedànta is to be found in the fact that the effects are to be regarded here as à mere unrolling or manifesting of states already in existence, but onlv in a potential manner. The incongruity and inexplicable character of the relation between cause and effect are solved in the conception of the movement of the substance in which the cause and effect are posited only as preceding and later stages. Here is indeed a philosophical standpoint in which the movement, the moved and the unmoved are not set against one another in opposition but are conceived in their actual and necessary form. The Naiyàyika, however, thinks of the movement as a separate entity from the unmoved but subsisting in it in an inexplicable relation of inherence. He separates the two and tries in vain to get at the Sankhya conception of abhivyakti, and finds fault with it. Thus Jayanta asks what can be the meaning of the Sankhya evolution (abhivyakti) ? 1f it means effect (kārya), then as it did not exist before, the theory of the previous existence of effects (satkāryavāda) fails. If it really existed before, then, the actions of the instrumentals or agents to bring it about become unnecessary. If it means the particular arrangement of the atoms, then so far as the existence of the atoms is concerned, there cannot be any dispute, for we also are agreed on that point. If however

evolution (abhivyakti) means appearance as knowledge, then that depends on one hand upon the subjective activities of the senses, and on the other hand (in the case of the jug) upon the lump of earth, the potter’s wheel, the stick and the agency of the potter, and it cannot be said that a thing which depends upon the collocation of so many things could exist already in the lump of earth. Moreover the effect could not exist as a mere potency, for the question whether this potency is the same as the effect or not leads to an unanswerable dilemma. The objection that if any effect comes out of non-being, we might expect the production of a non-existing effect as well like the hare’s horn, is illogical as the converse does not follow (yadasat tatkriyate iti neyam vacanavyaktirapi tu yatkriyate tadasat).

Again it is absolutely meaningless to speak of the existence of the effect as the being of the potency (the substance as the datum and the instrumentals as extraneous), for that would mean that an effect would come out of an effect ; and if the effect is already in existence there is neither production nor material cause. Experience also shows that the cause and the effect are different, it is therefore mere confusion of thought to speak of the effect as being existent in the cause.

Vijūānabhikshu brushes away these TA tions by saying that if at any change that a

substance undergoes it is to be urged that a new thing has been created, then such changes are always occurring, and consequently we are always having a succession of new things, the preceding ones being gradually destroyed one after another; and this will bring in the Buddhist doctrine of the momentariness of things.

It is indeed interesting to notice that while the Sankhya had united the cause and the effect or the part and the whole in one process of movement, the Buddhists had merely laid stress on the side of the series of succession of existence without observing anything permanent in them. Thus a Buddhist will say that he perceives only modification (a being destroyed and replaced by another) and no permanent substance which continues to subsist throughout the changes as their substratum ; he perceives only individuals and the idea of the genus, as the one universal subsisting amongst them all, is only an illusion of the mind ; he perceives only the parts and not the whole, which is merely a convenient fiction of the mind. Sānkbhya also agrees with the Buddhist that the modifications are coming into being and passing away every moment, but it asserts at the same time that these are only the appearances (dharma) and behind them is the substance (dharmi), whereas with the Buddhists it is only the appearances, the impermanent, the momentary

revelations which exist which have no other reality behind them.

Again with reference to the relation of the individual and the universal, the Sāūkhya does not say like the Buddhist that there is no universal, but asserts that in one sense the universal is identical with the individual, and in another sense the two may seem to be different ; they cannot be separated from one another like milk and water, for even when we look at the aspect of the individual, the aspect of the universal persists.

On the point of the relation of the part to the whole also Sankhya agrees with the Buddhists that the parts are the only reals but it does not agree with them in holding that the whole is merely an illusion, for if this were so, then the minute parts themselves being invisible, all knowledge would become false and illusory ; it must therefore be admitted that the whole is an attribute of the parts and fulfils its existence in each one of them; it does not depend upon them all for its existence or manifestation, i.e., it is not vyasajy avrtti, or relative mutually to all the parts like the conceptions of number such as two, three, etc.; for had it been so, then from the obstruction of any part the whole would become invisible.

The view which comes nearest to the Sankhya-Yoga doctrine on these points (namely, the

relation of the universal and particular or of the whole and the part) is that of Kumarila Bhatta as we find in Sastradipika, though attempts have been made there to refute the Sankhya doctrine which holds the world to bea product of evolution; for Kumārila”s agreement is mainly based on experiential grounds which eannot be extended beyond a certain limit as neither Kumārila nor Prabhākara would believe in the creation and dissolution of the Universe asa whole. The author of Sāstradīpikā points out that since we can say “this is a cow " the class-concept can be considered as identical with the individual. But since the class-concept is applicable to different individuals at the same time, the class-concept cannot be identified with individuals. So the class-concept is at once one with the individual and different.

The main Sinkhya conclusions may thus be summarised. First, it agrees with Buddhism that the facts of experience come into being or are revealed, change and pass away; but it differs from it in that it holds such changes to be no mere fleeting states, no mere present, past and future, no mere impermanence, but it believes that there is a permanent background, the workings or self-modifications of which are noticed as “not yet," ‘‘now " and “no longer " characters, and qualities.

Secondly, it differs from the Nyàyavaiseshika

view in that it does not regard the characters or qualities as different in nature from the substances, but as the manifestations of their modifications as appearing to our consciousness through the senses; so also other changes which lead to the distinction of cause and effect, universal and particular, or whole and part, are only relative distinctions and do not justify the Vaiseshika idea that these indicate permanent and unalterable difference in existence; for these are only relative distinctions based upon the reality of a substance which reveals them by their own constitutional or collocational modifications.

Thirdly, it agrees with Vedanta that only the substance is true reality, but it does not agree with it in holding that all movement and change are mere extraneous and illusory impositions. Change, character, diversity, and plurality are as much a reality as the substance itself, though these are involved in the nature of the substance itself and are not mere extreneous impositions of an illusory nature. The facts of experience are therefore not unreal but are modifications of the real.

CHAPTER V

Tue THEORY OF Sour.

The Carvakas and Buddhists do not believe in the existence of any permanent soul or self. All the other systems of Indian Philosophy however believe in its existence, but differ as to its nature and relations with conscious experience. To understand properly the peculiarities of the Sankhya-Yoga theory of soul, it will be to our advantage to bear in mind the criticism that all the Hindu systems make in common, of the Carvakas and the Buddhists, and then pass in review the peculiarities of the soul-doctrine in important systems. To do this I shall first examine how the Carvakas and the Buddhists try to do away with the theory of a permanent soul in the light of the criticisms offered against them by Nyāya. The peculiarities of the souldoctrine of Nyāya, the two schools of Mīmāmsā and Vedanta will then be compared and contrasted, so that we may attain a position from which it will be possible to form a correct estimate of the Sānkhya-Yoga theory of soul, as it is in itself and in relation to other Indian

doctrines.

The Lokayata school of Carvakas asserts that the body is endowed with intelligence and there

is no separate soul; life and intelligence are only by-products of the transformations of matter at a certain stage as they appear in the body of an organic being just as molasses can in certain forms cause intoxication. It cannot be argued, they say, from the feeling of “I know,” “I desire,” “I am happy,” or “Tam sorry,” that we really directly perceive such a self or soul within us, for these are mere linguistic usages, and such notions do not really signify any perceiver but merely perceptions as knowldge, desire, etc. It is easy to see that such an introspection will naturally mean that the self can at the same time be both subject and object of its cognitions. It cannot be said that in such an expression as “I know the things," the “ self ” is revealed in knowledge. as there is no distinction between this and the perception * Here is the thing," except that in the former case the knowledge of the thing is directly made the object whereas in the latter case it is the thing which is made the object of knowledge. To say that in such cases of introspection as in the self-knowledge involved in * I know myself, " the self is revealed as the seer, is all the more absurd, for the single self cannot cut itself into two, so that one part may see the other. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that in all cases of self-knowledge it is the body that is known and not a separate self. Linguistic

usages do not count for much, as we are just as accustomed to say “my body" as “my soul" Objections similar to those found against the direct perception of the self in our experiences are also to be urged against any inference of the self as the seat of knowledge, feeling and willing, and the body may equally well be designated as their seat.

The other school designated by Jayanta as the learned (susikshita) Cārvāka though ready to admit that there is a separate subject who is the perceiver in man, does not admit as to the immortality of such a self, as we have no memory of any of our past lives.

Buddhism also rejects any permanent soul, but not in the manner of the materialists of whom I have just spoken. The body as well as the soul exists only as a complex of manifold interconnected origination and decease, but neither has any existence as a self-contained substance, existing per se. Sensations, perceptions, and all those processes which make up the inner life, crowd upon one another in motley variety. In the midst of this psychical flux stands consciousness. But consciousness is not different from the perceptions, sensations, ideas, etc., which come and go, though it may in a way be said to superintend them. “We are accustomed to realise our inner life as a comprehensible factor, only when we are allowed to refer

to its changing ingredients,—every individual feeling, every distinct act of will,—to one and ever identical ego; but this mode of thinking is fundamentally opposed to Buddhism. Here as everywhere it condemns that fixity which we are prone to-give to the flowing current of incidents which is falsely interpreted as abiding substances. A seeing, a hearing, a conceiving, above all, a suffering takes place; but an existence which may be regarded as the seer, the hearer, the sufferer is not recognised.” The stream of sankhāras appearing and again vanishing admits of no “I” and no “ thou,” but only a phenomenon of the “I” and “thou” which many in their illusion think to be a manifestation of personality. It is like the flame which appears to be at rest but is yet enduring continuous self-production and self-consumption. The arguments against the existence of a permanent self are the same as against the permanence of all other things ; for applying their maxim of causal efficiency arthakriyakaritoa, the Buddhists declare all things to be momentary and revealed as a moment in the process of origination and decease. !

1 For Buddhistic arguments in favour of the dootrine of momentariness (kshaņabhaūgavāda) see Nyàyamaíijari of Jayanta and Nyāyavārttikatātparyyatīkā of Vācaspati. Ratnakīrtti's contributions in this direction through anvayavyāpti and vyatirekavyāpti are invaluable For the M&dhyamika view see Nāgārjuna's Kārikā, 18th Chapter, and Candrakīrti's commentary.

As against the Cārvākas, Nyāya argues that it does not matter whether the molecular transformation of changes (pitharapaka) or the atomic transformation of changes (pilupaka) be accepted, for in either of those views, the body, since it must suffer changes in the different stages of growth and decay, cannot be held to be the seat of knowledge, desire, etc., or the subject of an unchangeable notion of self. Intoxication cannot be compared with knowledge and the fact that food enhances the power or strength of consciousness, means nothing more than this, that food improves the physical body and: with it the power of the senses, and thus the powers of cognition are also enhanced. The senses too cannot be the self, for they are not only as material as the body but require an organiser and common perceiver and are also often contradieted by one another Neither can the mind (manas) be regarded as the seat, for itis but the organ of knowledge, desire, ete So Nyāya holds that a separate self is to be admitted as the seat of knowledge, desire, happiness, etc.

As against the Buddhists, Nyaya contends that causal efficiency (artkakriyākāritva) is not the criterion of existence but whatever appears as existent without any contradiction to experience (abadhitasadbuddhi) is to be regarded as existent. Moreover even if the maxim of causal efficiency (arthakriyakaritua) be accepted,

Nyaya holds that the momentariness of things cannot be proved. A thing suffers destruction only when it is destroyed by the operation of an extraneous agency (kārakavyāpāra). Again, the phenomena of memory and recognition, those of continuous perception and rebirth, also prove the doctrine of momentariness to be invalid. Thus the doctrine of momentariness of the Buddhists being dislodged, their theory that there is no permanent soul also falls to the ground.

As to the nature of this soul, Nyāya holds that it can neither be of the nature of pure consciousness (cit) nor an object of pratyaksha, for then it would have revealed itself even without the action of the mental organs ; again even if it could reveal itself how could it be itself its subject as well as the object. So the sou: is without any natural consciousness of itself (jada) ; and it is with the acquirement of the attribute of consciousness that it becomes conscious It can be inferred as the constant seat of its own attributes such as consciousness, etc. It is only its nature that these attributes rest on it alone and not on any other thing, just as smell is the property of earth and not of fire. This soul is eternal, for as it has no parts it cannot

t For Nyāya arguments against momentariness (Kshanabhangavada) see Nyayamafijari,

be destroyed by the dissolution of parts; as it is not an attribute it cannot be destroyed by the dissolution of any substance, and there is no ` conceivable cause by which it could be destroyed. This soul is also omnipresent, for being without any physical body it cannot be carried with the body from place to place, and yet wherever the body may be carried there is knowledge, etc., associated with it. Moreover it cannot be atomic, for, then we should not have feelings all over the body. It cannot be occupying the extent of the body, for then it would have different dimensions with different bodies; and if it could suffer such changes it would not be eternal. Soit has to be admitted that the soul is omnipresent. Souls aremany, for without this assumption the different experiences of different men as pleasure, pain, bondage, ete., could not be explained. The soul is not actually connected with any action as real mover, but its agency consists in possessing knowledge, desire, etc.; the actual action is performed therefore by the accessories such as the body and the senses. From all these considerations we find that there cannot be any objection against the eternality of the self, and this is further strengthened by the presence of instinctive fear, desire, etc., in children, which proves that they must have felt them in another birth. Prabhakara’s view agrees in general with the

Nyāya theory of soul except as to the self-luminosity of knowledge and its necessary consequences. The Nyāya holds that the soul is'to be inferred from knowledge, desire, etc., as one constant entity capable of possessing them, but Prabhakara holds that both the self as the notion of ** I° and the object are revealed in self-luminous knowledge and so there is no necessity for any inference or fur accepting the view that it is through the mind that the self is known, for then the self would become the perceiver as well as the perceived, the object and the subject are revealed in one self-revealing knowledge. The soul is the notion of “I” and as such directly given in knowledge. Kumārila differs from Prabhakara in holding that the soul must be the substratum or object of the notion of *I.'! The soul therefore according to him is known by mental perception. The nature of soul is pure consciousness (cetanā) and therefore consciousness here, is not a quality of the soul as in Prabhākara and the

Even if it is accepted that the soul is perceivable directly, yet for inferring the soul in general of other people, the inference is necessary,

It must be noted in this connection that the inference of soul is not from changing acts of knowledge to a permanent entity or from effect to cause, būt according to Nyāya the relation of substance with attributes and actions is that attributes and actiong must inhere jn substances. So cognition (jana), desire (icchā), etc., being attributes (guna) must have a permanent substratum in which they may inhere. This substratum is the self.

Nyāyavaišeshika. The souls are, however, many as in the systems of Prabhākara and Nyaya, eternal and omnipresent. The objection of Prabhākara to mental perception (manasapratyaksha) applies therefore directly against Kumarila and he rightly turns the table ‘upon Prabhakara, saying that the objection of the same thing appearing both object and subject applies to the self-luminous knowledge of Prabhākara also. The self is thus according to Kumārila “ pure intellectual energy ” (citišakti) and in the emancipated state there is no knowledge and no bliss (Gnanda) such as a Vedāntin would hold, for the soul exists in this state in its own true nature as pure power of knowledge ( jūānašakti). Rāmānuja holds that the self is a nonmaterial principle, which means that it shines by itself nd does not require the aid of knowledge for its illumination. It is of the nature of bliss (anandarupg) and exists for all time, ĉe., is eternal. It is atomic in size, and yet can feel the affections in distant parts of the body, for just as the rays of, the sun radiate to a great distance, so likewise its knowledge spreads all over the body.’ It is beyond the knowledge of the senses, changeless,

1 The simile used by the Jains in explaining the pervasion of the body by the soul is just the same though on the basis of their expression '"onugurudehapramana" they are charged with thinking the soul to be of the size of the body it occupies.

partless and a receptacle of knowledge (as contrasted with the Vedanta of the Sankara School). It is itself agent and enjoyer, though worldly actions are said to be due to the connection of the gunas. The power of this agency however is ultimately derived from God (Isvara) and the agency of the soul is realised in action only through Isvara’s will. But the soul is responsible for its actions, because ĪSvara fulfils its agency in the way in which the soul desires to act (cetanakriaprathamaprayatnam apekshya Īsvarah pravarttayati). It exists in absolute subordination to Isvara, of whose body it forms a part. Souls are infinite in number. They are associated with avidyà and desires, ete., by being associated with acit or matter. Knowledge of the self is also like it an eternal non-material substance of the nature of ānanda, but the difference between them lies only in the fact that though itself a substance (being non-material as well as endowed with movement and qualities) it is an attribute of the soul and unlike it, capable of contraction and dilatation, and of illuminating all other things though it remains dark with regard to its own nature.

The Vedanta of Sankara however holds that it is one Brahman which appears as many souls. For the sake of convenience it will be well te note here only three typical explanations offered

by the different exponents of the appearance of the one as many souls :—

(1) Reflection theory (prativimbarada). The Brahman as pure consciousness and bliss being reflected in the ajňāna (nescience) of mind (antahkarana) and its states, appear as individual souls. It is called reflection for like it, the thing reflected (Brahman) is outside, and yet is not different from the image it has projected which appears in the ajūāna (of the reflection in a mirror) As the antahkaranas are many, souls appear as many, though none have any real existence. Its characteristic as image is due to the fact that tnough like an image it appears in the mirror of antahkaranas it is not affected by the limitations of the reflector.

(2) Limitation theory (avacchedavada). The Brahman as associated with ajūāna appears as many souls on account of the plurality of the ajfána. Each soul has its own creation and it is only on the basis of similarity that there is agreement regarding the objective perceptions of the souls (pratijivam viyadád? nrapafícabhedasca).

(3) The idealistic theory of self-creation of all perceptions (drshtisrshtivdda). In this view the Brahman appears though itself unchanged through beginningless maya, as jiva, but this illusory appearance is due to ignorance

(kaunteyasya eva rādheyatvavai avikrtasya ātmanah avidyāvašat jīvabhāvah). There is thus only one soul and both the many souls and the world are merely its imaginary creations.

The reasons which all Hindu systems adduce against the Cārvāka and Buddhist schools are (1) that the notion of a self or personality as a permanent entity in all experiences cannot be adequately justified in the case of either the ever-changing body or the ever-changing flux of ideas. (2) On ethical and eschatalogical grounds, also there should be one unchanging soul responsible for all actions, experiences, sufferings and emancipation. The quarrel therefore which the Hindu systems have amongst themselves is only with regard to the nature of this soul or to the substance of its being, its knowledge, experience, etc., and connection with external nature.

The Sāūkhya-Yoga agrees with the Buddhists in holding that the citta or plane of consciousness is always in a state of change undergoing constant modifications not only when it has to relate itself to the external world but also when it is without any such relation, as in the dream state. There is of course a fundamental unity of relations amcngst the mental modifications themselves, and also between them and external nature, as they are all grounded in the three gunas, but this unity of relations and actions in

the production of a unity in the diversity of effects presupposes an intelligent being for whom they are intended (cf. their dictum of saņghātaparārthatvāt which hold that all complex groupings imply a teleology or purpose). This teleological attitude is the most important philosophical consideration which led them to postulate a permanent soul as against the Buddhists. With the Nyāya, knowledge, ete., were qualities and thus presupposed a substance in which they could inhere and their interest in refuting the Buddhists was mainly centred in establishing the existence of permanent substances. Knowledge, pleasure, pain, etc., were not qualities according to Sankhya but states or modifications of citta, or the plane of consciousness and this succession of states could not be said to know itself. It was therefore necessary that there should be a permanent intelligence to whom these might appear and thus be co-ordinated and expressed as the experience of a person for the states must be the states of a perceiver, Sànkhya-Yoga holds that there is an essential difference between this element of permanent perceiver and the general content of mental states as appears in experience. For the content of states not only assumes the forms of the external world but also suffers change at every moment. The element of the personality is however always abiding. So far as the con-

tent of experience has the form of external objects generally or any other kind of form, it is not different in essence from the objects which it copies. The perceptions therefore when looked at apart from the experience of a person are no more than mere reflections, copies, or photographs, as it were, of the gross world of matter. This gross state is at once transformed into a state of effulgence as intelligent experience as soon as it is related to the self of the personality. So far as the notion of personality is concerned it is again a mental state and as such non-intelligent and gross, and as such must be distinguished from the pure intelligence involved in it which like a light enlivens the states into intelligent experience. The essential distinction of this pure noumenal intelligence which intelligises all experience, from the mental states is, that it always remains constant and permanent in its true nature as pure intelligence (citšakti).

The Nyàya holds that our knowledge of self does not rise above the descriptive stage as being aware of something, e.g, a book, of desiring something, of feeling pleasure or pain. The self is therefore nothing more than that entity with which the awareness of the different sense data, the feelings of pleasure, pain, ete., can be associated by inference. But is this true ? Let us take the proposition “I am aware of this

awareness,” it isnot merely a judgment that some person has an awareness of an awareness but it also asserts that the person who is aware of the awareness is the person who is making the judgment. How can I assert this identity if ‘I’ can be known only by description ? In that case I am aware of this awareness and of making a judgment and I may be entitled to conclude that there is some one who is aware of the awareness and that some one is making the judgment since both awareness and judgment require persons to make them. It may be that * the person who is aware of this awareness” is an exclusive description of the person to whom it applies. But how do I know that the person thus described is the person who makes the judgment? If Iam not aware of myself, the only thing that I know about the person who makes the judgment is just the description “the person who makes this judgment." Granting that this is an exclusive description, I am still not entitled to say “I am aware of this awareness" unless I know that the two exclusive descriptions apply to the same person. If the person is known only by these descriptions or by other descriptions it is not possible to know anything of the sort. If‘I’ can be known only by description it seems impossible that I can know that I am aware of this awareness or of anything else, since the judgment “I am aware of this ”

always means that the person who knows this is also the person who makes the judgment.

If, however, [ perceive my self, there is no difficulty in justifying either the proposition “I am aware of this awareness " or * I am aware of this thing." If it is said that this means that I know the self with the two characteristics of having the awareness and of making the judgment, the answer will be that to know the ** self " to be the possessor of those two qualities, the self must be known not merely in an indifferent manner as their vehicles but as the “I,” the experiencer. The person who has the awareness is the same that passes the judgment; the volitional aspect (kartriva) and the aspect as enjoyer of experiences (dhoktrtva) go together and reveal themselves in the notion of the self and this manifestation of the self in experience at once raises it to the plane of intelligibility ; without it the awareness as such (though it might be mine) would be as intelligenceless as the direct awareness of other persons is to me. Purusha has thus to be admitted as the principle of intelligence. The Nyaya and Jaina objections that if purusha were the principle of intelligence, then all things should be directly illuminated by it, and there would be no need of the help of any organ such as the Buddhi, is groundless, for knowledge in our ordinary sense means, that a limited content should appear revealed as

the experience of a person ; it cannot therefore be supposed that pure knowledge which is without any content can be known. The knowledge that we speak of can only be of a certain content in the domain of relativity, change and limitation. So the pure intelligence though it is self-revealed and though it illumines and reveals the ordinary contents of our knowledge and feelings, is yet an entity which cannot be interpreted in terms of ordinary consciousness.

Self-consciousness can therefore be affirmed of such an entity in the sense that it is pure intelligence and yet denied in the sense that it has no self-consciousness in the ordinary sense of the term, for what we call self-consciousness is but the illumination of a content, and thus limited in its nature, and hence the result of the union of the self with the states of the plane of consciousness.

Hume went side by side with Buddhism when he supposed that our selves were nothing but bundles or collections of different perceptions which succeed one other with an inconceivable rapidity and are ina perpetual flux and movement. The fallacy of such a position lies in this that though all the contents of self, pains, pleasures, griefs, joys, sensations, etc., fall within various mental states, yet while these change, the self remains the same. The self again which was not intelligence by its own nature

THE THEORY OF SOUT, 158

and which only acquired consciousness by the ordinary processes (as in the case of Nyāya) would be in its pure and emancipated state in no way better than pure vacuity and in the ordinary state also there is no reason why knowledge. should be its peculiar gift or property.

It may now be objected from the Rāmānuja and other similar points of view that since personality involves the notions of a determiner and experiencer, it is better rather to say that the soul actually experiences and determines, the answer is that if it really experiences and determines diverse contents, it must change itself with them for if it be absolutely the same it can never determine or experience different things at different times; for that which is absolutely the same cannot itself change its relations with other things. It is for this reason that it is held that it is the things, the contents, which are modified and changed in such a way that they are all illuminated by the purusha and thus project the appearance that it is the purusha which is determining or experiencing. The purusha remains however the pure and unchangeable entity of pure intelligence which never really determines nor experiences. -

Both the Prabhākara and the Bhatta schools are guilty of the charge of self-objectification of

knowledge and of self respectively, as each has pointed out of the other. Prabhakara moreover inverts the true relation in holding that it is the knowledge which reveals the self and not that the self that reveals knowledge.

As regards the Sankara school, it holds that (1) bliss or Ananda does not mean anything more than happiness and this is always an object of knowledge; so if at the state of emancipation there is this happiness then it presupposes that there also must then be a subject who feels it and thus monism fails. It cannot be said again that it is of the nature of happiness to be identical with intelligence (cit) for these are related as object and subject and hence cannot be identified. (2) The Vedanta explains all the appearance of the world with the help of avidya, but when asked to describe its nature gives evasive answers and when further pressed says that it is illusory and has no real existence. If it is at the root of all worldly appearances, it has necessarily to be admitted that it has real existence, for, if inspite of its hand in bringing about this manifold world and diverse experiences of the world appearance, its existence could be denied, then verily the existence of anything and everything could be denied. (3) Its doctrine of the Brahman appearing as numberless souls stand refuted in all other systems of Hindu thought as it cannot explain

any of the questions relating to individual birth, death, experiences or salvation.

Thus the Sànkhya-Yoga holds that the soul is pure intelligence and that all the cognitive states of ideas, feeling, etc., are illuminated by it. (2) As against the Jains and the school of Rāmānuja, it agrees with the Naiyayikas in holding that the souls are omnipresent. (3) They are numberless, absolutely actionless, and passionless, remaining ever the same with absolutely no change. .

The most important problem in Sānkhya- Yoga philosophy is therefore the establishment of the relation of the purusha with the prakrti or the three gunas which form the substratum of the conscious plane on one side and of the objective world on the other. The difficulty lies in this that purusha in its nature as pure intelligence is absolutely unrelationable with any change, but the states in which we find it reflected are all made of the stuff of the gunas which are constantly changing. Change is as much the character of the prakrti as changelessness of the purusha; intelligence is the essence of the purusha, whereas non-intelligence is the characteristic of the prakrti. Yet it is said that all the movements of the prakrti are for the experiences and liberation of the purusha and it is held at the same time that the purusha stands always as emancipated, and cannot be the

determiner of the prakrti. How are the two to be brought together and yet held in such a state of aloofness that the purity of the purusha may remain intact ?

We know that according to Sankhya-Yoga the prakrti takes two developments, one on the mental side, another, on the side of the exterior world. The mental plane takes the copy or the reflection of the external objects and the result is the perceptions which are but the reproductions (though distorted through the senses) in the stuff of the mental material. These mental images are enlivened by the influence of the pure intelligence, the purusha. The material of both the mental plane and of the exterior world is the three gunas. Of these, sattva, which we have already described, resembles most the nature of the Purusha ; in fact it is called in the Bhojavritt the second citšakti with this difference only that its cit requires for its manifestations association with the purusha. It is through this sattva that the Sankhya-Yoga has striven to solve the vital difficulty of the system, namely that of connecting the purusha with the prakrii. The commentators have tried to understand this connection in diverse ways. Some have taken the sattva to be a second kind of intelligence, which is kindled by the influence of the purusha ; others have taken the sattva to be so translucent that intelligence is reflected in it, though there

is no real contact, while others have held that there is a real contact between the two. Let us take these views one by one. Bhoja says that just as the proximity of a magnet manifests the power of movement in a piece of iron, so by the mere proximity of the purusha, the cit which exists in a potential manner as it were in the sattva, becomes manifest and this manifestation of cit which illumines the whole vrtti or state becomes the object of purusha’s experience partly because of the closest proximity of the purusha and partly because the whole process of prakrti’s transformations is for the experiences and the liberation of the purusha. Prakrti is not conscious that it will serve the purpose of the purusha but its forward and backward transformations are called its tendencies for the services of the purushas. he prakrti naturally possesses these two tendencies though it is unconscious. When it exhausts its powers in this way with reference to a purusha it cannot again repeat the process. As both the prakrti and the purusha are omnipresent, there cannot be any actual contact or samyoga. It is the proximity and the teleology of the purusha that effects the illumination in the citta the object of the purusha’s experience so far only as it is kindled by its presence. So there is no actual reflection also; but when reflection or prativimba is spoken of in this

connection, what is meant is that as in a reflection there is the projection of a similar image so here also by the proximity of the purusha an intelligence is manifested in the sattva which is quite similar to the intelligence of the purusha.'

Vacaspati Misra however seems to hold that there is no samyoga or contact of the buddhi with the purusha but a reflection of the purusha is caught in the states of the buddhi, by virtue of which these become intelligised and transformed into consciousness. But this view is said to be open to the objection that it does not explain how the purusha can be said to be the experiencer of the conscious states of the buddhi, for its reflection in the budchi is merely the image, and there cannot be any experience (bhoga) on the basis of that image merely, as actually there is no connection of the purusha with the buddhi. The answer of Misra is that there is no contact (samyoga) between them in space or time but the * sannidhi'' or proximity here means “ yogyata" or passive capacity of being treated and by virtue of it the purusha, though it remains aloof, is yet felt to be united and identified with the buddhi, and as a result of that che states of the buddhi appear ascribed to a person. The modifications of the buddhi as states, on account of their extreme translucent character,

1 Bhojavrtti IV, 22 and II, 28.

THE THEORY OF SOUT, 159

catch the reflection of the purusha and are not only intelligised but become expressed as the experiences of a person or purusha, and it is in this way that it may be said to have been useful to the purusha. Thus it is that though the purusha remains absolutely pure and unperturbed yet it experiences the states of the prakrti.'

Vijüána Bhikshu differs from Vacaspati as to this being the Sànkhya doctrine. His objection is first, that such a yogyata or capacity on the part of the purusha by virtue of which even though it may not be in touch with the buddhi yet the states of buddhi can continue to be expressed in terms of an experiencer, will continue even in the state of emancipation ; for it is the nature of the purusha, and so the experience will continue even in the emancipated state Second, if the beginningless experience of states be said to be serving the purpose of samyoga or contact, then the assertion of the Bhashya that this seeming union is due to avidyā potency breaks down. Thirdly the objection of Vacaspati that a samyoga of the buddhi and the purusha will necessarily mean that the purusha is exposed to change is gronndless, for samyoga and change are not synonymous. ‘The ākāša has also samyoga, but it is

Tattvarvaitāradī II. 17 and I, 4

not by virtue of that called parinamin or changing. Change means the rise of new qualitics. It is the buddhi which knows or forms its states (either through the inner action of its own potencies or by copying the objective world directly) and when this is reflected in the purusha, there is the noticn of the person or the experiencer in the purusha and when the cit is reflected in the buddhi there is the knowledge as conscious state in the buddhi. The notion of the knower as “I” the expcriencer cannot be generated in the buddhi by the reflection of the cit, for the mere reflection cannot be said to be of any purpose. lt is when by the reflection of the cit, the states of buddhi become intelligised, that the purusha shines forth through their reflections as the cogniser of those states.

If the notion of cogniser had also been in the buddhi, then there would be no necessity of a separate purusha. Thus the bondage continues so long as this mutual reflection continues through the action of the prakrti ‘The cit does not become actually a part of the states of buddhi but just as by the mere presence of fire the iron becomes redhot, so by the mere proximity of purusha the mind becomes illuminated ; and it has to be assumed that this contact (samyoga) is due to the manifestation of that translucent character in the citta, the

sattva, for purusha is unchanging and could not therefore be made responsible for the connection. Thus we see that to account for the knower in knowledge the purusha has to be admitted as the pure entity which intelligises all states by reflection. The Nsiyāyikas are wrong in saying that the self is the vehicle of jūāna but Bhikshu agrees with them so far that the jūāna is no real part of the person the knower or the self, and that their unity * I know this” as a mental state is false so far as the T” js concerned. Yet this union is necessary for revelation even of the “I” as its notionina conscious state.

When we look to the Yogasūtra, we find that questions regarding prakrti and purusha purusha, the seer is spoken of as power (šaktv) as much as prakrti itself, and we see that their identity is a seeming «one. Vyasa in his Bhashya explains " ekūtmatā *' or identity as avibhāga-prāptau iva, i.e., as if they were so mixed up that no distinction could be made between them; and Paficasikha writes, *'not knowing the purusha beyond the buddhi to be different from it in nature, character, and knowledge, etc., à man has by forgetfulness the notion of self therein." Thus we see that when they are known to be separate the real nature of |

the purusha is realised. This seeming identity is again described as “ pratyayānupašya »—it illuminates the conceptual forms of thought and though different, appears as if it were identically the same as the concepts of thought.

The purusha cognises the phenomena of consciousness after they have been formed and though its nature is different from them, yet it does not appear to be in any way different from them. Vyasa in explaining this siitra says that the purusha is neither quite similar to the buddhi nor altogether different from it. For the buddhi must be said to be changeful according to the change of objects that are offered to it, and according as it knows objects or does not know them. But the purusha is not such, for it always appears as the self, howsoever the other contents or objects of knowledge may change. As the contents of knowledge belong to the buddhi and as its connection with the “I” only intelligises these into the conscious states of a person, the purusha may be said in a way to see again that which was perceived by the buddhi and thus impart consciousness by transforming its illumination into the buddhi. The buddhi suffers modifications according to the forms of the objects of cognition and thus a state of conscious cognition in the shape of “I know it" results when it becomes connected with the constant factor of

the transcendent reflection or identification of the purusha with the buddhi. Whether the process can be called a reflection is open to objection and criticism. But the Sāmkhya-Yoga rests here on its analysis of consciousness, as also on the traditional teachings of the Upanishads, that the self, as the permanent experiencer which reveals itself as the notion of “I’’ in consciousness, has an essentially different nature in its character as permanent and unchangeable, though in point of mere intelligence it highly resembles the sattva. What gives the conscious states their true character as conscious is not merely their intelligent character, but their expression in connection with a person or rather as the experiences of a person. The notion of “I” however is not the principle as a Prabhākara would say but merely the product of the unity of the self with the buddhi. The substratum which I perceive of the notion of the “I” through mental perception is not also the self as a follower of Kumārila the great Mīmāmsā philosopher might think, but the self is that element by coming in touch with which the states of buddhi become expressed as my experiences or the experiences of an “I” as the experiencer. The “I” so far as it is a vrtti or state is a modification of the buddhi, but it does not change like other contents and is an indication of the permanent self as intelligising the states.

The knowledge belongs to the self, but the states belong to the buddhi. The self is no part of buddhi, but yet as the Bhashya says it appears as a state of 'buddbi as the notion of self experiencing the cognitions and as such within them. The sattva element which predominates in buddhi is so pure and of so intelligent a character (as we have noticed many times before), that it can become as absolutely contentless as the purusha! So when the buddhi has been modified into its states, it may be said in some sense to have been intelligised, for buddhi is itself of a translucent nature, but even this state is called jada as there is no self, no knower, and the only distinction between intelligent states and material ‘states is this element of self or “I.” This modification of the translucent buddhi therefore cannot ultimately be distinguished from other material states, as the difference between the two is one of degres of manifestation of sattva and not of kind. It is when the self comes in that the distinction

1 The sūtra ‘‘ sattvapurushagoh šuddhisāmye kaivalyam '' supposes

that the buddhi can be as pure as the purusha and this state in which it reflects the purusha in its absolute purity without any other content does not materially differ from the state of oneness (kaivalya), for the next stage is only the return of the buddhi to prakrti and the ultimate escape from sufferings and experiences came about when the buddhi could no longer bind the purusha again. The only distinction is that when the buddhi is as pure as purusha, it is still a phenomenal state, whereas when it returns to the Prakrti the state is metaphysically reduced to a noumenal one.

becomes one of kind as apart from that of degree. These states of buddhi have therefore to be intelligised over again by coming in touch with the self. So our process of knowing an external object may be said to be one of double-intelligising, first by being imaged by buddhi and then again by the perception of the light of the purusha and of being transferred over to it for interpretation as its experiencer. The difference among the commentators rests therefore on the degree of translucency that they are ready to ascribe to sattva. Thus Bhoja does not feel the necessity of assuming any reflection from the purusha beyond the mere excitation of the sleeping intelligence of the sattva itself. Vācaspati thinks that such a reflection is necessary but the other reflection from the buddhi to the purusha unnecessary whereas Bhikshu required them both. The Bžāskya merely states the real analysis and is indifferent with regard to the metaphysical fictions over which the commentators quarrel.

The arguments on behalf of the existence of the purusha as summarised in the Samkhyakarika are, (1) because an assemblage of things is for the sake of another and thus there must be some other persons different from the three gunas and their modifications for which they exist ; (2) because there must be simple experiencers different from the complex assemblage of the

guņas; (3) because there must be a superintending power; (4) because of the existence of active exertion for the sake of salvation or emancipation.' The first is teleological, as has already been noticed? ‘The second is that the prakrti being a composite of the three gunas cannot itself be the seer. So the seer must be taken as an unchangeable actionless entity, pure intelligence. "The third is that there must be a supreme background of pure intelligence, standing on which allour experiences may be co-ordinated and expressed. This background is the pure actionless intelligence, the purusha, by a reflection from which all our mental states are intelligised* The fourth is that as the prakrti is non-intelligent there must be one who

enjoys the pains and pleasures and experiences the states.

! Sāņkhya-Kārikā, 17.

2 We have already noticed that Bhoja differs on this point, and says that it only excites cit in the sattva as movement in the iron by the magnet. Bhikshu however takes the simile of cittamayaskāntamanikalpam sannidhimātropakāri in the sense that as the magnet draws out an iron nail stuck in the hand and thus benefits the man, so the citta also brings the objects of experience to the purusha and brings about its experience.

3 Davies commits a mistake in his translation of the Sāmkhyu Kārikā in interpreting the simile ‘‘yatha rathādayak yantrüdibhih" to moan that the purusha must have some activity like the charioteer, for the comparison holdg only as far that the chariot can take a particular

course only when there is a particular purpose of the chariotcer to perform,

The next important point is the multiplicity of the buddhis. The Kārikā says that “ from the separate allotment of birth, death, and the organs of knowledge, action, etc., from the diversity of occupations at the same time and also from the different conditions of the three modes, it is proved that there is a plurality of souls. Pātaiijali, though he does not infer in this way the plurality of the purushas, yet holds this view, as we find in the sūtra “ krtārtham prati nashtamapi anashtam tadanyasādhāraņatvāt.”

If the different selves be the reflections upon different buddhis from one purusha, or atman as in the Vedanta then the notions of self or personality would be false. For then the only true being would be the being of one purusha. So the knower being false the known also becomes false ; the knower and the known having vanished, everything is reduced to that which we can in no way conceive, viz., the Brahman. It may be argued that according to the Sāmkhya philosophy also, the knower is false, for the pure purusha as such is not in any way connected with the prakrti. But even then it must be observed that the Samkhya- Yoga view does not hold that the knower is false, but analyses the nature of the ego, and says that it is the seeming unity of buddhi and the purusha, both of which are reals in the strictest sense of the terms. Purusha is a real

knower there. Its seeing is the reflection of buddhi on it and simultaneously with it the modification of ego comes in the buddhi and this ego then appears as the person who identifies his experiences as his. Purusha thus always remains the real knower. The knower, the ego and the knowable, none of them are false in the Samkhya-Yoga system in any one of the stages preceding emancipation, kaivalya. Savikara’s Vedanta has to admit the modifications of the māyā but has at the same time to hold it as unreal. The Vedanta says that the maya is as beginningless as the prakrti and as * sānta ” (ending) as the buddhi of the Sankhya with reference to the released person. But according to the Vedanta the notion of the self as the experiencer is only false knowledge—an illusion imposed upon the formless Brahman as many. The maya according to Sankara can neither be said to exist nor to non-exist. It is anirvācya, é.e., can never be described or defined. Such an unknown and unknowable maya by its reflection upon the Brahman causes the many of the world. But according to the Samkhya doctrine, the prakrti is as real as the purusha itself. They are the two irreducible metaphysical remainders, the purusha and the prakrti. Their connection is beginningless. But the connection is not unreal in the Vedanta sense of the term. We see that according to the Vedanta system, all notions

of ego, or personality, are false and are originated by the illusive action of the maya, so that when they ultimately vanish, there are no other remainders except the Brahman. But this is not the case with Samkhya, for as the purusha is the real seer, its cognitions cannot be dismissed as unreal, and so the purushas or the knowers as they appear to us must he held to be real so far as they are not identified with the contents of knowledge. As the prakrti is not the maya of the Vedantists the nature of whose influence over the spiritual principle cannot be determined, we cannot account for the plurality of the purushas by supposing that one purusha is being reflected into many buddhis and generating the many egoes. For in that case it will be difficult to explain the plurality of their appearances in the buddhis. For if there be one spiritual principle, how should we account for the supposed plurality of the buddhis? For to serve the supposed one purusha we should rather expect to find one buddhi and not many, and this will only mean that there will be only one ego, his experience and release. Supposing for argument's sake that there are many buddhis and one purusha, which being reflected into them is the cause of the plurality of selves, then also we cannot see how the prakrti is moving, for the experience and release of one purusha, it

would rather appear to be moved for the sake of the experience and release of the reflected or unreal self. For the purusha is not finally released with the release of any number of particular individual selves. For it may be released with reference to one individual but will remain bound in connection with others. So the prakrti would not reaily be moved in this suppositional case for the sake of the purusha, but only for the sake of the reflected self. If we suppose that it takes place in such a way as to avoid the said difficulties, then with the release of one purusha all purushas must be released. For on the supposed theory there would not really be many different purushas, but one purusba, which had appeared as many, so that with its release all the other so-called purushas must be released. On the experience, birth, emancipation, or death of one purusha we should expect the same for all purushas.

So we see that from the position in which Kapila and Pataūjali were standing, this plurality of the purushas was the most consistent thing that they could think of. Any compromise with the Vedanta doctrine here would have greatly changed the philosophical aspect and value of the Samkhya philosophy. The purushas are nothing but pure intelligences; though many they are regarded as all-pervading. But there is another objection that number is a con-

ception of the phenomenal mind, how then can it be applied to the purushas which are said to be many? But that difficulty remains unabated even though we should regard the purusha as one. When we go into the domain of metaphysics, and try to represent the reality with the symbols of our phenomenal conceptions, we have really to commit almost a violence to it.

But this must be allowed in all our attempts to philosophise or to express that pure inexpressible, free illumination which exists in and for itself beyond the range of any mediation by the concepts or images of our mind in terms of our

conceptions.!

! Bhikshu bowever thinks that thedeterminations of number or content does notin any way make the thing paringmin or changeable,

Yogavārtika. II. 17.

CHAPTER VI.

We have seen that in order that a connection

should be established between the prakrti and the purusha the sattva type of Reals must completely dominate the other two constituents — the rajas and tamas. But the prakrti is acknowledged to be the state in which these three gunas are in such a state of equipoise that all their individual characteristics are ina state of absolute potentiality. The gunas are of course in motion even then, but in this movement they are in a kind of inner oscillation against one another so that the movement is confined to the unified whole and only serves to maintain equilibrium and stability. This kind of movement which serves to maintain the state of equipoise is called sadréa pariņāma as distinguished from that which breaks the equipoise and sets the three gunas rolling on in the road of development, called the visadréa.partnama.

We must assume (phalabalat kalpyah) that the first step in the development is a state of sattva predominance, for otherwise it is difficult to explain the connection of the three gunas with the purushas in the earliest stage. If the connection with the purusha is not admitted

as the initial state, then such a transformation, being out of touch with the purusha, would be meaningless and the general teleological attitude that the developments of prakrti are for the experience of the purushas has to be sacrificed.

But the question is how and why the prakrti should of its own accord change its type of inner movement in a state of equipoise, so as to accept the other movement which produced the transformations. Prakrti is non-intelligent and it cannot have any desire of its own to follow any particular course and change its own movement of itself. The difficulty is enhanced when we consider that the Sāmkhya-Yoga in common with other Indian systems believed in the doctrine of dissolution—a state in which the world returns back into the original state in the prakrti and again comes forth after a time as it existed before, through gradual transformations. The connection of buddhi with purusha cannot therefore be regarded as beginningless or anādi as it is taking place anew at each new creation after dissolution, and is broken up again at the time of every new dissolution (pralaya). Thus the question arises as to how or why the prakrti should disturb its original equilibrium in order to form the first modification as represented by a state of predominance of the sattva? Why after it is

once cut off from connection with any particular purusha should the buddhi again strive to find him and again become connected? If it bea matter of accident, then the buddhi might as well accidentally entrammel an emancipated purusha. Moreover the emancipation also would be no emancipation, for even after emancipation the buddhi might equally well again entrammel purusha.

This question brings us to the difference ‘between the state of dissolution and the state of emancipation. The state of dissolution, pralaya (apīti), is like the state of deep sleep for the purushas, for just as when we go to sleep we lose all consciousness, feelings and experiences of the awakened state, but get them back again when the sleep is broken, so also in the pralaya, the purushas remain for a time in themselves, only to be again associated with old experiences at the time of the new creation. Pralaya is not a state of emancipation but almost a state of samsara. Prakrti has two movements, forward (anuloma) and backward (pratiloma). It is then the karmas of all purushas which come to such a state of harmony that they by their united force demand a state of temporary cessation from the bonds of prakrti and the prakrti takes its backward movement and retraces the stages through which it developed. The state of pralaya is also a state which has been as much

earned as samsāra by the purushas owing to their karmas or deeds. We have remarked in the last chapter that the purusha is pure intelligence without any movement of any kind; knowledge, feelings, desires, actions all belong to the prakrti; so all karmas also belong to the prakrti and there cannot be any karma at all in the true sense for the purusha. But as we have said, the purusha experiences and takes the experiences as his own, on account of the reflection of the buddhi in the purusha, or merely owing to proximity. It is this false identification and false knowledge that constitutes the ignorance of the purusha. The prakrti is impure and changing and it is when the purusha identifies this prakrti with himself as pure and unchanging that the samsàra begins. It is this wrong or false knowledge, this taking that for ihe self what is not the self, that is called ignorance (avidya), and emancipation only comes when avidyā is destroyed by the rise of a pure state of modification in the buddhi, which closely resembles the pure purusha (sattvapurushayoh šuddhisāmye kaivalyam). When such a state comes, the purusha experiences its true state through the states of buddhi which shows to it that all the modifications of the prakrti, the objective physical states, as well as the mental states do not belong to it, and the result is that the buddhi returns back to the prakrti once for

all and cannot again serve to bind that purusha ; and like a dancing girl, the prakrti retires from the stage when its performance is over.’

There is however a technical difference between the Samkhya and the Yoga avidya, for while the Yoga holds that it is a positive knowledge opposed to the right knowledge, the Samkhya takes it to be a mere non-distinction (aviveka) between the nature of the purusha and that of the prakrti and calls this the avidya, cause of the samsàra (anyathakhyati), But without entering into details as to the significance of this difference we see that from the Yoga point of view it is the taking of the buddhi as the purusba, that is the cause of the bondage of the purusha. This avid ā however exists in the buddhi and manifests itself in diverse ways in the diverse modifications of the buddhi. At the time of dissolution when everything returns to the potential state, this also as a mere potential tendency returns back to the prakrti. When the time of new creation comes, the transcendental influence of the purusha acts, and Isvara removes the bayrier of the prakrti in accordance with the potency of the avidyās of the buddhis which had returned back into the prakrti. The barriers being removed the prakrti by the transcendental influence of the purushas acting like a magnet, moves on for the realisation of the experiences

khyakātikā 69.61,

of the purushas. These potential avidya tendencies (avidyā vīja) serve to bring the peculiar modifications suited to the realisation of their, potency into actuality and to show them again to their respective purushas, as their separate buddhis. These buddhis are but inherent parts of the stuff of consciousness called the mahat tattva, for at the time of the retirement of these avidyās into the prakrti, their potencies had in them the peculiarities which were inherent in them by being in association from beginning - less time with the particular purushas. Sankhya finds a difficulty here, for the theory of nondistinction (aviveka) has no positive content in the avidya of Yoga. For non-distinction can only take place so long as the buddhi and the purusha are present and it cannot be said to exist in the prakrti when there is no buddhi ; consequently, it is difficult to discover the agent which could modify the prakrti as the buddhi of a particular purusha in the Samkhya system. Bhikshu is therefore forced to admit that this aviveka is not a mere negative phenomenon of non-distinction, but has a positive stuff of existence or potency which resides in the buddhi and serve the same purpose as the Yoga avidyā. Moreover the Sāmkhya does not think that the interposition of an Isvara is necessary for removing the barriers of the prakrti ; though non-intelligent the prakrti by its

own inherent teleology under the magnet-like influence of the purushas, can bring about the order of development necessary and suitable for the experience of the respective purushas. Considering the different kinds of evolutes that come out from the prakrti, we find that these are classified as the aviseshas and the viseshas. The former (slightly modified evolutes) are those which being modifications or products themselves are capable of originating other produets like themselves. The viseshas (thoroughly modified evolutes) are themselves the products of some causes but cannot themselves be the cause of the origination of other existence like themselves. Thus the five tanmātras and asmitā- mātra (ahamkara) are called the six aviseshas ; the eleven senses and the atoms of the five mahābhūtas are called the višesha, Mahat itself, called also sattāmātra, is properly speaking an avisesha, for it has been produced from the prakrti and is the mother of all other avišeshas, but still as it has got its special name linga, it is not generally included under the aviseshas. The production of these aviseshas and the viseshas are called tattvāntarapariņāma, as distinguished

from the changes that take place among the višeshas themselves. Thus for example when the tanmātras are produced from ahamkāra, the state of being, involved in the tanmātras, is al-

together different from the state of being of

ahamkara. Itis not merely a mere change of quality but a change of existence or state of being. Thus though the tanmatras are derived from mahat through ahamkāra, the traces of ahamkara cannot be easily found in them. This derivation is not such that the ahamkara remains principally unchanged and there is only a change of quality of the ahamkara, but it is a different existence altogether, and has properties which differ widely from that of ahamkara. So itis tativantaraparinama, i.c. evolution of the different categories of existence. The evolution of the senses and the five gross elements cannot be of this nature, for they are the viseshas which have been too much specialised to allow the evolution of any other substance of a grade of existence different from themselves. With them there is an end of all emanations and the changes or modifications that they suffer are brought under the dharma, lakshaņa and avasthā-parinama. Thus mahat, ahamkāra and the five tanmātras are themselves emanations as well as the source of other emanations. The mahat has been called the linga (sign or ground of influence) as it is the basis from which the existence of the prakrti and purusha can be inferred. Prakrti from which no other primal state is inferrible is called the alinga, or that which is not a sign for the existence of any other primal and more unspecialised state. In

one sense all the emanations can with justice be called the lingas or states of existence standing as the sign, by which the causes from which they have emanated can be directly inferred. Thus the five gross elements may be called linga of the tanmātras, and they again of the ego (ahamkāra) and that again of the mahat, for the unspecialised ones are inferred from their specialised modifications. But this technical name linga is reserved for the mahat from which the alinga prakrti can be inferred Prakrti is the eternal state which is not an emanation itself but the basis and source of all other emanations.

Thus the first stage in the onward course of the development of prakrti is the mahat which comprises the knowable, the empirical universe, cosmic matter or stuff of consciousness, the intelligible essence of the cosmos evolved by differentiation and integration within the formless, characterless, inconceivable prakrti. The relation of this stage to the individual buddhis is that they are only the parts of this universal, first great stage of being. There is however according to Samkhya- Yoga no ultimate difference between a whole and its parts, but yet it is to be understood that if the creation had been from the individual buddhis then each person would have his own separate creation and there would be no stability of the objective

world as the common field of experience for all persons. It is probable that such a view was held by the primary (maulika) Samkhya school mentioned by Gunaratna, who for the sake of consistency held that there were separate prakrtis for each individual. The reduction of the many prakrtis to one in the Uttara Sāmkhya school naturally necessitated the joining together of the buddhis as one tattva which in its aspect as whole was the cause of the cosmic world, and as individual parts of the separate buddhis at the disposal of each purusha, the cause of his experiences.

This conseiousness-stuif is described as * sattāmātra "—having no other determination than the pure being, and it is this pure being, which is at once the one and the same mindstuff and the matter-stuff. It is a state of pure sattva where the rajas and the tamas elements are extremely subordinated. The confusion in understanding the system comes in when according to popular conception the buddhi is thought of as being of the nature of individual intelligence or idea, and as a result of that the world is thought of as having sprung from individual ideas, ego-hood or ego. It is therefore to be pointed out again that the buddhitattva is the universal consciousness-stuff of matter from which on one side the mental and on the other the physical take their origin.

182 YOC 4 PHILOSOPHY

The next stage of development from the buddhitattva is a non-individuated indeterminate stuff which bifurcates into two series, the subject experience and the object experience. It comprises on the one hand the indeterminate unity of apperception or the empirical ego, as the co-ordinating principle of the subject series (asmitā) and on the other hand the indeterminate material potencies, the subtile vehicles of potential energy (sukshmabhuta tanmātra), the ultimate subtile constituents of the object-series of the external world. The genesis of the bhū- tas from the tanmatras and the tanmātras from the ahamkara (ego) ahd the ahamkara (ego) from the buddhitattva has sometimes misled some scholars to suppose that according to the Sankhya philosophy matter has been derived from thoughts and ideas. Thus Mr. J. C. Chatterjee says in the introduction of his Hindu Realism-—“ There has been much confusion in the West as to the exact nature of this standard. It derives the material from the mental and the psychical, that is to say from things which are of the nature of thoughts, ideas and feelings. But in spite of this fact Prof. Garbe has yet taken it to be a form of materialism ; so much so that he has seen no place for psychology in this standard and has substituted a physiology in its stead. This is indeed strange not only because it is absolutely against the universal

tradition of the Hindus, but also because it is absurd to call a system of philosophy materialistic which derives matter from thoughts and ideas.” From the description of the genesis as generally found in the Sankhya treatises such an idealistic explanation may apparently appear to be justifiable at first sight. But if we look at it in connection with the most important passage on the subject in the Yyūsa Bhüshya— * lingamātram alingasya pratyasannam tatra tatsamsrshtam vivicyate kramanativrtteh, etc.,” the whole system assumes such a position that it can neither be called altogether materialistic nor idealistic in the ordinary sense of the terms. For here it is said that the separation, evolution or determination of mahat as such takes place in such a way that it remains itself integrated with the prakrti all the while. Mahat is therefore not posited in opposition to the prakrti as its differentiated evolute, but what we find here is rather differentiation in integration. Mahat is no doubt differentiated from prakrti, but is at the same time integrated with it (samsrshta vivicyante). The course of evolution here described points out that in each stage, it is the prakrti itself which becomes more and more differentiated, determinate and coherent. The evolution of mahat means that the absolute homogeneity of the prakrti being negated and broken, there is the predominance of the sattva

which justifies its christening with the new name mahat, sattva, linga, or sattāmātra. This differentiation, however marked it may appear, cannot be thought of differently from the aspect of its integration with prakrti. As Dr. Seal points out “increasing differentiation goes on hand in hand with increasing integration within the évolving whole, and by this double process, what was an incoherent, indeterminate homogeneous whole becomes coherent, heterogeneous and determinate.” Mahat can never be regarded as a product of prakrti outside of it but it is the prakrti which has been differentiated within itself in order to be more integrated within itself ; there is viveka, differentiation in samsrshti or integration. Integrated with the mahat we find that the ahamkāra and the five tanmātras are differentiated, in a like manner. It is said no doubt that the five tanmātras are evolved from the ego or ahamkara ; but this evolution cannot be regarded as being of the same kind as the evolution of the bhitas from the tanmatras. With the evolution of the stage of mahat, there is an oscillation consequent upon the liberation of rajas, which takes three different courses according to the predominance of sattva, rajas or tamas. The transformation which mahat undergoes by this liberation of rajas gives at one moment a shake to sattva and tamas and asserts its own predominance, and

thus the differentiation which is the product of this liberation of rajas, though associated with integration, represents the root of the development of this stage in three distinct directions. Thus according to these three phases, the ego is called sattvika, rajasika and tamasika. These different phases represent the disturbance caused in the three constituent entities or gunas of mahat which will lead the ego to develop in three distinct directions. The ego however in spite of its differentiation from mahat is however integrated with it all the while, for it is mahat itself which by an element of differentiation within itself has become more determinate and coherent in the form of ego and has thus become integrated with itself in a new form. But it is said that the five tanmatras together with the ego are evolved from the mahat—“tatha shadavišeshā lingamatre samsrshta vivicyante pariņāmakramaniyamāt.”' To understand this passage clearly we must remember that the tanmatras are generated with successive accretions from the bhūtādi (tāmasa ahamkara) ; thus from bhūtādi the rudiment matter by the action of rajas, the šabdatanmātra or sound potential being generated, there is an accretion of bhūtādi, and by the action of rajas, the touch potential is produced and so on; each new tanmātra is

Vydsa-bhashya, II, 19.

generated at each successive accretion. We must also remember that though bhitadi or the tamas side of ahamkāra is regarded as being one with the conception of the ego or ahamkāra, it being a preponderance of tamas is essentially different in nature from the sattva side of ahamkāra. Its inclusion in ahamkāra with the other two phases is due to the fact that all the three of them are associated and taken up in the very first moment of the oscillatory movement in the mahat. The successive accretions of tanmatras for the formation of the tanmātras are made from the mahat through the bhūtādi ; or rather the bhūtādi represents the tamas side of mahat which is in a state of activity by the inherent rajas for the formation of the tanmatras. Bhutadi is the tamas or rudiment matter, mass, just when we conceive it to be unmoved by rajas for the formation of the tanmātras by successive collocations of gradual accretions and their definite combinations. It is the transitional state through which differentiations and determinations of tamas take place with the help of rajas in the very body of the mahat with which they are integrated. The being of these determinations and differentiations cannot be conceived in "any way as being outside of mahat.!

This interpretation is based on Dr. Beal's interpretation of the

evolution of Sāhkhya categories in hia “ Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus,”

In the production of the atoms however from the tanmātras the differentiation and integration take place in the tanmātras and not in the mahat. Those tattvas or categories, the genesis of which depends directly upon the differentiation and integration of the mahat are classed as aviseshas. Though the tanmatras are derived from ahamkara yet the very fact that the basis of their originating collocations lies directly in the mahat makes an idealistic explanation of the Pataijala-Sankhya doctrine an impossibility. The ahamkara also, it should be remembered, is not a mere idea of “ I" or mine “as is sometimes understood, for it is also a substance, an egostuff. Thus Bhikshu says, ahamküra$ca abhimānavrttikam antahkaranadravyam.

The confusion that has arisen on this point is, I imagine, due to the confusion which was probably caused owing to the transition of the idealistic school of the Maulika Sankhya to the Uttara Sāūkhya. For the idealistic explanation of deriving the tanmatras purely from the ego could well have been defendéd if the ego of any individual person created his own matter, and if the matter and the prakrti vanished altogether at his emancipation ; but here in the Uttara Sāmkhya, with the world as one common reality and ground of objective experience for all persons, such an explanation becomes wholly untenable. But the divergence

is due, as I have just pointed out, to the difference of view which naturally arose at the time of the modification of the idealistic Sankhya to the realistic Sankhya. Here is the lacuna of an imperfect modification. But that the Yoga view, as I have explained, was also a genuine Sankhya doctrine is suggested by the inconsistency pointed out by Sankara in his refutation of the Sankhya doctrine “ tatha kvaci mahatastanmatramupadisanti |^ kvacidahamkarat.” Vācaspati being a Vedāntist himself seems to be inclined to explain the genesis from an idealistic point of view, which could certainly be traced in it owing to the original idealistic form ofthe school from which the realistic one grew up. Thus Vācaspati says, * I am, mine are the objects, no one but I myself am entitied to doit; this is the abhimana and its functioning is the ahamkara; and feeding on this the buddhi decides or posits itself for the creation in the two series, and hence the twofold creation—the subject series and the object series." '

The bearing of this doctrine on Yoga ethics and psychology will be dealt with later on.

The three stages of bhūtādi, tanmātras and the atoms have thus been described by Dr. B. N. Seal. ‘The ultimate condition of matter is a question of the profoundest interest in the

1 Vācespati's commentary on Sāmkhya-kārikā, 24,

Sāmkhya-Pātaiijala system. These stages clearly stand out in the genesis of matter: (1) the original infinite units of mass or inertia absolutely homogeneous and ubiquitous on which energy does work, when the original equilibrium comes to an end (dŽūtādt, tāmasākamkāra) ; (2) the infra-atomic unit potentials, charged with different kinds of energy, which results from the action of energy on the original units of mass (tanmātra) ; and (3) the five different classes of atoms, the minutest divisions of which gross matter is capable, but which are themselves complex tanmātric systems. The first stadium Bhūtādi is absolutely homogeneous and absolutely inert, being devoid of all physical and chemical characters (rupadibhih asamyutam) except quantum or mass (paricchinnatva parimüma) ; and this admits neither of addition nor of subtraction, can neither be created nor destroyed. The second stadium tanmatra represents subtile matter, vibrating, impingent, radiant, instinct with potential energy. These potentials arise from the unequal aggregation of the original mass units in different proportions and collocations with an unequal distribution of the original energy (rajas)—* tanmā- trarūpādeh kim kāraņam iti cet sa kāraņadravyāņām nyūnādhikabhāvena anyonyam pratisamyogavisesha eva svajatiyopashtambhadina vrddhihrāsādikam ca yuktam.” The tanmātras

possess something more than quantum of mass and energy. They possess physical characters, some of them penetrability (avakāšadāna). others powers of impact, others radiant heat, others again capability of viscous and cohesive attraction. In intimate relation to these physical characters they also possess the potentials of the energies represented by sound, touch, colour, taste and smell, but being subtile matter they are devoid of the peculiar forms (višesha) which these potentials assume in particles of gross matter, like the atoms and their aggregates. In other words the potentials lodged in subtile matter must undergo peculiar transformations by new groupings and collocations to be classed among sensory stimuli, gross matter being supposed to be matter endowed with properties of the class of sensory stimuli, though in the minutest particles thereof, the sensory stimuli may be infra-sensible (atindriya but not anudbhūta : “ tasmin tasmimstu tanmātrāh te ca avišeshiņah te ca padārthāh šāntaghoramūdhākhyaih éthülagatasabdadivi&esha- šūnyā ekarūpatvāt, tatha ca šāntādivišeshašūnyasabdādimattvameva bhutanim ^ éabdaditanmatratvam.” '

“The tanmātras then are infra-atomic particles charged with specific potential energies ; first, the potential of the sound stimulus is

1 The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus, p. 25.

lodged in one class of particles, tanmātras, which possess the physical energy of vibration (parispanda) and serve to periorm the radicle of the ether atom (ākāša-paramāņu) ; then the potential of the tactile stimulus is lodged in another class of tanmatras, particles which possess the physical energy of impact or mechanical pressure, in addition to that of vibration, and serve to form the radicle of the gas atom (vāyu paramāņu) ; next the potential of the colour stimulus is lodged in a third class of tanmātras, particles which are charged with the energy of radiant heat and light in addition to those of impact and vibration, and serve to form the nucleus of the light and heat corpuscles: then the potential of the taste stimulus is lodged in other tanmatras particles which possess the energy of viscous attraction in addition to those of heat, impact, and vibration, and which afterwards develop into the atom of water, and lastly the potential of the smell stimulus is lodged in a further class of tanmatras, particles which are charged with the energy of cohesive attraction in addition to those of viscous attraction, heat, impact and vibration and which serve to form the radicle of the earth-atom.

A very wide divergence of views is however found about the genesis of the tanmātras ; thus according to Visknupurana bhūtādi in conjunction with mahat, the sound potential,

and this in conjunction with bhūtādi produced the ākāša paramāņu. This ākāša paramāņu in conjunction with bhūtādi produces the touch potential, and that in conjunction with bhūtādi produces the vayu atom. Parāšara again says that the šabdatanmātra is produced from bhū- tādi; and from the šabdatanmātra is produced the sparsatanmatra and from it the rasatanmātra and so on. From šabdatanmātra as centre surrounded by bhūtādi the ākāša paramanu is formed ; from šabdatanmātra as centre surrounded by sparšatanmātra and the akasa anu, the vayu paramāņu is generated and so on. According to Yogavarttika on Vydsabhashya however we find that it is the bhūtādi or the tāmasa ahamkāra, the rudiment mass which being acted on by the rajas (or rājasa ahamkāra) produces the sound potential or vibration potential. This subtle sound potential with a further accretion from bhūtādi generates the touch potential (impact potential) which is impingent and oscillating. This touch potential with a further accretion from bhütàdi generates the rūpatanmātra or the light-heat-potential From this again in a similar manner comes the tastepotential and from that again in a similar manner with a further accretion the smellpotential.

Coming to the production of atoms we find that the sound potential forms the ākāša

paramāņu with an accretion from the bhūtādi. The touch potential combines with the sound potential to produce the Vayu atom. The lightheat potentials combine with the two previous tanmatras of touch and sound and produce the tejas atom. Thus in the same way by the combination of the first three tanmātras, the ap atom and of the first four tanmātras with kshiti tanmātra, the earth atom is generated.

The ākāša atom possesses penetrability, the vāyu atom impact, the tejas atom heat and light, the ap atom viscous attraction and the earth atom cohesive attraction.’

There is a characteristic difference between the tanmatras and their respective paramāņus, such that though the former are sufficiently modified to be classed as kshiti, ap, tejas, marut, and vayu, yet they are not in themselves sensible, but are rather the rudiments by the peculiar combination of which the atoms or the sensible elements are produced. Thus Bhikshu says :—

€ tanmātrāņyavišeshāņi avišesāstato hi te

na santa nāpi ghorāste na mūdhāšcāvišeshiņah

The atoms of the Sàmkhya-Yoga system are not partless (niravayava) like that of the

1 Many other views regarding the genesis of tanmātras and atoms have been elaborately discussed in Dr. Seal's most erudite introduction to Dr. P. C. Ray's Hindu Chemistry and need not there. fore be repeated here unnecessarily,

Vaišeshikas, but have parts (sāvayava) or what is

called mahat parimāņa. The gunas alone are here taken to be partless or (niravayava) and can be compared in that sense with the atoms of

the Vaiseshikas. Thus Bhikshu says, ** vaišeshi-

koktā puramāņavah api asmabhih abhyupagamy-

ante, te ca asmaddaršane gunasabdavacya ityeva višeshah, Yoga-vürttiko, iii. 52.” But even the

gunas themselves are not wholly of an infinitesimal nature, for then the all-pervasive nature

of the prakrti has to be abandoned. It is there-

fore to be admitted that those gunas from which the partless antahkarana and akasa are produced are to be regarded as pervasive; if they were wholly ubiquitous, then the contact necessary for the first movement of the prakrti would be inexplainable. But these atomic gunas have of course no differentiation as earth, water, etc., as in the case of the Vaiseshika atoms. But these questions were not probably solved in the older Samkhya-Yoga speculation, so the Vyasa-bhashya is also almost practically silent on these points. Bhikshu however in his Yoga-vārttika comes to these conclusions on the supposition that the opinions of other schools could be accepted so far as they did not run counter to their own conclusions." In other places however Bhikshu himself has said that the gunas stand

1 Yoga-varttike, ITI, 62 and IT, 18.

for all the eight substances of the Vaiseshikas, and it is these which are the permanent causes of the creation as the modifications of mahat, etc., which vary in various creations after the final dissolution (pralaya).

Turning to the development of the eleven senses we find that these are produced from the sāttvika side of ahamkara with the help of the rajas. The internal organs are. therefore buddhi, ahamkāra, manas and the five cognitive and the conative senses. Of these the first three form together the three inner mental organs, and hold good for all experiences, past, present or future, whereas the other senses hold good only in taking the objects at the present time. Now to take a review. When at the outset of the last pralaya the gunas had taken their backward movement, and all the avišeshas had returned into the mahat, which with all the ignorance-stuff (avidyā) of the purushas inherent in it had returned back into the prakrti, there came the pralaya. Prakrti is now in a state of equilibrium consisting in a uniform diffusion of the reals. The tendencies to conscious manifestation as well as the powers of doing work are exactly counterbalanced by the resistance of the mass (famas). The process of evolutionary creation is at rest. The transcendental (non-mechanical) influence of the purusha, whether it be contact (samyogu) or mere

passive attraction of proximity, puts an end to the state of arrest and the equilibrium is disturbed. But how the actionless purushas can by their influence disturb the state of equilibrium of prakrti is a point which Samkhya cannot properly explain. The Yoga has tried to solve the difficulty by admitting that the disturbance is directly effected by the removal of obstacles by Isvara. When once the disturance is set afoot, the affinity comes into play and leads to unequal aggregation, and therefore to the relative preponderance of one or more of the gunas, and the process of formative combination (ārambhakasamyoga) commences. It has to be imagined that the first stadium of evolution is a state in which the sattva or intelligence-stuff, the principles of manifestation, should preponderate, for, otherwise the mutual reflection with the purusha becomes inexplicable. This stadium is the stage in which out of prakrti a development has come which holds the first germs of all things as the stuff of consciousness. When we speak of such a development, it does not mean that the whole of prakrti has been transformed into the mahat, but it only means that some portions of it has been transformed into it. Just as portions of the ocean are transformed into foam while still the great ocean lies within itself, or just asa tree grows up knot by

knot, so this universal pure being as stuff of consciousness contains within itself as inherent in it many separate buddhis or individual conscious planes which form its part. These buddhis, though they have been treated as new, contain within themselves the particular and peculiar avidyas or ignorance-stuff with which the buddhis of a former creation had returned into the prakiti at the pralaya. It is also in accordance with or for the realisation of the function of these buddhis that Isvara had disturbed the prakrti. When once the disturbance was set up, the old avidyāvījas or ignorance potencies prevailed and that stadium evolved, in which new buddhis with old avidyā potencies could find scope and bind their respective purushas by mutual reflection. If the potencies had been absolutely burnt by true knowledge of any purusha then that purusha could no longer be bound again, for the potency being lost no separate buddhi would evolve for him. This stadium is then on one hand the first stage through which prakrti would evolve itself towards the creation of meterial objects, and on another the whole in which the individual buddhis were held up in one plane. Thus from these two aspects there is a twofold creation. For the first movement or undulation of this mahat creates a strife amongst the three different gunas, and this state being a new

differentiation as integrated in the mahat is called the three different ahamkāras. The sattvika ahamkāra which expresses itself as “ I," * mine," is the co-ordinating principle of the subject series which with the help of the rajasa ahamkara produced the eleven senses. So this sattvika ahamkara is one product of the mahat whereas the other product is the tanmatras by the action of the timasa ahamkāra. The sāttvika ahamkāra is as much a new kind of consciousness-stuff as the tanmatras with this difference that the latter charged with the predominance of tamas is ultimately reduced into the matter-stuff by a further accretion of tamas. So all these actions up to the production of the tanmātras and the asmitā go on in the mahat and through it in the prakrti herself. The tanmātras are therefore not a product of asmita but of mahat directly, while they along with asmitā were still in a state of differentiation as integrated in the mahat. It should again be noted that when mahat transforms itself into its evolutes it is not wholly transformed, but as some forms of it are evolving onwards, it is being fed by the fresh formations of mahat-stuff from the prakrti. Thus it is that we find that by a peculiar transformation, the gunas (comparable to Vaiseshika atoms) through the stage of a stadium as cosmic matter of experience of the predominance of sattva-stuff bifurcate into

two lines, the subjective series through asmita, and the world or gross matter through the tanmatras. Every transformation is nothing but a new state of existence generated by the groupings in of the guna particles in varying proportions with the predominance of a particular type of gunas ; sattva, rajas or tamas are but names to denote the classes of gunas giving their own peculiar types of manifestation, actualisation, or existence. The names sattva, rajas and tamas only serve to differentiate the characteristic differences of the gunas as are seen in the state of their development.

CHAPTER VII. YocA PHYSICS.

The existence of the external world as the common ground of experience for all men, in the past, present, and future, forms the most essential characteristic of the Sāmkhya-Yoga realism as against the Buddhistic idealists. Of the two schools of Buddhists, one asserts that the external world exists, but its guarantee of existence or truth is (arthakariyakaritva) its capacity of producing effects ; the things must be coming into existence only at the moment that the ideas about them are produced, and destroyed the moment the ideas are destroyed. The ideas have only momentary existence, and such must be the case with the external objects. Another class of Buddhists says that since the things and ideas are taken at the same point of time, both of them have the same identical reality (cf. sahopalambhaniyamat abhedo nilataddhiyoh) ; the awareness and that of which we are aware are one and the same and apart from the ideas the things have no separate

1 Kshanabhasgasiddhi of Ratnakirtti.

existence. Against the first class of Buddhists Yoga holds that if the thing rises into existence and dies away with the rise and destruction of the ideas in any person, then how can it at the very moment of its destruction be found to be existing, by virtue of the idea it has generated in another person who has directed his attention towards it. Moreover simply because I do not see a thing I cannot call it non-existent ; I do not see the back of a thing and it cannot be argued that the back does not therefore exist.

Against the second class of Buddhists, Yoga holds that from the fact that wherever there is the idea there is the thing, it cannot be argued that the thing and the idea are one and the same, for there may be things without there being any one to represent them in his ideas; or in other words the maxim of. sahopalambha is not corroborated by the negative test that every case of absence of knowledge is also a case of absence of reality (sahopalambhaniyamaáca vedyatvam ca hetusandigdhavyatirekitaya naikantiki). Moreover the external world appears before us by its presentative power, and its truth is guaranteed by the testimony of our ideas which possess extension and co-existence and are thus realised as being different from the external world. The things persist as the same, though they generate diverse emotions in diverse

persons. Soit is that we are to admit that external things exist apart from and independent of our ideas, and they are not momentary as the Buddhists would like to assert (tasmāt svatantro'rthah sarvapurushasadharanah svatantrāņi ca nityāni pratipurusham pravarttante).

These are in short the contentions of the Yoga school in favour of an external world as the common ground of experience as against the idealists. With the exception of some schools of Buddhism and Vedantism almost all the other Indian systems are properly speaking realistic systems.

But the extent and nature of the admission of this external reality, as also the methods of its workings, were divergently conceived in different systems and it is here that the ideas of Indian physics differ. Thus to take a brief review of these, before we come to the Yoga physics, we find that the Carvakas regarded life as the product of combinations of matter, just as we get red colour from the combination of white and yellow. Life according to them, was only a property of matter (madašaktivat caitanyam) which manifested itself under con. ditions of particular combinations.

According to the Sarvastivadin Buddhists the eternal dynamics of action conglomerated the different classes of atomic reals, and in particular cases of such combination, life shone

forth as the product. There were two classes of such combinations, the mental conglomeration of the five groups consists of supa (perception), vijžāna (consciousness), vedamà (feeling), samjid (name), and samskāra (association). The conglomeration (samghdta) of these clusters formed the psychical plane of man, whereas the atoms of the five bhiitas formed the basis of the physical bodies of men, animals, the vegetable and the inorganic world. The inference of the existence of the diverse atomic reals reminds us of the Herbartian argument for the doctrine of reals, as it consists in positing as many different reals as there are diversities of experience; for the same real cannot have contradictory qualities. These reals exist by themselves independently and there are no actual combinations to form wholes. But there are only conglomerations which are more or less of a mechanical nature of loose atoms rising up in existence and being destroyed the next moment. These conglomerations are brought about neither by a conscious principle as soul nor by an omnipotent God but by the dynamics of the eternal chains of causes and effects. Each particular being of the moment, vegetable, inorganic or organic, is determined by the particular nature of the conglomeration that is brought about. There is no other reality either in man or in nature save the force of actions which rolls on.

In each conglomeration each of the elements entering into it performs its own function of the conglomeration. The number of conglomerations forming the reality of the universe at any particular moment is destroyed at the next moment and further conglomerations spring up and so on. The order of the world is to be found in the regulative world-order of the forces of the actions. Thus is explained the manifold reality of the material world by the force of dying conglomerations by which new conglomerations are brought forth and soon. The universe is thus undergoing change at every moment ; there is no stability anywhere but only change. No conglomerations can ever be the same at any two moments. They are breaking up at every moment and fresh conglomerations are being formed by the breaking up of the old ones and all this on the physical side is the result of the collocations of the atoms and the eternal potential energy associated with them which becomes kinetic at every stage of the progressive march — the pratitya samutpāda. According to the Nyāya-Vaiseshika view, generally, a molecule of any bhūta could not contain more than two atoms. But there was another view as we find from the accounts of Utpala in his commentary on Brhat Samhita that two, three or four atoms are admitted to unite together by their natural vibratory motion

to form molecules. So long as there is no action of heat, these molecules of the different bhitas instead of displaying any diversities of qualities and characters show only their homogeneous characters. But by the action of heat these molecules of the different bhūtas are diversely rearranged and collocated, and it is on account of this diversity of collocations that the different genera and species are formed. Molecules or the atoms of the same bhūta, say for example kshiti, may rearrange themselves in diverse ways by the action of heat and form thousands of different substances. The factors which operate in the formation of these different substances are: (I) the density of the grouping, (2) the position of the atoms, (3) the different kinds of paka or heat associated with them in the making of the different arrangements. Thus Uddyotakara says that “there is no differentiation of species in the atoms themselves.” Sridhara also says, “ there are no ultimate differences between the atoms of semen and ovum, as they are all but modifications of earth. The changes produced by heat upon a body suffering through the thermal influence are conditioned by the previous characters according to which heat generates further new changes of colour, etc. Nyāyabodhinī judging from the diversity of effects speaks of different kinds of heat. To take a concrete example of such atomic changes, we find

that when a cow eats grass, the grass matter being broken up into atoms and by the touch of some kind of heat, the old colour, taste, touch and smell being destroyed, there comes in that kind of heat which generates those kinds of colour, etc., which are found in milk, and now the atoms being possessed of those kinds of taste, ete., generate a binary molecule, and by the aggregation of these, gross milk is formed. Thus itis that we find that all the objective world of matter is formed generally by the various kinds of groupings of the spherical atoms of the same bhūta, or by the groupings amongst the atoms of the modifications of the same bhūta entering into the compound for the formation of the same substance and sometimes really amongst the atoms of the different bhūtas when one of them acts as the radicle. The atoms were conceived to be spherical in shape, but it was something like a point without any dimension ; and it is by the grouping of these that the whole universe is formed

There can never be any change of substance or quality without the action of the components upon one another; and no molecule can have any quality which is not possessed by any of its components. The character of any atom cannot manifest itself until it can link itself with other atoms of its own class. The whole world is explained on a basis of chemical synthesis,

and all things are looked at from a detached point of view rather than from the point of. view of the conservation of energy. Life itself is the product of diverse chemical syntheses. All action of matter on matter is reduced to motion with the exception of conscious activity. The combination of the atoms to form the diverse substances had a controller in the background in the shape of the unseen moral destiny, which in its turn was presided over by God. The atoms themselves were neither created nor were they the evolved products of simple elements. There is no separate entity or force apart from the modes of motion. The effect is in all cases the resultant of the combined motion of the various causes involved (kāraka cakra). Taking the validity of the objective world as an established fact we have noticed in brief the two classes of atomists: the Buddhists and the Vaiseshikas. The Samkhya- Yoga view differs from both as it combines the dynamic aspect and the momentariness of the Buddhists with the static and detached character of the Vaiseshikas into a system of evolution of the three types of reals. ‘This evolution in its formal aspect," as Dr. Seal says, may be defined “ as differentiation in the integrated (samsrstaviveka). In other words the process of evolution consists in the development of the differentiated (vaisamya) within the undifferentiated (sümyüvoestha) of the

determinate (visesha) within the indeterminate, of the coherent (yutasiddha) within thé incoherent (ayutasiddha). The evolutionary series is subject to a definite law, which it cannot overstep (pariņāmakramaniyama). The order of succession is not from whole to parts nor from parts to whole but ever from a relatively less differentiated, less determinate, less coherent whole to a relatively more differentiated, more determinate, more coherent whole. That the process of differentiation evolves out of homogeneity as separate or unrelated parts, which -are then integrated into a whole, and that the whole again breaks up by fresh differentiation into isolated factors for a subsequent redintegration, is a fundamental misconception of the course of material evolution. That the antithesis stands over against the thesis and imposes unity ab extra on these independent and hostile moments is the same radical misconception as regards the dialectical form of the cosmical development. On the Samkhya view increasing differentistion proceeds pari passu with increasing integration within the evolving whole. So that by this twofold process what was an incoherent, indeterminate, homogeneous whole evolves into a coherent, determinate and heterogeneous whole.”

It should be remembered in this connection that though the individual combinations may

he said to be subject to addition and subtraction, growth and decay, the gunas themselves are infinite and cternal, and there cannot be any increase or decrease of them. Considering the cosmic changes as a whole, the gunas remain for ever as their permanent substrata. The changes come and go, the combinations break and form but the reals remain ever the same, though they may seem to appear in diverse characters. The characters and qualities are the results of the diversity of their combination. Thus the totality of the mass and energy also remains constant if we take account of both the manifested and the unmanifested, the actual and the potential. Such is the bond of teleological relation between the gunas and the purushas, that the course of evolution follows an unalterable definite law, not only as regards the order of succession but also about the appearance and mutual relations of the separate units of like and unlike energies. Had there not been such a definite order, the world would have been a chaos instead of cosmos, in spite of all the three guņas. All things being composed ultimately of the three guņas, there are no intrinsic differences amongst them (sarvvam sarvvātmakam). The only difference is the difference in the constitution of the collocation of the gunas, or as expressed in the phenomenal world of matter as the collocations of the atoms. It is theoretically therefore

possible to change anything in the world to any other thing provided the necessary collocations of the atoms could be arranged. The change or modifications only give expression to the latent varieties of the substance. As the atoms change their position by their innate rajas or energy, the substance changes its form and manifests diverse new qualities which could not be perceived before. But still such a change is not possible to an unlimited degree, for in the constitution of the relation of the gunas there are limitations and obstacles which cannot be overstepped. These limitations may generally be counted in the phenomenal world of change, as being of the nature of time, space, form and disposing cause. Thus Kashmere being the country of saffron, it does not grow in the Pāūcāla country, even though the other causes of its growth may be present there. Similarly there are rains in the summer season, therefore the growth of rice is possible only in that season ; so also the form of aman cannot take its rise from that ofa deer. Thus though all things are intrinsically the same yet the obstacles to change, of the constitution of the gunas in the formation of -different substances in certain directions, are such that these cannot be removed, and so those modifications though

1 Tattvavaitūradī.

theoretically possible will ever remain a practical impossibility.

This brings us to the relation of cause and effect and the part which is played by concomitant conditions in transforming the cause into the effect. We know that there is no other difference between cause and effect than this that the former is only the potential state of which the latter is the actual. ‘The sum of material causes is only the vehicle of the power which is efficient in the production. The concomitant conditions are said to help the effectuation of this transformation from the potential to the actual state. Thus the work of the sculptor may be regarded as the concomitant condition which transforms a piece of marble into a statue. The oilman has helped the oil which was already in existence in the mustard to manifest itself as such. Thus, looked at from this point of view, all concomitant causes may be regarded as helping the passage of the effect from its potentiality as the cause, into the effect as an actuality.'

But apart from this surface view of the matter there is a deeper side of it which has been pointed out in the Vyāsa-Bhāshya which looks upon the concomitant conditions as only removing the obstacles in the way of the transformation

1 Pravacana-Bhashya, 1, 115.

of the cause into effect. This explains causation on the basis of conservation and transformation of energy, for the potential energy is here viewed as being stored up in a substance (or guna eolloeation), and as soon as the concomitant conditions remove the barrier, the energy flows out of itself and produces the necessary transformation. Thus the Bhashya explains the situation of the theory of potentials thus: “ As the husbandman desirous of carrying water from an already well-filled bed to another, docs not draw the water with his own hands to places which are on the same or lower level but simply removes the obstacles or impediments, and thereupon the water flows down of itself to the other bed, so it pierces the obstacles or impediments in the way of the development, and thereby the creative causes naturally pass through the respective changes of themselves, orsimilarly the same husbandman does not possess the power of transforming the earth and watery juices to the roots of rice in the same bed. What then? He weeds the mudga, the gavendhuka, and the šyāmāka out of the common bed and when they have been weeded out, the juices themselves enter the roots of rice.”

Thus we see that the energy conserved in one

form naturally passes into another by manifest-

ing consequent changes or transformations

designated by the name of evolution. As natural flow is obstructed in various ways by the resistance offered by space, time, form, and causality, it has naturally to take the course in which there are no impediments and obstacles ; at each stage new impediments may come in and interfere with the evolving process and compel the flow to change the direction of its course at every stage ; so it is that we find that the evolutionary process has naturally to take a curvilinear line rather than the straight one It is this resistance against the evolutionary flow which compels it to reject thousands of courses open to it and select a particular one in which there is no resistance. It is this therefore that gives niyama or a regulation (pariņāmakramaniyama).

The pariņāmakramaniyama, or the desakalakāranimittāpabandha, takes the question of natural selection to a firmer basis and seeks to answer the question from the principle of the conservation of energy. It seems that by attributing the resistance of Nature to the particular atomic constitution of things and environments, it includes not only the modifications of the vegetable and the animal kingdoms but also those of the inorganic world. It suggests that the force which guides the evolutionary process is not a peculiar thing different from other kinds of forces of Nature, but reduces all forces

of Nature to that one kind generated by the continual displacement of the vibratory atoms of substances and the natural obstruction involved in the adoption of any mode of displacement other than the one which belongs to the atoms owing to their particular constituent arrangements and environments. Only that kind of evolution can come out or remain unmolested which has not to face the opposition of time, space or the particular atomic arrangement of things. For unless retarded by these, the liberated energy will continue to form transformations which will again undergo a course of changes forced upon them by the varying retardation and oppositions either from environments or from the peculiar nature of their own constitution. What we call qualities of things are only modes of energy acting in these collocations (yogyatavacchinna dharminah saktireva dharmah).

The question of cause and effect naturally brings with it the conception of time in the Samkhya-Yoga system. For time is merely the scheme of the understanding for representing the course of evolution or recording the changes. Whenever we want to take note of any change these naturally fall into a series, and it is this series that is called the time series or order in time. If the finest constituent of matter is taken as the atom, then the finest

YOGA PHYSICS 2l5

unit of time would be that required by an atom to move its own dimension of space. But the atoms are constituted of the tanmatras and these are constituted of the gunas, so if we are to rest anywhere we have to rest in the gunas as the ultimate units of matter having no parts. So the ultimate unit of time must be the time required for these absolute units of matter to change. ‘Time is here therefore wholly discrete as opposed to the Nyàya-Vaiseshika view of an infinite continuum perceptible by direct experience. Bhikshu has argued in Yoga-Vārttika that though the time is defined as buddhinirmāņa (a scheme of the understanding) yet it may be taken as real, for it is really identical with the unit of change of the gunas in phenomena. But it is important to note that even this relative reality of time fails when we consider that in nirvicara samadhi, the space-unit of the guna change is not of any use, as the sages then perceive only the gunas without the space relations of ordinary consciousness. Discrete time therefore being only the scheme of the understanding in taking the phenomenal changes, and its ultimate unit being measured by the ultimate unit of change of space of the ultimate units of matter, it comes to this that there is no metaphysical existence of time. Time as an absolutely existing continuum is also illusory. It is only the present

moment which exists and it is here that the whole world suffers a change ; the future and the past have no meaning apart from potential and sublatent phenomena. Only the present moment is the actual and the time of transformation is the change of the potential into the actual and from the actual into the sublatent.

Space as mere extension (deša) is an existent external entity and it is not reduced to unity of position as in the moments with regard to time. We have seen that the grossness of things has been defined as the space they occupy. Dik however which means relative position results only from the different relations in which the all-pervasive ākāša stands to the various finite objects. Space as extension is to be distinguished from this, for the former is an unalterable entity which stands as the measure of all finite things and these are themselves unanalysable into the infinitesimal extensive quantity inherent in the gunas. The difference however between the reality of relative position and time lies in the former being absolutely illusory and having no real existence at all, whereas the latter is admitted to exist as mere moments. The difference here between the Buddhist and the Yoga position is this that here it is only the time which is regarded as momentary but things are regarded

as permanent, whereas in Buddhism both the things and time are regarded as momentary ; between the Naiyayikas and the Yoga, the difference consists in this that the former holds that there is an eternal substance called time apart from the moments called kshana. What we hear ordinarily as eternal time is but this eternity of flow or succession. We should however remember that the substance of both time and space is the ākāša or vacuous ether so they are also not different in essence from gunas. Vācaspati however contends that the moments being the scheme of the understanding are absolutely imaginary, illusory and false. The close relation of ākāša with time and space brings the ākāša for our consideration. There are two kinds of ākāša according to the Samkhya-Yoga system, as has been noticed by Vijiāna Bhikshu in the Yoga-Varttika. These are karanakasa and kāryākāša. The karanakasa is the absolutely ubiquitous mass as bhūtādi which is devoid of all potentials and is merely the seat of the rajas. It is from this aspect called vibhu—all-pervasive. This should not be regarded as a mere negative vacuity, though it occupies the same space as all the gross forms of matter and is devoid of all impenetrability. From this comes the tanmātrie ākāša, when by the action of rajas it forms itself as a unit of vibration potential or ākāša

tanmātra. This ākāša tanmātra with a further accretion of mass and fresh redistribution of energy forms into the ākāša atom which is integrated and limited and is the sound medium. This ākāša remaining itself in the kāraņākāša forms the medium of all gaseous bodies and also of light and heat corpuscles. This atomic ākāša is called the kāryākāša and we may conceive it for all purposes as being another kind of atom. Coming to the domain of evolutionary changes we find that the bhūtādi is pure ubiquitous mass and it is from this that the tanmatras are produced ina gradual order by the action of energy. These tanmatras have all the characteristics of differentiations as the bhūtas, but these are in such a state of potentiality that they cannot directly manifest themselves to our senses. These tanmatras combine themselves, as we have already seen, to form the atoms of the five bhūtas. The smallest part of any bhūta is called an anu or atom. These are not however partless (niravayava) like the atoms of the Vaiseshikas but are composed of the tanmatras which are their parts. These are not also eternal like the Vaiseshika anus. Samkhya holds that these form into the dyanukas after the Vaiseshika fashion, but Yoga holds that no such dyanukas are formed, but the mass of different bodies is formed by the conglomeration of atoms. These atoms are of five classes, kshiti, ap, tejas, vàyu

and vyoman. These five bhūtas should not be taken to mean elements in the ordinary chemical sense of the term, for the classification is ultimate in the sense that there are only five types of qualities which can be grasped by the five senses. Whatever qualities may be grasped by any particular sense may be said to form a class and according to that the substance possessing them may be said to be a particular bhūta. Formation of aggregates (samiiha) may be said to be of two classes : (1) those of which the parts are in such intimate union as to form an individual whole (ayutasiddhavayava), and (2) aggregates of a mechanical character where the parts are comparatively separate (yutasiddhavayava). The combination of atoms which form substances may be said to be of two kinds: (1) the rearrangement of the atoms of the same bhūta which form different substances ; (2) the union of the atoms of different bhūtas which form substances. The contact of atoms in the former case is called sajàtiya samyoga and in the latter vijatiya samyoga. Now the Vaiseshikas laboured under the belief that there cannot generally be any union between the atoms of different bhūtas In cases where such combinations are possible only one should act as a radicle, round which the others may form a system of co-efficient causes. The brief Samkhya account as we have it from Utpala supposes that the atoms of five bhitas

could combine together to form the different bodies. Yyāsa- Bhāshya also iu the line “ jalabhimyoh pāriņāmikam rasadivaisvaripyam’”’ suggests that different bi-bhūtic compounds of water and earth substances are formed in plants in different combinations. Vācaspati says in Zattvakaumudī that with the water atom at the centre and the earth atoms grouped round it, new energies are produced which are manifested as the different kinds of fruit-juice and acids. In another place Vācaspati says that in the constitution of things, the atoms of different bhūtas are arranged side by side. Thus an object of perception is not constituted of the light or heat atoms merely, but these are also alternated by earth and water atoms ; so from it we can infer that Vacaspati held that compounds amongst the atoms of diverse bhūtas were allowable. But Vijfiana Bhikshu, probably under the Vaiseshika influence, denies the possibility of such combinations except after the Vaiseshika fashion, namely, with the atom of the principal bhüta as the material cause (upādāna kāraņa) and the other atoms in a comparatively unattached condition as efficient causes (nimitta kāraņa) called upashtambha. So the human body is formed with the earth as the material cause and the other four bhūtas as upashtambhaka.' About the union

1 Samkhya-Sutra, I, 102.

of the tanmātras however no such objection was felt, and the Bhashya also holds that the union of the five tanmātras form the linga deha. As all the substances according to the Sāmkhya- Yoga view are but collocations of the gunas there is no reason why Samkhya-Yoga physics should object to the combination or collocations of the atoms of diverse bhūtas to form substances. All change here is but the transformation of energy due to the change of collocations of the atoms or gunas.

Matter then can exist in three forms in the infra-atomic stage as tanmatras, as anus or the atoms of the bhūtas, and also in the actual combined stage as extensive earth, water, air, etc. .

The physical characteristics of these five bhiitas have thus been described by Vacaspati :

The characteristics of earth are:—form, heaviness, roughness, obstruction, stability, manifestation, difference, support, turbidity, hardness, enjoyability by all.

The characteristics of ap are :—smoothness, subtlety, clearness, whiteness, softness, heaviness, coolness, preservation, purification, cementation.

The characteristics of tejas are :—going upward, burning, lightness, shining, destruction, power.

The qualities of vàyu are :—transverse motion, purification, throwing, pushing, strength, movability, throwing no shadow, roughness.

The characteristics of ākāša are:— motion in all direction, non-agglomeration, and non-obstruction.

The atoms of the five bhūtas combined together to form the different material objects and the bodies of plants, animals and men. They all being only the collocation of the bhūta atoms there is consequently a circulation or passage from one state to another. Thus inorganic matter when assimilated as food in the plant or in animal systems, serves to form their bodies; the bodies of men and animals also when disintegrated are reduced into the atoms of the bhitas as inorganic substances. All things are formed of mass (tamas) and energy (rajas) ; the action of rajas is going on always; and as Vijūānabhikshu says, the atomic constitution of things has to be admitted to make the action of the rajas possible, as we cannot but associate units of energy with units of mass. The difference

between the diverse species of the same bhūtas as well as of the compounds of many bhūtas is due to the diversity of the arrangement of the atoms. All changes of all kinds, physical or chemical, are reduced to this one kind, namely, that of diverse redistribution of atoms and energy. Thus it is that the water atoms and

the kshiti atoms combine together in the plant bodies and produce diverse kinds of juices in the roots, trunk, leaves, flowers and fruits by the diversity of their arrangement. The atomic arrangement of the plant bodies again changes and forms the bodies of animals and attain other characteristics. Bodies of animals also can be assimilated by plants and changed into such atomic arrangements as are suitable to plantbodies. So there is a constant transformation from one state to another according to the diversity of the aggregation of the atoms and consequent appearance of new energies manifesting themselves as diverse qualities.

It may not be out of place here to notice that the practical nature of the Sāmkhya-Yoga physics and the emphasis that it gave to the method of concentration by which a man could by his own endeavours attain truth readily attracted scientific workers to accept its general conclusions in the formulation of the principles of their special branches of enquiry. These were mainly the medical schools of Caraka and Susruta, and other works in alchemy and medicine. Caraka devoted a whole chapter (Sārira) in explaining the Samkhya-Yoga system of philosophy, and drew up its system on the basis laid down by it. We know that in Alberuni's “Book of Pàtanjal" an alternative way of salvation through alehemy was proposed. In

many alchemical works we find that processes of making the body immortal are suggested as the best kind of salvation and it is attainable through chemistry. Thus Dr. P. C. Ray says in his lecture delivered in the University of Madras: * In our country though the pursuit of this science was made an auxiliary to the healing arts, it made rapid strides by entering into an alliance with the Yoga philosophy. In later times, the philosophy of the Yoga was pressed into the service of science and degenerated into Tantrika rites especially in Bengal." These became so much associated with the Yoga philosophy that Yoga became the common name for medicine as well as alchemy.

The fact that all objects in nature and all forces are reduced to the movement of atoms should not lead us to suppose that life itself is a product of the combination of the atoms like the madašakti of the Carvaka which we have described before; for we know that the Samkhya has combated the Carvakas on the ground that the difference of consciousness from intoxication lies in the fact that the intoxicating power is a force which is the resultant of the intoxicating tendencies of the different particles of

1 Rasarnava,

3 Compare the names Yogachandrikü—s manual of materia medica, Rājamārtaņdayogasārasamgraha—a treatise on the preparation of medicinal arts, or Fogašatābhidhānam—a work on the practice of medicine, etc., etc. —R. L. Mitra's Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS.

the fermented molasses; but consciousness is not motion and hence cannot be the resultant product of other motions or tendencies. Neither can the consciousness of the person be regarded as the product of any consciousness distributed over the particles of the body and it is a more legitimate hypothesis to admit one superintending intelligence than to accept the theory of an assemblage of consciousnesses latent in different bhūtas or material particles.’ Life is only a reflex activity, a resultant of the various concurrent activities of the antahkaranas or the sensori motor, the emotional and the apperceptive reactions. It is thus the united action of the sensas that is called life. Life is neither the five vayus (bio-mechanical force) nor is it a sort of subtle rarefied ether principle (adhyātmavāyu) pervasive of the organism which is not gross vayu, but is all the same subtilised matter like the manas itself of the Vedanta. It is the side of rajas or energy which first emanates in the emanation of the mahat from the prakrti, and then shows itself in the formation of the senses, etc. Prana presides over all the organs and pervades them and as such is but the active manifestation of the mahat. Thus Bhikshu says in Vijiianāmrta-Bhāshya “mahat tattvam hyekameva

! Bee Sāmkhyapravacana-Bhāshya, III, 22.

pranrterutpdayamanam jžūnakriyūšaktibhyūm buddhipranasabdabhyam abhilapyate”” Thus it is the different active manifestations of the mahat which holds together in union the different organs as its states that is called the prana.! The five vayus only represent the diverse types of the manifestation of life as the psychical co-ordinating and regulative activity of mahat. All movement thus, whether of matter or of mind, is derived from the stuff of consciousness, the mahat.

Thus we find that all the multifarious kinds of objects of the inorganic world are but the products of the displacement and rearrangements acting in accordance with a definite law. At certain stages of their development they become suitable to reflect life or soul. This soul though absolutely inactive in itself is the goal for which all the activities of life are produced which are in themselves but material products of the activities of the mahat or the supreme stuff of consciousness. Matter particles conglomerate together to form the different bodies for different souls according to their merit or demerit until we come to man wherein we find the soul wedded to the most perfect body of evolution. Man's body, so far as it isa physical object, is like any other object of

Vojūānūmrtabhāshya and Pravacana-Bhashya, IJ, 13,

nature passing through the processes of evelution. In considering the objects of the material world we had so long altogether neglected its sattva side which had no other manifestation than that of making them cognisable in terms of thought and feeling of the purushas. But it is when the bodies gradually develop into the body of man that we find that the sattva of matter begins to manifest itself in developing the translucent character of the buddhi by removing the obstructing elements; and it is thus that we find that from the manifestations of simple feelings of joy and grief we come to the most developed consciousness of the philosopher.

If we look at the history of the investigation into the nature of matter we find that Locke found the concept obscure and of little use; Berkeley dismissed matter as an abstraction and a superfluity; Hume similarly banished spirit. Kant retained the conception in the sense of the permanent in all change. Modern phenomenalism regards it as denoting the unknown existent upon which physica] properties depend. In the physical science matter is the * stuff" of which the universe is made. The happy guess of Democritus of matter as being composed of simple impenetrable hard atoms was revived by Dalton asa genuine scientific theory. But if the atoms had no elasticity

many of the physical phenomena would not be explained. It is considerations like these that led Boscovich to speak of matter as being made of points which were the centres of attractive and repulsive forces. Lord Kelvin had proposed that a vortex-ring of ether in an ethereal plenum capable of transmitting vibrations should be the definition of an atom Kelvin’s theory of matter differs from that of Boscovich in that it offers a plenum instead of isolating an empty space; this plenum provides for action and reaction without the need of any action at a distance. it differs again from Dalton’s in dispensing with hard atoms, while furnishing atoms which are not only extended, but also, in virtue of their rote~ tional movement elastic. Natural science however in spite of its high pretensions does no more than describe natural phenomena in so far as these are to be regarded as changes in the motion of masses. It abstracts from the qualitative properties and changes of matter, because these are not amenable to scientific method and replaces them by hypothetically representative movement of masses. Matter with its diversities of qualities of perceptual experience is not only one in kind for science but as the goal of abstraction is reached, physics passes into mathematics and matter becomes indistinguishable from space.

So far as the indivisibility of atoms and unchangeability of elements are concerned the views of the scientists were so long quite orthodox. But quite lately the old beliefs have been reversed. Itis now believed that atoms are not simple but that portions of them can be split „Off and exist separately and that these detached fractions or corpuscles are identical from whatever kinds of atoms they may have been broken off and possess the same mass or inertia. Thus atoms are complex systems in spite of their differences as built up of parts or corpuscles which are identical. The corpuscles have been found to be a constant electrical charge (electron). Corpuscle and electron would seem to be identical because the whole mass of the corpuscles appear to be due to its electric charge and motion. The ultra-atomic character of matter and the non-fixed character of the elements have now been demonstrated by experiments. But the ultimate question as to what matter is in itself is still unsolved. It is moreover gratifying for an Indian to notice that in the bustle and crowd of the controversies of the scientific world it has been steadily approaching in a direction which, so far at least as the general scheme is concerned, is quite familiar to a student of the Yoga Philosophy: The highly specialised and experimental character of modern investigations may well be

contrasted to the crude and speculative character of Samkhya-Yoga physics. But we should remember that the Sāmkhya-Yoga built up a whole system of philosophic thought and did not busy itself merely in giving a detached view of physics alone. We should also remember the remote period when it flourished, and we should also be alive to the shortcomings of the speculations of the scientific world of the past as well as of the present.

CHAPTER VIII.

SAMKHYA ATHEISM AND Yoca THEISM.

Atheism as a philosophic creed did not develop, it seems, in systematic forms in an early age in any country other than India. From Dr. Legge’s edition of Mencius we know that a practical type of materialistic atheism developed in China about the third century B. C. A certain Yang Choo advises men “to care nothing for praise or blame, virtue or vice; to seek merely to make themselves as happy as they can while happiness is within their reach ; to eat and drink for to-morrow they die.” Looking to Greece we find that Plato asserts that while other erroneous views about the gods might be permanent, no one, after embracing in his youth the doctrine of atheism had ever continued in it up to old age. There were thinkers who denied the popular gods but did not deny God in its entirety. A sceptic like Protagoras declared himself unable to affirm of the gods either that they were or that they were not. Diagoras of Melos is said to have turned to atheism because the gods failed to visit with punishment a flagrant wrong which

had been committed against him. The charges of atheism also against Euhemerus or Prodicus also may be said to be true only in the sense of their opposition to received religion. It is only of Theodorous of Cyrene, the follower of Aristippus, that we have definite information of an uncompromising atheism which was subversive of the foundations of customary morality. But these forms of atheism must be distinguished from the schools of atheism which developed in early India as a reasoned utterance of philosophy. Atheism as a system presupposes the existence of theism, the conception of a selfexisting cause on whom all things and persons depend. The mere disbelief of the gods of the national pantheon of a race, does not constitute atheism. But here again distinction must be made between ordinary atheism as mere doubt and negation with regard to some essential elements of theism and the philosophic or scientific atheism which discards God as an unnecessary hypothesis as we had in India.’

Early in the Rgveda the national God Indra is derided in several passages *; and we read of people who absolutely denied his existence.’ These traces of old atheism are not the result of any philosophical reflection, but simply

1 8ee E.R.E., article on “Atheism.”

the refusal to believe like the Lokayatas, what cannot be visualised. This atheism must be distinguished from those types of atheism which developed as the result of serious philosophical speculations.

But atheism was being seriously worked amongst certain sections of the people to such an extent that by the time we come to the Svetasvatara, it had differentiated itself into diverse schools in more or less organised forms as can be inferred from the Svetasvatara texts :— kalasvabhavo niyatiryadrecha bhūtāni yonihpurusha iti cintyam samyoga esham na tvatmabhavadatmapyanisah sukhaduhkhahetoh.

We find from the above text that the origin of the universe was ascribed by some to time, to nature, to moral works, to chance, to matter, to soulor to all of them combined as the soul was not itself the master of the causes of its pleasures and pains.’

The Sāmkhya atheism seems to be a combination of all these forms excepting the chance atheism much advocated by the Carvakas and amply criticised by the Naiyayikas.’

In the Samkhya system we find that there are many purushas but one prakrti. Prakrti is the composite of the three gunas in a state of equilibrium. The guņas are themselves non-

1 Svetāfvatara Bhāshya of Šahkara, 1. 2. 2 Bee Kusumātījali, 1. 4, and Prakāša cf Varddhamāns on it.

intelligent but there is this instinctive tendency in them that all their diverse movements amongst themselves whether in the forward line as cosmos or in the backward line às the return into the prakrti are for the sake of the infinite number of purushas. The formation of the state of equilibrium andits break are both the unbroken parts of the same chain of its movement as saficara and pratisaficara.! The Sāmkhya holds, that the question “ who breaks the state of equilibrium " is meaningless, because the prakrti is as mueh a state of becoming as any other state is. The state of equilibrium far from being a state of absolute motionlessness is one ofthe highest tension. The state of ultimate passivity is due to the arrest of motion on account of their mutual opposition. It is their nature that the gunas disturb themselves for the sake of the purushas.? This state of arrest is only a moment in the process where the returning forces of the gunas being set against one another had produced the equilibrium only to be negated by the disturbing series of modification called the visadršapariņāma. Time, we have seen, is ultimately nothing but the movement of the gunas, and all movement of the gunas being in a state of arrest, it is time in its timelessness, it is the pure duration, if we may

i Kapila-sutra, 6.—satīcarah pratisaficarah.

Calatica guņavritam guņasvābhāvyantu pravrttikāraņamuktam.

call it so. Time has vanished, because the data of its manifestation are not to be found. But the reality of time so far as it is indistinguish-. able from the gunas, and so far as it is also a state in the process, still remains. The disturbance is as much a moment as the return, and if the whole process is thought of or conceived as existing in time one may say that the ultimate disturbances of the prakrti happens as much in time as the disturbance of the mahat in the production of ahamkara. It should always be remembered that from the Samkhya point of view prakrti herself is of a moving nature and no agent is necessary at any stage to disturb her. The influence of the purusha also does not move it, but such is its nature (svadkāva) or material disposition that all its movements are directed to the service of the purusha. The question how the prakrti became originally connected with the purusha cannot be allowed, for it is eternal and there is no beginning of it. The teleology of the prakrti for the service of the purusha is not a conscious one, but a mere material disposition of the supreme

guņūnāmiti. (Vyāsabhāshya, iii, 13.) cāticalyam hi guņānām svabhāvaķ (Yogavārttika, iii. 13).

! Bhāgavata purāņa gives a view in which it states that the union of Prakrti and Purusha is due to mere chance coincidence on the part of Prakrti and mere playfulness on the part of the Purusha. Bhagavata purāņā, III. 26.44,

mind-matter-stuff, the prakrti, like the oozing of the milk from the udder of the cow for the calf. The introduction of a conscious intelligence, Isvara cannot explain the position, as such an interposition cannot be justified otherwise than on egoistic or altruistic grounds. Isvara must have some interest of his own to serve or He must have been moved with pity for others before he could wish to launch upon such an endeavour. But he cannot have any interest of his own to serve. Neither is there any scope for pity for no person had any affliction or sorrow before creation, and sorrow during the creation cannot certainly be the cause why he should move the prakrti for the creation. Evidently this involves the vicious circle. Moreover if the srshti is for the good of the creatures, they all ought to have been made happy. If everything depended on karma what is the use of admitting an Isvara to control it ? The non-intelligent movement might.as well serve the purpose, and karma might as well bring its own fruit itself. Moreover there is no way how the supposed Īsvara could act upon the prakrti without running the risk of being sullied by its impurities. If itis admitted that it acts like à magnet through mere proximity, then the proximity of the purusha might as well be regarded as causing the disturbance in the prakrti. Iévara cannot be perceived; neither can His existence be inferred, as there is no way

of determining any universal concomitance with Him. This atheism of Samkhya, however, has no reference to the ordinary popular gods who are only more highly organised and happier beings than men ; like men they are within the samsara cycle of life, and unless they gain the saving knowledge which enables them to withdraw from worldly existence, they are obliged to change their bodies again. Nor have they escaped the power of death or the fears of dismissal from office. Consequently they are lower than men who have reached the highest goal. These gods are called the janyešvaras or kāryešvaras, and they are evidently different from God as nityešvara regarding whom the theists assume that he made the world by his will.

The denial of God is thus based firstly on the doctrine that there is inherent in unconscious matter (prakrti and its evolutes such as bhūta, etc.) a force which operates with physical necessity, and develops it for the sake of the pure souls (purusha) and secondly, on the general Indian conception of the after-effects of the actions of living being (karma and niyati) which excite that natural force and guide its activity into definite channels.

If we take a bird's eye view of the Jaina, Buddhist or the Mīmāmsā forms of atheism we find that the denial of Isvara is mainly due

to the fact that all that he could do is really determined by karma. For how could a Jaina assent to the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient God, when karma alone is regarded as responsible for the state of bondage as well as salvation ? In Buddhism also itis the force of karma which brings about all momentary existence. Moreover as the Bodhicaryavatāra says, God has created neither souls nor elements which are eternal. He does not bring about the birth of knowledge in the mind since knowledge is produced by the object ; He does not allot pain and pleasure, which result from karma. Then, if God acts without desiring to act, He becomes subject to another’s will; if he acts because He desires to act, He is subject to desire, and therefore dependent, if He were independent of others, He could have accomplished the creation, preservation, and destruction of the universe at one and the same moment. The Mīmāmsā also does not think the existence of any God necessary firstly because the world asa whole cannot be thought to have any beginning in time, and secondly because all the individual pains and pleasures can be explained on the basis of dharma and adharma, which instead of being presided over by God really belong to the doers themselves. But though these different systems agree with Samkhya in point of atheism, yet to Samkhya

really belongs the credit of producing a systematic philosophy competent to do away with the hypothesis of an Īšvara as the ruler of the universe. The atheism of Europe has not been able to go much beyond materialism. Thus Hobbes held that even sensations were nothing but the motion of corporeal particles. Holbach substitutes for God, matter and motion. Laplace, when he was asked by Napoleon why he had written nothing about God in his treatise the Mécanique Céleste had said, “Sire I had no need of. that hypothesis.” Carl Vogt argued that thought stood in the same relation to the brain as the bile to the liver or the urine to the kidneys and that all vital phenomena could be explained as a perpetual circulation of matter from the inorganic to the organic world and then back again from the organic to the inorganic. Moleschott says that without phosphorus there is no thought and thought is a movement of matter in the brain. Haeckel characterises the original substance as having a psychical as well as a physical side. The first substance passes by condensation first into imponderable ether and then into the elements of imponderable matter. The souls of animals and men have no origin separate from that of their bodies. The point in evolution at which consciousness first clearly presents itself, is however not known to him. Professor Clifford’s theory of

mind-stuff is also similar to that of Haeckel. With Holycake and Dubois-Raymond he regards the existence of a self-existent personal cause as highly improbable, owing to the want of evidence for the existence of a corresponding brain. Huxley tries to avoid the charge of materialism by saying that he is incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which that existence would be pictured, but holds at the same time the doctrine of human automatism that while the states of consciousness depend upon the molecular movements of the cerebral substance, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. But comparing the Darwinian evolution with the teleological argument he holds that the teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences. All these forms of modern atheism, are however but forms of materialism.’ Samkhya would abhor them all, as but the reappearance in diverse forms of the Bhūtacaitanya schools of Carvakism which deny the existence of souls. The arguments of theists

1 See E. R. E. article on Atheism,

against these forms of atheism consist in the contention, that movements of matter or the generation of new forces cannot explain consciousness, memory, ideas or personality and that the harmonious co-operation of matter particles or mind-stuff in the creation of this orderly universe would be inexplainable if it was not arranged under the direction of a conscious purpose or will! Sāmkhya will give the same answer to these atheists as it gave to the Carvakas, with this modification that there was no need of admitting the purpose of a conscious Being, as the unconscious disposition of matter may be said to be working for the experiences of the souls. The primordial limitations in the guņas, which may be compared with the primordial molecular arrangement of Huxley, is at once the basis of mechanism and teleology in Sāmkhya. There is no conscious design, but an unconscious purpose or disposition in matter which develops it in unison with the moral merit or demerit of persons by its mechanistic teleology. Teleology is here the end and mechanism the means subserving to that.

The ordinary form of Nyaya theism supposes the world to be an effect, and thence argues

2 Compare tho Satkāryyavāda dictum with the main points of theistic objection to tho generation of consciousness from matter that no effect can contain morethan is contained in the ground and cause from which tho effect has proceeded.

that it must have an all-intelligent creator who by his eternal and absolute will and knowledge acts upon the eternal atoms to bring about this orderly creation. The principal points

of the arguments may briefly be noticed as follows :—

(1) All the objects of the world are made up of collocations of parts like any of these common objects such as jug, etc., which are made by us (sannivesavisishtatvameva hetumabhidadhmahe—Nyāyamaūjarī, p. 194). The particular differences of collocation are immaterial, for it is the universal aspect of being made up of collocated parts which is to be made the ground of inference ; even those cases which are

1 The form of theism as we find in the Nyāya.sūtra and Vateys. yana’s bhashya is not as much of an intellectualiatic character as the later form, as can be found from the time of Jayanta onwards. Thus Jévara is acknowledged as the person who organises the world-order for the adjudging of rewards and punishments according to the actions of men. Iévara has no interest of his own to realise; but he ia like the father who works for his sons, though it must be observed that he can. not bestow any such blessing on men as are not guaranteed by their karmas evam ca svakrtābhyāgamasyālopena — nirmünaprákamyam. īšvarasya svakrtakarmaphalam veditavyam ; aptakalpaécayam yathā pitā apatyānām tathā pitrbhūta Tévaro bhūtānām—V ātsyāyana-bhāshya (4, 1. 21). He is an all-intelligent self (ātmānturamīšvaraķ) He can act as he wishes. He associates the individual with their respective dharma and adharma and moves the world order and living beings accordingly (saůkalpānuvidhāyī casya

dharma pratyātmavrttīn dharmādharmasaticayān — prthivyadini

ca bhutüni pravarttayati— Vātsyāyana, ibid). Thus the formal side of the inference has hardly

any importance so far as the Sūtra and the Bhāshya are concerned,

universally acknowledged to be made by men do not.agree in the collocation of the parts.’

(2) The fact that young shoots of trees are directly found to be collocation of parts but are not seen to be made by any Being does not afford any room for doubt ; all that can be said of them is that the agent of their collocation is not visible. The inference could have been proved to be invalid if it could be definitely shown that they had no creator, though they were made up of collocations of parts. Unless that can be done, we are justified to infer, on the basis of the collocation of parts, that these have been done by an agent or creator; for an inference cannot be nullified in spite of the presence of the hetu as collocation, merely on the strength of a meaningless doubt that there may not be a creator (sadasatpūvakatayā parvate sandigdhe vipakashe varttamanasya dhūmasya hetutvaprasangat ; sarva eva ca sādhyāmšasamšayād vipakshā eva jatah iti pakshavrttayo hetavah idanim vipakshagamino bhaveyuh ityanumanocchedah.— Nyayamaüjari, p. 197)?

(8) It is not necessary for the conception of a creator that he should have a body, for it is enough that he should have knowledge, will

1 Nyāyamaūjarī, pp. 194-195,

For the Jaina objection against the Nyāya argument, see Syüdvüdamafijar: and Gunaratna on the Jaina philosophy in Shaddaršanasamuccayā. Compare also the logical form of the inference as given by Varddhamāna and Siromani,

and effort. Thusit is that by the mere will of our spirit or soul the body is directly moved.! The karma itself cannot create the world as it is non-intelligent. The souls of man also cannot be thought of as presiding over it in order to create the world, for the interests of men being different there cannot be any cooperation for a common end. So itis that one Isvara has to be acknowledged as presiding over the karma, and by whose will creations and dissolutions take place. Yet he is not a despot for he only acts in accordance with the karmas of men. He is omniscient as he knows how to destroy and create the universe. His will and knowledge eternally exist His knowledge is not in succession but in eternal perception, so he has no need of memory or of mind. He is eternally happy.

It is easy to see that the Yoga could not have such a God, inasmuch as it denied all activity even to the human soul. Flint rightly says that in order to think of God as a cause, to apprehend the universe as an effect, we must have some direct experience of causation. And such experience we have only in the consciousness of volition. When the soul wills, it knows

1 Yatha hyacetanah kāyah atmecehamanupatrttate Tadicchūmanuvartsyante tathaiva paramanavah (Nyayamanjari, p. 709.) There was however a school of Naiyāyikas who wanted šo call the atoms the body of Isvara. See Muktavali.

itself as an agent, as a cause. The Yoga attributed all movements and changes to the prakrti, the primal matter. It was difficult therefore for it to assign any place to Isvara consistently with its system of metaphysics. The “ sannivešu” or the collocation of the atoms in an orderly manner, which with the Nyaya was the main ground of inferring an external intelligent cause, was with Yoga brought about by the natural movement of the prakrti herself. It is therefore that we find that in the Yoga sütras lsvara is but loosely introduced, more as a matter of traditional faith than as having a place in the system of philosophy. He is introdueed as only one of the alternative objects of concentration ; but concentration on God is more useful (han concentration on other objects, for God is pleased by the direction of concentration on Him and may thereby be pleased to remove the obstacles and make the attainment of the goalof the Yogin much easier. He is himself buta purusha, with this difference that unlike them he had never the least semblance of any connection with the prakrti. He had never any ignorance, karma, the fruits of karma or the residual instincts of karma as vāsanā. He has in him the seed of the highest omniscience. As he is not limited by time he is the preceptor of all past teachers even. I have elsewhere tried ta show that Yoga as a system of mental discipline

had originally existed independently of Samkhya, and that it was subsequently incorporated into the Samkhya school, as the latter could in all probability explain its phenomena quite satisfactorily. It is probable therefore that the belief in an I$vara was associated from the carliest times with Yoga traditions as being revealed by the spiritual experiences of Yoga. Thus in Svetàsvatara, immediately following the verse which contains references to diverse atheistical doctrines, we find the verse which says that * the sages devoted to meditation and concentration perceived the power belonging to God himself, hidden in its qualities (guna). He being one, superintends all causes, time, self and the rest.’ It is true no doubt that the Upanishad period is a time when the Īsa and Brahman were hardly sufficiently distinguished and differentiated from the point of view of later philosophy. The word Isvara or even Isa was not a favourite word with the early Upanishads.! It was the Brahman who (from the point of view of the distinction raised in later philosophy) served both the purposes of Isvara as well as that of its colourless character as Brahman. The compara. tively free introduction of the name Isvara in

1 The word Īša is used only once in the Īša Upanishad though it occurs no less than six times iu the Svetāšvataru ; the word l$vara ig used twice in Brhadárapyaka (1. 4. 8 and 6. 4. 14) but not in the sense of God.

the later Upanishads might have probably been due to the fact that the name I$vara was being separately chosen as the importance of the active side of Brahman was being gradually felt. In the early Upanishads the word Brahman seems to be loosely used to denote the supreme reality as infinite knowledge, as the self within, as the supreme cause of the world and also as the ruler and dispenser from the fear of whom allthe forces of nature fulfilled their duties. The Upanishad culture, as we have noticed elsewhere, was the product of the consciousness of a ruler and upholder of all. The Brahman as pure knowledge, the Atman as the only reality, the immutable and the eternal, forms no doubt an essential element in the Upanishads as Sankara had so clearly shown in later times; but it has to be admitted that the word Brahman was also used to denote the all-intelligent creator, ruler and upholder of the world and this, as an important element of the Upanishad thought, had never lost its force. That the opposition between the Brahman as static and the Brahman as the upholder and ruler was not felt, was due to the fact that philosophy as a system of dialectic reasoning had not yet grown in the Upanishad period. It seems therefore that the later affiliation of the Yoga doctrines to the Samkhya system of thought had not been able to shake off its old characteristic association with Isvara the

supreme Lord. Professor Garbe’s remark that Patafijali, the founder of the Yoga system, introduced the idea of a personal god in the hope that he would thus make the Sāmkhya philosophy acceptable to his countrymen is more an example of ingenious imagination than a fact justified by tradition and evidence. Had Pataiijali introduced Isvara from such prudential considerations as Garbe ascribes to him, he would surely have been a little more cautious and have given his ĪSvara a place in the system of his philosophy, instead of keeping him in a floating condition. The belief in the existence of Tévara and the profession of a philosophy which agreed so much with the atheistic Samkhya philosophy gave such a peculiar position to the Yoga philosophy that in many ancient works one of the most familiar topics of controversy was the difference between the Samkhya and the Yoga. Thus for example in the Mahabharata Santiparva, Yudhisthira asks Bhishma about the difference of Sāmkhya and Yoga, and Bhishma points out that the Yoga differs from the Samkhya in this that it holds the existence of Īsvara necessary for salvation, whereas the Samkhya holds that salvation comes by knowledge. Later discussions with Bhishma show that though the difference of views with regard to the existence of Isvara generally distinguish the one system from the other, their real difference lay in this that the Yoga laid all

emphasis upon practice whereas the Samkhya was essentially an advocate of science. As regards external ethical morality they were in complete accord. But the Samkhya wanted to exhaust the field of knowledge in all possible ways and then ultimately to attain salvation by the knowledge of self. Truly it was this which was the original difference between the Samkhya and the Yoga, but the difference which was apparent on the surface was the faith of the latter in Isvara and the denial of the former.

To take account of the manner in which the problem was handled by the commentators we come first to Vyasa-bhishya. Vyasa says that Isvara has a pure body made of the purest sattva, and the evidence that we have of its existence is the creation of the šāstras, and if the body had not been so pure the šāstras could not have been so pure and infallible. It is easy to see that Vyasa had no other way of proving the existence of Isvara, which had no place in the system, than by appealing to the sastras, a device so rarely to be found in the general metaphysical discussions. It is on account of the pure body of Īsvara that he can have knowledge and action by which he could produce the sastras for the benefit of the people and it is from the šāstras again that his pure nature could be inferred; such is their

! Compare the Brahmasutra ** sastrayonitvat.”

mutual relation from eternity. His is the highest power ; there is nonē like him ; he is one, for if the~e had been many Isvaras, then there would have been guarrels for supremacy, or the desire and will of one would have been baffled by that of another. He who has no equal and who has the ultimate perfection of all powers and omniscience is I$vara.! He has nothing to realise for himself but he acts for the good of all beings and gives instruction in true knowledge and virtue for the emancipation of men. It is only natural for the pure souls to show mercy to others who are wretched : thus it is that Kapila with the help of a pure body first instructed Asuri in the Samkhya system. But Iévara is the instructor of all previous teachers in all past ages. The pranava or the omkara has from eternity been the name to designate him. Thus we find that so far as the Yyāsa-bhāshya is concerned Īsvara is an unfettered soul, which is ever existing as the most exalted person with the purest body who brought forth the Vedas, and who is always engaged in doing good to the beings of the world. He is thus the omniscient, all-powerful, all-merciful, unfettered object of meditation, as he is of the same nature as the unfettered purusha, the object of Yoga meditation. Isvara is a fit object of meditation, as he is of the

1 Compare the Nyāya lóvara as found in Vatsyayana-bhashya.

same nature as the purusha himself and as he

being attracted (a@varjita) by bhakti fulfils his purpose by the merest wish.

Vacaspati however tries to find outa place for Í$vara by conceiving him elsewhere as removing the barriers of the prakrti. This is indeed a very ingenious and happy device ; for we know that prakrti has the movement in herself. There is also the inherent teleology in the prakrti by virtue of which all her movements become such that they are suited to the purpose of the purushas determined by their previous karmas, and it is this which gives the order and system of the universe, for these only signify that the universe is in harmony with the knowledge and expectations of men. Prakrti again winds and unwinds of herself as pralaya and sarga. But the point which still remains to be questioned is that when at the pralaya all energy and matter are reduced to a state of pure potentiality, how can it (without any external movement) again reduce itself into its kinetic forms. Sāmkhya says, as we have already seen, that prakrti itself unwinds from the state of pralaya but the Yoga can maintain here with much reason that so far ag the positive content of unwinding is concerned it is certainly due to prakrti, but there is the negative affair without which the flow of the unwinding process would have remained in a state

of pure potentiality, namely, that of removing the obstacles and the impediments in prakrti herself which arrested its outgoing flow. The flow of energy is always on the way to actualiseitself, but it cannot do so unless the inherent obstacles which kept it in a certain form be removed. This is true not only of the state of pralaya, but in all subsequent stages ; for whenever prakrti is in any of her forms of development, it means that the constituent elements have so stood in relation to one another as to effectuate the desired form; but this form can only change if any one of the gunas gets greater ascendency than the others than was found in the existing form; but how can the gunas change the relation of their relative strength ? Thus it has to be admitted that the obstacles in the way of the flow of the gunas in an appropriate direction must be removed before such a transformation can take place. In our ordinary phenomenal experience of conscious or volitional energy also we find that we have but to remove the obstacles in the way of the flow of the material energy consequent upon which the flow commences to actualise. It is for the removal of these obstacles that the Yoga Isvara is of use as an important element in the metaphysical system of the Yoga. Isvara removes the barriers of the prakrti in accordance with the merits and demerits of men and as a result

of that she can flow of herself to fulfil the purposes of the purushas; for merit and demerit being but modifications of the prakrti cannot of themselves remove her barriers and all purushas are absolutely inactive. Vacaspati holds that at the time of the pralaya, Isvara renounces his body with a desire that it should rise up again when the period of creation commences. Asa result of that his pure sattvamaya body returns to the prakrti and again rises up and connects itself with Isvara, who then continues to help the order of the creation by his will by removing the suitable obstacles.

Vijūāna Bhikshu differs from Vacaspati in holding that the pure body of Isvara never returns to prakrti during the pralaya but that he is always in possession of his pure body, for Īsvara's pure body cannot be regarded as being either limited by time or as possessing potency or samskāra which is due to avidyā.

As regards the general Yoga position about Tsvara, Bhikshu says in the Yijūānāmrtabhāshya that the Yoga in order to avoid the difficulties of meeting the imputations of a partial or a cruel Tsvara has accepted the independence of prakrti in all its winding and unwinding processes. Īsvara is only one of many objects on which a Yogin can concentrate his mind. The only purpose of Isvara is to do good to his devotees.’

. Bhikshu himself had an ardent religious zeal and he could hardly think of his dear Samkhya to be atheistic in spite of its clear and distinct professions on that side. Thus when he has to explain the atheistic declarations of the Samkhyasutra, he remarks that these atheistical statements are only exaggerations (praudhivada) to show that for acquiring dispassion towards worldly pleasures it is not necessary that one should know Í$vara; or in other words ethical and moral qualities of a man when combined with true knowledge are quite sufficient to bring about salvation for a man, even without a belief in Ī$vara' In another place in Vijfanamrtabhashya he says that Samkhya cannot be regarded atheistic, as the Upanishads refer to the Samkhyas as professing an Isvara in such passages as “ tatkūraņam, sāmkhya-yogādhigamyam ki and the atheists were held in great disrepute in the Upanishad age.”

Vijiana Bhikshu's comment on the Vyāsabhashya shows that he believed that in the pralaya as well as during creation Isvara was always connected with his pure body as the permanent basis of his eternal knowledge and will. With that pure body Isvara has his joyous experiences though he has no bondage of abhimāna with them, as is the case with ordinary purushas. It

Pravacana-bhāshya, 5.12. * Vijūānāmrta-bhāshya, p. 129.

is because I$vara does not identify himself with his happiness that he is generally spoken of as nirguna or without any attribute. Bhikshu thinks that both the prakrti and the purushas have their truth and reality in his being, and it is by his will that the purushas are connected with the prakrti. The disturbance of the prakrti is also due to Isvara’s will (prakrtervaishamyahetuh kshobhopi Isvarecchata eva— Yogavāritika, 1. 24). The purushas are regarded as mere sparks of Isvara. The reality therefore of prakrti and the purusha cannot be distinguished from the reality of the Isvara, though their separate existence as such is not denied. Purushas are the parts of which Isvara is the whole. Bhikshu however controverts the Vedanta view of one Brahma-intelligence as appearing as Īsvara and the individual souls. His main objections are, (1) that in that case the limitations through which the individual could appear should be regarded as limiting Isvara as well, inasmuch as the limitations which obstruct the pure consciousness (caitanya) are to be regarded as the sum-total of the limitations of the individual souls; (2) if again the limitations of individual souls be regarded as different from the limitation of I$vara then also he cannot be regarded as dominating and controlling the individual souls; moreover if one limitation of an individual soul is broken then also the

pure intelligence of that soul may again connect itself with other available limitations, just as the vacuum (ūkāša) of a broken jug may again be found as occupying the interior of another jug; (8) the reflection theory of the Vedantists is untenable, for reflection being absolutely unreal, jiva also becomes absolutely unreal, and so the question of its identification with Brahman also fails. Bhikshu says that in his view these difficulties have no place, since the souls are always like sparks of fires, parts of Tsvara at all times; the difference is only apparrent, on account of the semblance of a connection of the souls with their respective buddhis. Emancipation comes in when by true knowledge the soul finds that the prakrtiis distinct from itself, and as a result of that the soul is freed from the bondage of prakrtiand is then lost in its true nature as a part of the Brahman or T$vara. Concentration as meditating on the meaning of pranava is therefore of two kinds, namely that of thinking the self as a part of Īsvara the whole, or that of thinking the spiritual nature of the self as distinct from the prakrti and her effects. In this procedure Isvara is not affected by the connection of the individual souls with their prakrti because in the. pure sativa there is no room for ignorance and afflictions of the individual souls; but both the prakrti and the purushas are held in the person

of Īsvara, aud cannot be thought of as being separate from Him though their independent realities cannot be denied, in the fashion of the monistic Vedanta. The position is designated as one of avibhāga as of milk and water. This view has been only referred toin brief in the Yogavarttika as the right conception of Isvara, and it has been elaborated in great detail in the Vijfanamrtabhdshya. Thus Isvara here in the theological aspect appears as the father of us all, and He is always engaged in doing good to us in accordance with our moral conduct. We are at once separate from him as being his sons and yet one with him as he is our father: so long as we are under the bonds of passions and afflictions we are separate from him though in reality we are still in Him; but as soon as these are removed we are free in our essence and again one with Him, though we do not still lose our identity as ourselves all the while. Thus the prakrti in the Yoga system was generally regarded as being presided over by Tévara, though there was a difference of views as to the exact nature of His influence. This idea of Bhikshu however is an old one which appears in the diverse Puranas and in the Gita in slightly modified forms. We notice in the Mahābhārata also that the prakrti is said to return back to the Paramātman on the release of the purusha. In the Vaishnava schools of

thought also the same line of thinking may be found.

But it is best that we should not discuss this subject at length, as if may leave the impression that the question of determining the relation of ĪSvara to souls was one of the main problems of the Yoga philosophy ; the sole aim of the later Vaishnava systems was to bring out the relations between the individual and the Absolute Tsvara as can be determined in thought, emotion and action, and to realise them in devotion; but with Yoga the subject of Tévara is of secondary interest, whereas the main interest is to remove the afflictions of the citta by the cultivation of dispassion and habits of concentration for the release of the purusha; Isvara is described only as being one of the many objects of concentration ; by fixing the attention on Him the Yoga goal may be achieved in a more convenient manner, as He may be pleased to remove the obstacles of the Yoga and thereby make the way smoother for the Yogin; there is alsoa general belief in Him that He is the father of us all and the dedication of the fruits of all actions to Him has been described as being one of the principal ways of purifying the mind.

CHAPTER IX. Yoca PSYCHOLOGY.

The difficulty of putting the ideas of an antique age into modern forms is that they do not often suit them. Not only are the modes of expression different but the methods of enguiry, as well as the interest which guides them in each case, are also different. The interest of the present generation is of a positivistic nature ; it generally likes to take the phenomena as they are, and to study their relations, and the end in view is to serve the usefulness of the present world. The modern sciences are tending towards utilitarian ends and psychology is gradually being studied more and more in the light of other exact sciences, and the action and reaction of the mental and the material worlds are daily becoming matters of laboratory investigation, instead of abstract conjectures under the domination of metaphysical theories. It is therefore hardly justifiable to devote a chapter to Yoga psychology in the modern sense of the subject, but it cannot be gainsaid that the problem of knowledge as well as that of the principle on which the arrest, movement and annulment of ideas and emotions

260 YOGA PHILOSOPEY

depend, was of great importance for the Yoga philosophy. For unlike the other Indian systems of philosophy, emancipation is achieved here not by mere knowledge but by a process of psychological discipline by which it is said that the mind-stuff is absolutely disintegrated and merged in the Prakrti.

It is therefore necessary before we enter upon a discourse on this Yoga method of mental discipline of an ultramoral type that we should discuss the essential characteristics of the Yoga theory of mind or citta. Translating the word citta as mind in absence of a better word, we may put the question in the form in which we get it in ordinary text-books of psychology, what is citta or mind? The common answer of modern psychology is that it is that which knows, feels and wills. The answer of Yoga is that it is the stuff of consciousness formed of the three gunas sattva, rajas and tamas with an absolute preponderance of the first ; its existence is involved in the mahattattva, and as such it is all-pervasive in its nature. It is infinite in number as each has to serve its respective purusha, and in this aspect it continues to exist till the time of pralaya. Mahattattva is but the collective aspect of this citta material, though the citta should be distinguished from the mahat in this that fresh citta materials are always being evolved in it from the prakrti,

which are always ina state of transformation into the tanmātras and the atoms. The mahat is thus the general name as upholding the mindstuff and the matter-stuff. This cittain its all-pervasive character is called the karana citta. This karana citta holds within itself as its manifestation the karyya citta transforming itself as the asmitā, the ten senses, the manas, and also the motor power prana by which it transforms itself into the various life faculties. The citta is continually passing through its states, and as such resembles a flame ; the movements of the senses and the ego are all absorbed in its movement as different moments, and its substance is composed of their substance. It has an appearance different from them in a continual state of transformation like the flame of a lamp (vrttik pradipasikhavat dravyarūpā), though it remains all the same united with them. Thus the first is the buddhi stage, which has only the mere objective determination (niscaya); the second is the stage of asmitā or abhimāna, the ego, which feels all things as belonging to the self as “ I am so and so," “ mine is this or that ; ” then there are the five cognitive senses, five conative senses; and the faculties of desire and doubt; these however are all endowed with a dynamic of life called the pràna which again is associated with its five characteristic movements which preserve the life-functions

called the pranavrtti. The cittaas thus associated with its modifications is called the karyyacitta or citta as effect, and this citta pervades the whole body of the man or animal to whom it belongs and thus may be said to be contracting or expanding according to the extent of the body it occupies. The Samkhya school however, as the Yogavarttika notices, does not admit the existence of one citta which contracts and expands according to the body it occupies and it is made up of the fine essence of sattva infinitesimals (the other two being extremely subordinated).

It is however with the karyyacitta and its modifications that we are directly interested ; for the karanacitta is only a hypothetical all-pervasive ground for explaining some of the Yoga miracles. It is this ground, the kāraņacitta, which in connection with different bodies manifests itself as the kāryyacitta. Its existence is the same as that of the kāranacitta under particular limitations.

Thus to repeat our question, what is citta ? We find thatit involves feeling, willing and knowing in the way that all the three are but the three aspects of the same state. The citta is continually transforming itself into its diverse states, and each state is as much a state of knowing as a state of feeling and willing. The citta and all its transformations are but the

modifications of a subtle kind of matter, namely, the three gunas with the preponderance of sattva. In reality these three gunas, the substratum of the mentality, are but the three feeling-stuff entities which being plastic and translucent can reflect the objective world or transform themselves into its exact copies. These transformations can be looked at from three distinct aspects : (1) the mould or the form that it has taken of the objective world or any other representation, (2) its flow or movement, (3) its reality as feeling-stuff. These three aspects of any state of citta appears as knowledge, willing and feeling, when it comes in connection with purusha, the pure intelligence. The whole process of intellection consists in the intelligisation of these unconscious modifications of the states. The citta we know is regarded here as 'being spread all over the body just as the Jains thought of the soul. The contact of citta with the external world takes place through the medium of the active modifications of the senses. External objects are not represented in the citta as they really are but as they are modified by the senses through which they are transmitted. The sense data therefore vary with each individual according to the special characteristic qualities of his senses through which the objects are perceived. The spatial qualities of things as lying about in space are perceived

264 i YOGA PHILOSOPHY

by the senses directly, but the time-order is a

scheme of the citta, mind or understanding. As

regards the action of the senses in relation to

manas Bhikshu says that the Samkhya- Yoga sup-

poses that the senses can directly perceive the determinate qualities of things without any intervention of manas, whereas Vacaspati ascribes to manas the power of arranging the sense-data in a definite order and of making the indeterminate sense-materials determinate. ‘The first stage is the stage of indeterminate percepts (valamukadivijūūnasadršam mugdhavastujam) when the world of objects is transmitted before the bar ‘of buddhi. The next stage is the stage of assimilation, differentiation and association, by which the indeterminate data are ordered and classified by manas. Itis this activity of manas called samkalpa which co-ordinates the indeterminate percepts into determinate, perceptual or conceptual forms as class notions with particular characteristics; the different senses may act in succession, as well as simultaneously ; the action of the categories of the mind, namely, the actions of buddhi, ahamkara, as well as the senses, also take place sometimes in different moments and sometimes immediately as in the case of fear, etc. Bhikshu who supposes that the determinate character of things is directly perceived by the senses has necessarily to assign a subordinate position fo manas as being only the faculty

of desire, doubt and imagination. It is important to remember in this connection that citta must be distinguished from buddhi, the faculty of niscaya, co-ordination or determination and ahamkāra, the ego, the faculty which actively relates all things with the self as its experiences or as identifying itself with them. According to Yoga these two are to be regarded as the separate vrttis of the citta in the process of cognition which first discerns a thing as such, and then identifies the thing or its experiences with the experiencer shining forth as the ego ; looked at from another point of view these may all be regarded as the working of the same vrtti, excited either by the senses of presentation or by the representative elements of memory, etc. The Buddhists characterise the nirvikalpa concept as the mere characterless specific individuality (svalakshana) ; the Bhatta school holds that it is not mere specific individuality but the appearance of a thing of which the parts and the relations are not distinct (sammugdhakaram vastu). It later on develops into the savikalpa stage when it is associated with class notions, attributes, action, name, etc. The Nyaya distinguishes the two stages, the nirvikalpa as the specific individuality, as the basis of the notions of genus, etc., and the savikalpa as the thing characterised or determined by the notions of genus and species ( Jatyadisvarupávagahi na tu

jātyādīnām mitho višeshaņavišeshyabhāvāvagāhi — Tātparyyatīkā, p. 82).

Thus Vacaspati’s view with regard to Sāmkhya and Yoga perception agrees in the main with the Bhatta view in admitting that in the indeterminate stage neither the genus nor the differentia is presented in consciousness ; all that is present there being only the individual wherein those two subsist. Bhikshu’s view runs counter to the other views and reduces the importance of manas in the perceptual process to a minimum, for it holds the nirvikalpa and savikalpa as stages produced by the prolonvation of the work of the visual sense.

In discussing the nature of sense perception we find that owing to a defective knowledge of opties, the Hindus were much puzzled and could not explain how the visual sense came in contact with the external objects. Some of the schools of philosophy thought that the visual sense actually protruded itself and reached the objects whereas Yoga held that the visual sense could connect itself with the external objects (even without going over to them) by its processes called vrtti.

About the auditory perception of words it is said that the sound is produced as vibrations of the air which touch the ear drum and produce the sensation of the sounds of alphabets. The object of the perception of the auditory organs

is the sabda tanmatra and not the entities signified by those words.

In connection with the subject of auditory perception, the doctrine of sphota attracts our notice. This doctrine has indeed little or no philosophical importance. But it is so peculiarly associated with the Yoga doctrine that I believe it may be expected of me to enter into a little digression to describe briefly the special features of the theory of sphota. Vacaspati on describing sphota says that each of the letters has the potentiality of manifesting endless meanings but none of them can do it individually ; it is only when-the alphabet sounds are produced in succession by one effort of speech that these individual alphabets by their own particular contiguity or distance from one another can manifest a complete word called sphota. Thus owing to the variation of contiguity or distance, and by the intervention of another alphabet sound, they may manifest any meaning or word ; for the particular order and the association of alphabet sounds depend upon the particular output of energy required in making their utterance, The sphota is therefore a particular modification of the buddhi of that word, whereas the alphabet sounds have their temporary origin in the organ of speech, lasting there only so long as they are uttered, and lasting in the sense of hearing only so long as each one of them is

heard. It is well to point out in this connection that the theory that the alphabet sounds themselves are of endless potentiality and can manifest any word sphotas according to their particular combinations and recombinations is quite in keeping with the main metaphysical doctrines of the Patafijala philosophy, though the Samkhya stands against it and denies the existence of any such sphota.'

As regards the question of verbal cognition the Yoga holds that it proceeds only from a confusion of (1) the alphabet sounds which are perceived in the sense of hearing, (2) the whole word or šabda manifested in the buddhi, and (3) the corresponding objects existing in the external world denoted by the sabda. The three though altogether distinct from one another yet appear to be unified on account of the sanketa or sign, so that the alphabet sounds, the sphota word, and the thing can never be distinguished from one another. Of course knowledge can arise even in those cases where there is no actual external object, simply by virtue of the manifesting power of alphabet sounds

1 In later times however there had been a tendency on the side of Sāmkhya authors to accept the doctrine of sphota. Thus Sīmānanda says ;—tāni paddnyevarthasya karanatvat sphota iti ucyate; taddht padam vügindriyoccaryyapratyekavarnebhyah atiriktam, varņānām ūdu. taravinaéitaya melanabhavat naikam padamiti vyavahGragocaratvasambhavat arthasmārakatvāsambhavācea.—Sāmkhyatattvaviņecana,

(šabdajiiāānānupātī vastušūnyah vikalpah). This saūketa or convention is defined as the manifestation of memory of the nature of mutual confused identification of words and their meanings. This object is the same as this word and this word is the same as this object. Thus there is no actual unity of words and their objects ; it is only imagined to be so by beginningless tradition. This view may thus be well contrasted with the Nyāya view which says that the convention of words by which they signify objects are due to the will of God (asmāt šabdāt ayam artho boddhavya iti Jávareccharüpah).

To understand the sphota more clearly we find that first the vocal sound is produced in the mouth of the speaker; the sound then moves in aerial waves until it reaches the ear-drum of the hearer; by coming in contact with which it produces the audible sound called dhvani. This sound in the stage of pure varnas is called nada. The third stage of šabda is that in which the varna g, au, and ha, as in the case of the word gauh are taken together and the complete word form ‘gauh’ comes before our view The comprehension of this complete word form is an attribute of the mind and not of the sense of hearing ; for the sense of hearing only receives the varna sounds as they are produced one by one. But each varna vanishes as it is generated, as the sense of hearing has no power to hold

them together and comprehend the varnas in a collective form in a definite order. The ideation of the complete word is called sphota. It differs from the varna sounds which die the next moment that they are generated. All significance belongs to this sphota form and it is believed that the varna sounds pronounced or heard in a particular order serve to give rise to such ideational word-images which possess denotation and connotation and are thus called sphota. These are essentially different in nature from the varna sounds generated in the sense of hearing, which are momentary and evanescent, and can never be brought together to form one whole as the complete word form.

It may not be out of place here to notice that with the exception of Patafijali the grammarian and his followers there are in general no other adherents of the sphota theory in the Yoga fashion in any of the prominent systems of Indian philosophy. Both Kumarila and Prabhakara deny the sphota for they say that when the samskaras have to be admitted, even on the sphota view it is better to admit that, with the help of the samskara, the varņa sounds are sufficient to explain the šabda directly instead of manifesting the šabda sphota as the Yoga holds. The Nyāyavaiseshika view also discards the sphota on the ground that the varnas pronounced

and heard in a definite order are jointly called a name when they denote a particular meaning or object. The fact that the Yoga should differ on such a technical matter from Kapila Samkhya with which it is philosophically so much united, and bold a view which is held only by Patafjali of the Mahabhashya is therefore the most important argument in favour of identifying the Pataiijali of the Yoga with the Patafijali of the Mahabhashya.

We may now conclude the discourse on perception by briefly describing the principal moments involved in the production of the perceptual knowledge. Thus taking for example the visual perception we find first that the connection between the visual sense and the object takes place in absence of the natural obstruction to perception—such as too much remoteness (atidūrāt), too much proximity (simipy&t), defect of the visual organ (indriyaghātāt), too much want of attention (mano’navasthānāt), too much fineness (saukshmāt), as in the case of atoms, the existence of an obstructing barrier between the organ and the object as by walls, etc. (vyavadhānāt), the brightness of objects being overcome by other brighter things as in the case of the stars during daytime (abhibhavat), the non-distinction which a thing suffers when it is lost in its own medium as in the case of drops of water in water. The

connection once established between the sense organ and the external object, the citta being modified by the sense organ through which its connection with the external object is made, assumes the form of the object. So it is that the sense of colour, etc., are due in part to the visual organ too. It should be remembered that the citta may also suffer transformations quite simultaneously with the visual modification. The problem of acquired perception "is solved here through samskara as in the case of Nyàya. Thus as soon as the citta suffers any transformation through the senses and the samskaras acting through the tamas, the tamas or obstruction being removed, the pure citta is tinged and coloured according to the object with which it has been connected. Thus it is that the buddhi has the same form as the external object. In dream experience, though there is no presentation of an external object, the citta through samskara assumes a shape which is akin to the mental object. This transformation of the citta is called a state or vrtti of the citta; this state is in itself non-intelligent and a species of mind-stuff; but it is raised to the status of valid cognition by being connected with the purusha immediately it is produced. It is the purusha who intelligises these states by receiving the reflection from the buddhi states; the reflection again in the purusha of

the baddhi appears as the notion of the ego, or the perceiver of the states! For internal thought also the process of citta transformation is just the same.

The states or vrttis of citta are described as of five kinds (1) right cognition, (2) illusory knowledge, (3) imagination, (4) sleep, and (5) memory. Right knowledge is said to be of three kinds namely, perception, inference, and sorip. tural testimony. Of these perception has already been described. Inference is of three kinds: (1) pürvavat or that from cause to effect, (9) šeshavat, from effect to cause, (3) sāmānyatodrshta, where the inference proceeds from general similarity alone. Anumana is the process of ascertaining not by perception or by direct observation but through the instrumentality or by the medium of a mark, that a thing possesses a certain character. Inference is therefore based on the establishment of an invariable concomitance between the mark and the character inferred. It is not merely formal nor merely material, but it combines formal validity with material truth, inductive generalisation with deductive particularisation.

Whether we infer the effect such as the rain from the cause, the clouds as in pūrvavat, or infer the cause such as the rain from the flood in

1 Gee for the jūānotpattiprakriyā of Samkhyayoga, pp. 74.79, of Vijfidnadmrtabhashya of Bhikshu,

the street as in Seshavat, a single condition called a cause is not invariably succeeded by the effect, nor does the phenomenon in general point to any particular cause as antecedent, for there may be a plurality of causes leading to a general effect. The skilful observer will therefore select the full complement of causal conditions, which is invariably succeeded by the effect, and also the specific effect which points to a spevific causal antecedent. A specific assemblage of causes therefore has only one assemblage of effects and vice versa; of course the observer is to find out the essential features (as distinguished from irrelevant ones) which being included will enable him to specify the particular cause of the particular effect, and this is done by what is called the knowledge of svabhāvapratibandha or vyāpti.

As regards viparyyaya or the psychology of illusion, Yoga does not hold like Samkhya that the illusion of silver in Sukti is due to the fact that the memory of the silver cannot be distinguished from the percept of the object under presentation ;* nor does it agree with Vaiseshika in holding that the memory of silver appears in the form of the percept of sukti which is thus perceived to be thereby of the form

1 This is virtually the admission of the Akhyati theory of illusion. rajatamitt jūānam na bhramah kintu svarūpatah arthatašca aviviktam jūānadvayam, yasya yadriamidam rajatamīti rajatajūānavishayībhūtam tüdríamega jagaditi nirnayah,—Samkhyatativavivecana, p. 32.

of silver. But it holds that it is the sukti which appears in the mind in the form of the silver, for when such direct transformation is possible, there is no necessity of admitting memory of external silver existing at a distant time or place appearing as a present percept.’ That such a transformation is only mental ideation and not a case of memory appearing as the object under perception, as being perceived, is proved by the fact that with regard to dream consciousness we say that we experienced it in dream but it is no longer present. Such an experience that it is not now but yet it was experienced, shows that the dream experience is a case of mental adaptation of a kind which is not in real existence; for if all illusion is analysed as the appearance of the memory of distant objects in form of things which are perceived at the present moment, then the dream existence could not be regarded as possessing any present existence, and then negated again in the waking time as an existence in the past during sleep. This theory of Yoga illusion is called anyathakhyati. This illusion is a product of avidyà (ignorance), which we know is

Svartipatah arthatašca aviviktam jūānadvayam, yasya yadréamidam rajatamiti rajatajitānaviskāyībhūtam tasya tédréiameva jagat st nirnayah—Ibid,

defined as a positive knowledge of a thing as that which it is not and not a mere negative non distinction between the right and the wrong thing.

Vikalpa is the existence of abstract imagination on the basis of language symbols, as when we say “ the intelligence of the purusha " though we know that the purusha has no other essence than pure intelligence. Without such a characteristic mode of citta transformation abstract thinking would be impossible.

Dreamless sleep is also regarded here as a state of mind in which the tamas predominates over the sattva, on the ground that on awaking a man remembers it as a state of mind. This, as it is easy to see, runs directly counter to the Vedantic teaching that sushupti cannot be regarded as a state of mind for the ātman remains then ina state of jis own pure bliss. Bhikshu however tries to make a compromise with tbe Upanishad texts which are in favour of the Vedantic view by supposing that there are two grades of sushupti, the ardhasushupti (halfdreamless sleep) and the samagra-sushupti (complete dreamless sleep) and that it is only to the latter case that the Upanishads refer.

When we perceive things, the act or the states of mind as perceiving as well as the perceptual image of the thing generate in the citta corresponding samskāras, potencies or

YOGA PSYCHOLOGY OTT

impressions. In the presence of things which have associative bonds with them these are revived, and asa result of that, comes the memory of the thing as well as the state of mind associated with its former perception. The dream state of mind is a result of memory, though the representations are all unreal, and as such the dream states are examples of viparyyaya or illusion. All these different kinds of cognition are the different classes into which the modifications of buddhi can be divided or rather the different images of the buddhi substance.

These modifications of citta as pratyayas or states of mind must however be distinguished from other aspects of citta which cannot be directly experienced, as they represent the character of the citta in its own nature. Thus first of all it has to be admitted that it is possible for the citta to remain in itself without transforming itself into its states, though this its existence in its own nature can never be cognised. This state is called the nirodha state. Ordinarily we find that the citta is incessantly transforming itself into its states in ordinary perception, in representative thought as smrti and vikalpa, in dream as viparyyaya or as sleep. There is not a moment when the citta is divested of its states in our experience, but still it is the fundamental postulate of Yoga that such a state is possible when the citta remains in itseli

without transforming itself into the states, for the aim of all Yoga is to reduce the citta to this form. There is also the moral colouring of the citta as virtue and vice, merit and demerit. Then there are the samskāras or the impressions in the citta as the ground of memory. There is further the plasticity of the citta, the pariņāma by virtue of which it is always transforming itself, and there is not a moment when it is at rest. Then there is also the life functions which are, so to say, almost like bye-products of the citta transformations—the movement which is characterised as the movement of the five vayus. Further there is the volitional activity or willing (ceshtā) by which the conative and the cognitive senses are brought in relation to their objects. 'Then there is also the reserve potent power, Sakti of citta, by which the citta can retain itself or change its course and directions. These characteristics ave involved in the very essence of citta and form the ground work of the Yoga method of practice, which consists in steadying a particular state of mind and then giving it up and steadying a finer state and so on until the citta is reduced to its pure essence.

On the side of the feelings we know that the gunas themselves are but feeling materials; so it is that every mental state has not only a tinge of feeling in it, but pleasure, pain and a feeling of ignorance are all present in the

same state of mind, at one and the same time. But the Yoga holds that though all the three feelings are present simultaneously yet it is pain which is the most prominent among them. Even when a feeling of pleasure is felt, there is the pain also in it for howsoever a man may like to be the possessor of any pleasure, he has also the antipathy against its removal, and this antipathy is fraught with sorrow. This antipathy again leaves behindit its potency, and this potency will have a tendency towards repeating the pain feeling. From the feeling of pleasure also there will be new potencies, and these will again try to repeat themselves in new experiences, and these will associate with new turns of aatipathy and pains. As our sensitiveness grows, we find that all our experiences are but experiences of sorrow, for not only are the best pleasures mixed with sorrow but they aso directly lead to sorrow of themselves; the Yogin alone can feel these subtle shades of pain.

It is not out of place to note here that this pessimism of the Yoga does not necessarily follow from the metaphysics, for pleasure is as much an element of the composite of feelings of each state, as pain, and if owing to the presence of pain all states areto be styled as painful, they may as well be called pleasurable If pleasures lead to pains, pains also lead to

pleasures. Samkhya pessimism is not so deep, for there the ambition is to weed out all the roots of pain so that they may not come at all but here all the experiences are felt to be painful. It is well therefore that this pessimism should be distinguished as a special characteristic of the Yoga school.

With regard to the law which regulates the rise and disappearance of emotions, the most important thing is that the growth of the potencies of the contrary feelings always checks the other feelings. The surest mode therefore of driving away a particular type of feelings is to try to habituate oneself to their opposite emotions. Emotions which are of a similar nature always try to help their mutual appearance, and it is only with the rise of the opposite emotions either through self-initiation op through objective influence that the other emotions and their potencies can be destroyed. The law of the appearance or disappearance of any emotion or idea depends on the strength or weakness of their potency. The strength of the potency again. depends upon the frequency of occurrence of the emotion or idea and vice versa. They may be said to be mutually the cause and effect of each other.

Thus the chief results of psychology with which the Yoga as a system of moral-inteliec-

tual practice is interested may be summed up as follows :—

(1) The buddhi is always transforming itself into its states either by the presentative or by the representative process and these states are in the main of the nature of pain.

(2) By concentration it is possible to bring forward any state of mind and by repeating it, its potency may be so far strengthened that that state gradually becomes steady, and all the movements of the mind are arrested.

(3) By the growth of practice and steadiness there might come such an ultimate steadiness, when the buddhi shrinks back to its own essence and there are no states at all.

To conclude the chapter with a brief review of the main problems of psychological interest, we find first that the problem of the interaction of mind and matter has been solved by the supposition that the mind is composed of the same three essences of which the external world is composed ; so that the mind or citta being only a translucent counterpart of the same stuff of which the objective world is made up, it can easily tinge or transform itself automatically after the mould or pattern of the objects. In Buddhism we find that there is an apparatus capable of reacting to an impact not itself an impinging form (rüpa) producing an impact

of one specific kind, an impact between these two, and the resultant modification of the mental continuum as the intellectual and the feeling result involving the two moments of mutual impact as causing the modification and as constituting the object of attention in the modified consciousness. The action and re-action of sense and sense-object are compared in realistic metaphor to the clash of two cymbals and the butting of two goats, and thus it is that we find it said in the Atthasalini that the “strikes on the eye are receptive of the object consciousness.” From the discussions in Sastradipika, Nyüyamaūjarī, and Nyāyabindu also, we collect that the raising of these indeterminate sense-data to the determinate stage is done from within, and so the objective world as it appears in our perception as having name and form and as appearing under class notions and as wholes containing parts and diverse characteristics, is more a creation of the inner imagination than a conglomeration of diverse reals (puūja). The Yoga as explained by Bhikshu differs from such a view of the origination of a precept in this that, according to it the indeterminate stage as the contact of the citta with the object, and the determinate stage as the modifications of the citta, both take place in association with the sense through which the unity took place.

Time and association as relative space (dik) are

generally the only two elements imposed by the

buddhi faculty of the citta; in auditory percep-

tion however the formation of the whole words

on the basis of the dying alphabet sounds is

also ascribed to the buddhi. The association

of names with objects is also regarded as an

illusory confusion between the auditory per-

ception of the name with the objects of percep-

tion of the other senses. As regards the rela-

tion of the sense-material with the sensations also we find that in spite of the same sensematerial there are different sensations for different persons according to the nature and character of the senses through which these are presented to the citta. But apart from limitations of this kind no distinction is made in the perceptual process between the sensory stage and the intelligible stage, and the latter is regarded as the continuity of tke former, for the impinging here only brings the citta into contact with the object of presentation ; once the contact is established the citta transforms itself into the form of the objeet. But this citta transformation should be distinguished from the Vedanta transformation of antahkarana in that here corresponding with each moment of contact there is a separate modification of the citta, which is constantly changing its states, whether it be in the form of similar or

dissimilar ones. In Vedanta however until the presentation changes, the form of the citta remains the same, and there is no such continual change of the citta as is described here.’

At this point again though with the Buddhists there is no permanent citta substance, yet there is a great similarity between the Buddhists and the Yoga idea; for with the Buddhists the rise of citta is a mere expression to fix the occasion for the induction of the whole concrete psychosis and also in a variety of other senses such as mental object or presentation (ārammaņam), the process of connecting the last things arising in consciousness with that which preceded them (sandhānam), the property of imitative action (pure cārikam), etc. The citta is constantly dying and arising, according as it appears with all the sensory objects as its field and its special province of dhammas. Citta may thus be occupied with its past experience, memory, or ratiocination, etc., called sometimes manoviiiānam as the dhammas of mano, as well as the cognition of the visual forms, etc., of objects. Butin whatsoever mould it may be, its stages are rising and dying. In Yoga also we find that citta is used in all this diversity of senses and even more, and just as can be found here, each stage

1 oriteļ svavirodhivrttyutpattiparyantam sthāyitvābhyupagamāt (Vedantaparibhasha, p. 27, Bombay, 1911.)

of citta is continually rising and passing away. But there is this difference that there is a citta substance here, and the states which arise whether in the form of external objects or in the form of inner reflection, etc., are all merely the transitory expressions of the citta substance, which in its essential form is below the threshold of the plane of consciousness. External sensations serve to bring out this potential citta into its actual states as coloured by them. When these presentations are absent, it transforms into the states naturally by the dynamic of its past impressions, and it is this continual burning of the sub-conscious stuff into the conscious states that is called the «ame of consciousness.” Until and unless the sub-conscious is brought out in the form of the states it cannot be cognised ; in spite of its pure essence it cannot catch the reflection of the soul. This lower region is a store-house of experiences of the most varied kinds in a latent state. The door of that treasure house which is also a work-house, is locked, so far as the conscious experiences of the purusha are concerned. The senses are like the chinks and crevices through which there isa constant coming and going, and the manufactured products of the lower world

are coutinually returning to the upper plane of consciousness and once more entering into (he

train and sequence of what we call active life ; both the invisible processes of this life as well as their root cause are as active as the visibles but from which these are derived. There is a continual movement from below upwards. A never-ending train of images, memories, and ideas keeps emerging into the light. Thus according to the Yoga, citta has two classes of characteristics, visible and the invisible, and it is the latter that controls the former and vice versa; for the visible as it passes away into the invisible gradually grows stronger and stronger in the form of potencies according to its frequency and stronger these potencies grow, the more their chance of actualising themselves in the form of visible states. But not only the plasticity, the change, the movement and life-functions are attributed to this citta, but there'is also the reserve power in it called the šakti, by virtue of which it can reflect and react back upon itself and change the passivity of its transformations into active states associated with will and effort. phus man's thoughts and actions are pure psychological determinations, but in the citta there is the reserve force by which it can act upon itself and determine itself. This force gets its full play in the strong effort required n meditation by which a particular state is

1 Of. James's description of the sub-conscious.

sought to be kept in a steady condition asa check against the natural flowing tendency. Aonther point already noticed, which may also be regarded as the important feature of the Yoga psychology, is the distinction of karana buddhi and karyya buddhi. The kàrana buddhis are pervasive and lie inherent in the stage of mahat. The karana buddhi expresses itself under the limitations of the body through which it is destined to play its róle as destined by its karma ; it is the greater psychical store of which only a part is revealed in each individual experience as a fragment. If with certain reservations we may be given the liberty of reflecting upon it in the language of modern psychologists, we may remember here the lines of McDougall, that “each human mind is conceived as but a fragmentary and temporary expression of some larger psychical whole; and it is sought to explain the supernormal phenomena by assuming that they are rendered possible by some temporary relaxation or breaking down of the conditions by which the isolation of the individual mind is commonly maintained, so that for the time being it may share in the larger life of the whole of which it is in reality a part and may draw psychical or spiritual energy from the common store more freely than is possible in normal condition.” It will be easy to see

that if this assumption of Yoga proved in future to be verifiable, it will explain many of the unexplained facts of abnormal psychology as

also of telepathy, hypnotism and other kindred psychic phenomena.

CHAPTER X. Yoea ETHICS.

Probably the earliest instance in the history of ethical thought of the schism between the ideal as pleasurable and the good which has in recent times been so much emphasised by Kant is to be traced in the episode of Naciketas and Yama in the Katha Upanishad. Naciketas is filled with a longing to know what becomes of man after death ? Yama asks him to cease from this enquiry, and offers in return all the sensual joys and pleasures of the world; but Naciketas spurns them all. He would not be satisfied with these transitory pleasures, as he was stirred up by the longing of the infinite within him. And Yama commending this noble conduct says “the good is one thing, the pleasant another ; these two having different objects, chain a man. jt is well with him who clings to the good; but he who chooses the pleasant misses his end. The good and the pleasant approach a man ; the wise goes round about them and distinguish them. Yea, the wise prefer the good to the pleasant, but the fool chooses the pleasant through greed and

avarice. Thou Naciketas after pondering on all pleasures that seem to be delightful, hast dismissed them all. Thou hast not gone into the road that leadeth to wealth, in which many men perish. Wide apart and leading to different points are these two, ignorance and what is known as wisdom. I believe thee Naciketas to be one who desires knowledge, for even many pleasures could not tear thee away." Later on Yama continues, that the self is not to be found by arguments but Naciketas has got it by true resolve, and by renouncing all that could be desired through motives of pleasure. It is this which is the ideal sought for in the Vedas and the goal of brahmacaryya and tapas. The path of truth or knowledge (vidyā) is that which leads man towards realising his own true essence as the self, whereas that which leads him to identify himself or his ideal with pleasures or their attainment is avidyā or the path of ignorance and untruth. We know that from the dawn of the Upanishad era of thought, the enquiry after the truth and reality had taken its firm hold upon the enlightened and the elevated, while the ordinary people were still under the sway of the popular gods, engaged in satisfying them with libations and sacrifices to ensure a prosperous and healthy lease of life with their help. This enquiry after true knowledge brought forth a new channel

of work through tapas and self-culture, and must be regarded as the dawn of a new ideal which sought the good for its own sake as against the Vedic ideal which worked through the hopes of pleasure and enjoyment. It is no doubt true that we do not find here the ordinary ethical modes of expression with which we are familiar in modern times, but in its essence it has the same ethical character, though it has not yet emerged clear from the theological and metaphysical elements associated with it. We view things from two different points of view, as to how they naturally are or as to how they should be with reference to a certain standard, and call the one “ natural " and the other *' norma. iive." Ethics thus is a normative science with its subject-matter as human conduct and character, not as natural facts with a history and causal connection with other facts but as possessing value in view of a standard or ideal. The claim of these ideals or ends to be universal and absoluie for human life necessarily raises the metaphysical question of the place of human life itself in the whole scheme of things, The metaphysical character of the Upanishad quest consists in this that it had laid its hold upon the ātman as the supreme and permanent reality. But the ethical aspect is also quite as strong, for the knowledge of self is not a mere

subject of metaphysical discussion, but it shows itself as an imperative upon all persons as the supreme ideal ** Thou shouldst know the self.” No one would be remoter from truth than he who should think that the result of the Upanishad teaching is a mere pantheistic creed, that it is the self which is the only reality and all else is maya ; for even if this extreme Vedantie monism be taken to be the only teaching of the Vedanta, we find here a subjective ethical ideal which grows up with the evolution of thought, and the supreme creative and presiding power of the universe becomes identified with the psychical principle in man; salvation lies in the personal recognition of this identity, and the ethical value of actions was reckoned not so much according to an objective scale of utility as according to a subjective calculus of their significance and result to the doer. Thus it is that we find that though the ultimate salvation was achieved by knowledge, and though there had grown up a general school of thought or tendency which exaggerated its supreme importance as the only end in view, a definite system of self-renunciation, self-culture and the practice of many cardinal virtues had come to be regarded as absolutely indispensable for qualifying oneself for furthering his great ambition of achieving this supreme subjective ideal. Thus not only do we find the

commandments relating to the ordinary civic duties, such as that of truthfulness, right conduct, righteousness, obedience to parents and teachers, making gifts, ete. (as in the Taittiriya Upanishad) but the much more advanced code, namely, that of controlling the senses and of keeping the mind in a state of steady meditation. The ideal of self-attainment presupposed the highest perfection of the ordinary ethical duties as being indispensably essential for the purpose. * He who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not tranquil and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, can never obtain the self by knowledge ” (Katha., ii, 28). The Upanishads assert a hierarchy of joys, and the highest of all joys and blessings is the realisation of the good, the Brahman, the self. But yet it is not hedonism ; the supreme realisation of man’s own psychical principle as the ultimate cosmical reality is the ethical form. to which all ethical actions are to be subordinated ; the performance of objective moral duties are essential only so long as by their performance such a perfection of the mind is not brought about as may stand as a sure guarantee against any misdeed, and it is in such a perfect state of the mind that there may dawn forth the true knowledge. So we see also that as the true identification of the self with pleasure or with any earthly object is avidyà, it is the

source of all that is ethically bad. The root of all good and evil is thus psychological as they are the direct results of right knowledge and ignorance respectively.

Yoga ethics also has to take this avidyā as the root of all evil, in the sense that all that is bad is due to it. We have spoken of avidyà in some of the previous chapters, but there we had only looked at it from the point of view of metaphysics ; but in Yoga it has a great importance from the point of view of ethical conduct as we shall try to show presently.

Ethics presupposes a conflict between the ideal and the actual which the will has to overcome, and this necessarily brings the question of the principle of evil. Prakrti in herself cannot be regarded as evil in any way, as she is a reality existing side by side with tbe souls. But when they come to regard the worldly objects (all evolutes of prakrti) as being endowed with attributes that they do not really possess, the psychological confusion leads to a series of blunders and misfortunes. The appearance, the ignorance, is the real cause of theevil. The evil does not therefore really exist it is the mere shadow that appears as the ghost and creates allthe fear and unrest. It is an eternal psychological confusion, which having taken root from beginningiess time is necessarily and naturally repeated again and again.

Thus it is through this ignorance that this changeful order of the universe is regarded by us as having been in existence permanently and eternally ; or that this body though impure from every consideration is regarded as pure, as is seen in the fascination, charm and passion that women generate in us, and we think “ The girl is attractive like the moon. Her limbs are as it were made of honey and nectar. She looks as if she has emerged from the moon. Her eyes are large like the leaves of a blue lotus ; with playful flashes of her eyes she imparts life to the world of men; " or again when a person thinks that merit (puyya) is attained by the animal sacrifice for worldly happiness, or when a person takes to such works as most of our worldly duties are, which are in reality of no other use than of increasing sorrows and troubles ; or again in spite of the fact that all that appear as pleasurable are in reality fraught with pains, we think them as essentially pleasurable; or again when we think of the mind, body, friends, or relatives as being ourselves and suffer in their sufferings thinking them to be our own, This is what is called avidya, the ignorance which confuses a thing with such characteristics as it really does not possess. From such an ignorance comes egoism (asmitā) which is but the immediately succeeding moment of the confusion. Thus for example when

once the confusion has arisen that the mind is the self, the self naturally proceeds to identify itself with the affections of the mind. We first identify ourselves with wife, son, relatives, and then think of their sorrows and pleasures as being ours. This egoism however is only a moment in the development of avidyā as it unfolds itself in its concreteness, and must, from the point of ethical value, be distinguished from its theoretical aspect as a cosmic principle of creation in metaphysics. From the psychological confusion and ignorance comes this tendency by which man begins to think of all things as his own, and from this comes his desire and attachment for pleasures and antipathy to pains called raga and dvesha, and the instinctive desire (abhiniveša) to live, which man shares in common with all animals.

It is thus that ignorance which readily expresses itself as egoism works in the threefold way, namely the desire for pleasures, antipathy to pains, and desire for life. All other vices are but separate forms of manifestation of any one of these. The egoism acting through ignorance is the root of all evil.

But the question comes in that under such a supposition all experiences become evil, and there is no scope for good, nor is there any chance that some external agent should cut asunder the knots of ignorance. The ethical

ideal or standard of actions also therefore fails, for, how should one strive after the true knowledge of the self, so long as the ignorance continues, for all strife and moral endeavours of the will are the productions of this ignorance, and can in no way therefore tend to its dissolution and the rise of self-knowledge. It isa fact that we are always prompted to action for the achievement of pleasures and for love of life, it does not matter if it is due to mere ignorance, for this ignorance is our very nature and existence, and all the world is moving under its guidance. Where is the saving virtue to be found? Where again are we to find the distinctions of moral and immoral, good and bad? And if ultimately there is no distinction why not follow Aristippus or Cārvāka ?

The Yoga however thinks that it is possible for us to remove this ignorance, and it is on this possibility of the ideal being actualised by will that morality can find its scope. We have already discussed in detail how this ignorance came into being, and we have also noticed that there is also in prakrti an innate tendency towards destroying this ignorance and releasing the soul. If prakrti herself were not dominated by such a purpose, not only moral actions would be impossible, but even the existence of moral ideas and purposes would be inexplainable ; and motives of pleasure and love of life would be

the only motives, and morality would be reduced to mere prudence. Thus it is that there is not only an inclination in us towards pleasure, put also a tendency to turn away from pleasure and seek to discover our own true nature. Both these tendencies are therefore equally innate in our minds. This is not however a characteristic which is peculiar to mind, for it has only inherited it from prakrti, the supreme mother. Thus it is therefore that the order of material events and things cannot throw any obstruction to the actualisation of the moral wil. Mind and matter are both permeated by such a unity of purpose that it is as much possible for us to be good as to be bad.

The states of mind are good or bad according as they are calculated to loosen the bonds of ignorance Or fasten them allthe more. Such is the innate tendency of prakrti that though she acts and relates herself to the purushas through ignorance and its manifold manifestations, ME also takes a reverse process and is ready to continue it until the bonds of ignorance are finally removed and the purusha is let alone. it remains for us therefore to avail ourselves of this tendency of the mind towards the good — liberation and self-realisation—and to form a habit of associating ourselves with it and it alone, so that the other tendency which leads us after the wandering fires of pleasure may gradually lose

all its strength for us. It is according to this difference of moral tendency that all states of mind may be divided as good and bad or unafflicted (aklishta) and afflicted (klishia). With the ordinary persons mental states are in a state of constant change and flow and the good and moral ones are peeping in and immediately passing away but in the case of moral men the good states preponderate, and bad ones visit them only oecasionaily like unwelcome guests. He alone can be good who has been straining himself to attain the habit of always cultivating moral emotions and ideas and eschew immoral ones. For such is the mechanical condition of mind that the more the good ones are repeated the more their potencies ære formed, and the more do they mechanically reappear before the conscious plane ; and the same is true of bad and immoral emotions and thoughts. To be moral therefore means to form a moral habit, to avail oneself of the moral emotion, will, and thoughts, and to habituate the mind to them.

The reason why it is so difficult to be moral or spiritual is to be found in the fact that we are more in the habit of placing curselves under the power of the immoral emotions such as those of pleasure and of self-love. This has made their potencies so strong, that even quite against our will they are again and again revived, and we drift along with them. But

the potencies of the higher demands of spiritual life and emotions, thoughts, ete., suited to that end are not altogether lost, and they also manifest themselves from time to time in the conscious plane and prompt us to follow their lead, and the more the suitable environments of good company, moral instructions, etc., are found the more is the chance of these moral potencies gaining in strength and overcoming the immoral potencies.

It is indeed 2 foolish hope to cherish that, as prakrti has naturally a tendency towards destroying the avidya bonds she will do it of herself naturally, and it is unnecessary for us to energise. For the moral purpose of the prakrti towards self-realisation is shown in no other way than by that of interposing moral emotions and thoughts against immoral propensities ; it remains therefore for us to energise, and by strenuous efforts of will to drive away the immoral propensities by the positive formation of moral habits. Thus if a man associates himself continually with evil thoughts, his moral emotions are gradually more and more stifled, and he may gradually be further off from the path of the good. But it may so happen that in some future time he may come into the midst of such good environment that moral potencies may be generated in him, and he may by his will so cultivate them that he may

attain salvation. All men therefore have with them the power of being good and of attaining salvation, and though the fear of being immoral may forever be removed in the case of an emancipated person, the hope of redemption is never lost to man however degraded his present condition may be.

The ideal of conduct for a Yogin is the removal of ignorance and the realisation of the true nature of the self and thus ultimately to dissociate the soul from the bondage of matter. This end can only be attained when even the last germ of the avidya potency has been removed. For such a complete removal it is first necessary that the Yogin should safeguard himself against the inrush of any new emotions of pleasure or self-love by dissociating himself completely from all attachments to all pleasures which are attainable in the ordinary course, by religious worship and sacrifices. He must weaken the strength of the immoral instincts by the formation of opposite moral habits of thought and the acquirements of positive mental virtues, such as that of purity, contentment, ete., which will help him in gaining equanimity and balance of mind. Last of all when the mind has once been prepared in that way to follow by the most strenuous effort of the will the process of Yoga meditation, the mind will be brought to a state of

ultimate perfection, and the self will shine forth in its own clear and unsullied life. So far as this last Yoga process is concerned it is easy to see that it transcends the highest limits of our ordinary ethics. We shall therefore first describe the first stages which are generally called the Yogàngas or accessories to the Yoga, and then describe the Yoga process.

Like Jainism, Yoga counts ahimsā as the one moral ideal; for all external conduct, and all the other virtues are subordinate to it in the sense that ahimsà includes them all. These virtues are: (1) veracity (satya) which consists in word and thought being in accord with facts, (2) abstinence from theft, which consists not only in not taking the things of others unlawfully, but in removing even the desire thereof (asteya), (3) continence, (4) absence of avariciousness, the non-appropriation of things not one’s own, consequent upon seeing the defects of attachment and of the miseries caused by accumulation, preservation, etc. (aparigraha). A Yogin must observe these duties universally and unconditionally. The maxims of moral conduct then are, “Thou shalt not injure any being, thou shalt not speak an untruth, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not be avaricious.” But the last three maxims can be brought under the one grand maxim, “'Thou shalt not injure any being on any condition whatsoever." Thus it is that

in case of a conflict of duties, say for example, between truthfulness and non-injury, itis the latter which is to be followed and not the former.' The fulfilment of these laws is technically called in Yoga, yama. According to the variety of circumstances, persons and conditions, the vices such as himsa, etc., may be of infinite kinds, but in every case it brings to us sorrow and takes us down the path of ignorance, and hence away from self-realisation.

The other observances called niyama, which are said to help the Yogin, are cleanliness, contentment, tapas, study and making Isvara the motive of all actions (Jévara-pranidhana); of these cleanliness may be regarded as being of two kinds: (1) external, which consists of eating pure things, washing, etc., (2) internal, which consists in removing the impurities of the mind. Contentment is the absence of desire to secure more than the bare necessaries of life. Tapas or asceticism consists in the endurance of opposites such as that of the desire for food and drink, cold and heat, and, in the absence of speech and facial indications. Study refers to that of philosophy which shows the way to liberation. Tsvarapranidhana means the performance of all

1 It is important to reniemher in this connection that the Jains had also exactly the same code of morality and Hemachandra in his Yogašāstra relates how Kaušikī having told the truth in pointing out the way of the bandits to the villagers had violated the law of ahimsā and gone to hell,

actions and the dedicating in mind of all the fruits to be reaped therefrom to Īsvara without the slightest personal desire.

So far we have seen that in external conduct the Yogin has to follow the universal law of not committing any harm to any being and to strengthen himself by limiting the course of all other actions in accordance with the observances the niyamas. For merely by non-injury the Yogin only avoids the vices, but he is to see that his other works may also be suitable for his purpose, for such an end restraining himself from injury, he has to follow the niyamas or the observances.

But in his attempts to follow this procedure obstacles may come in, and the remedy lies in meditation on the evil effects of those bad desires (pratipakshabkavana). Thus in spite of his self. restraint when the desire of doing injury to others comes to his mind, he is to think of the troubles and griefs and rebirths which this injury causes, and he «should make his resolve that when once he had forsaken it with diffieu]- ty he should not take it upon him again, as it is the source of all mischief. We have already noticed that the chief moral obstacles are the attachments to pleasure, self-love, and the will to be; it is necessary therefore in order to weaken the streugth of these manifestations of ignorance by trying to take them at their real

value and by meditating upon their defects. Thus for example when pleasure attracts us, we may think that it is but a bubble which is not only fraught with pain itself but will gradually draw us into more and more pain, aud there is pain everywhere in all the manifestations of avidyā. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, everywhere, excepting the right knowledge which releases the soul and takes it beyond the bonds of pain and pleasure.

This thinking of the contrary nature or the opposite character of things which appear attractive through ignorance or tempt us in the path of evil, reacts upon the will by tending to generate right estimates of things. The right observances serve to make the mind pure, remove desires, and tend to strengthen the will and prepare it for the great Yoga meditation. But still it may be said that until the mind is at peace with the world, the great duty of the yama of akimsā cannot be performed merely by thinking of the evil effects of the corresponding vices (vipakshabhāvanā), particularly because in ordinary minds the desire for salvation is not strong enough to resist the temptation. It is therefore necessary that the mind should be at perfect peace with the world by a willing culture of the emotion of friendliness (imaifrz) towards all those who are leading a life of pleasure, of compassion towards those who are virtuous, and

indifference towards the vicious. Whoever shows friendliness towards the happy is purged of the dirt of envy, whoever wishes to remove the miseries of others through compassion (karuņā) is purged of the propensity of doing mischief to others. Complacency (mudita) removes jealousy, and indifference towards sinners, removes impatience and anger. Thus by the culture of these positive emotions the mind becomes inclined to the side of mental restraint. When the mind is thus purged of its dross the Yogin takes his Yoga practice for the ultimate realisation of his purpose.

When the general tendency of Upanishad teaching referred to avidy& sometimes as the non-knowledge of the identity of the individual soul with the supreme reality the Brahman, and sometimes as the tendency which attracts men towards worldliness, we had a plastic and indefinite conception which could be interpreted by the later Vedantists as a mysterious metaphysical principle which in some mysterious way helped the Brahman in the production of this world-appearance (cf. the Sankara view of maya of Vacaspati). 'Ühe other side of it as a mere want of right knowledge of things and one’s true interests, was also however present in the same conception. Thus it is that when we enquire into the meaning of avidyā, which is placed at the beginning of the causal nexus in

Buddhism, we find that it is within the range of earthly tangible reality, as it means the ignorance of the four sacred truths. Sariputta says, * Not to know suffering, friend, not to know the origin of suffering, not to know the extinction of suffering, not to know the path to the extinction of suffering is called ignorance.” In Buddhism being is suffering, but ignorance totally deceives us as to this suffering, it causes us to see suffering as a phantom of pleasure and happiness, the impermanent as the permanent, the non-soul as the soul. Precisely the same is the definition of avidyā in Pataüjali (anityasuciduhkhandtmasu uitya$uciduhkhatmakhyátir avvdya). But the content is different, for in the case of Yoga we have two entities—purusha ana prakrti which stands as the vehicle of all that is impermanent, sorrow, non-soul and impure, and thus though the psychological and moral positions are almost the same there is a difference in the conception of avidyā.

Again, when we look to the other derivatives which are said to be the root of all ethical troubles, we find that avidya, raga and dvesha are the same as moha, lobha and dvesha of the Buddhists. Thus Rhys Davids writes: ‘The three bad roots are greed, hate and want of intelligence ; the first three are so radical and inclusive as sources of all human suffering that, the

extinction of them, is one of the few positive definitions given of Nibbana.”

The ethical function of ahamkara or asmitā is also the same, and we read in the Sutia Nipata :—

€ He who doth never think ‘’Tis mine,’ Nor ‘ others have gotten something’ thinketh this, There is nothing for me! No * mineness' (mamatvam)

being found Ia him he hath no cause to suffer grief."

There is also the same analysis of samsāra as the source of all sorrows. In Yoga as well as in Buddhism, “the state as it surrounds us in this world, with its restless oscillation between origination and decease, is our-misfortunes. The ground of our existence is our will. This is our besetting sin, that we will to be (cf. abhiniveša), that we will to be ourselves, that we fondly will our being to blend with other beings and extend. The negative of the will to be cuts off being, for us at least.” !

Not only in the origin of ethical troubles do we find Yoga and Buddhism the same, but we find also in the attainment of the ethical ideal that the method followed is the same. The

1 Compare also the same Sāmkhya teaching on this point in the Kārikā Evam taitvābhyāsūnnāsmi na me nāhamityaparišesham Aviparyyayādvišuddham kevalamutpadyate jīūānam,

same maitri, karuņā, etc., and ahimsd, the same (šauca, santosha and tapas). Thus it is that with the exception. of Išvarapraņidhāna and the general metaphysics, Buddhism has almost the same ethical scheme as the Yoga, and when we consider the details, we find that the Yoga ethics remarkably agrees with that of the Buddhists. But still so far as we understand Buddhism, it seems that there is little difference between the Buddhist and the Yoga ideal. For the Buddhist finds nothing but pain all round him, and the good for him is thus only good with respect to karma that is to pleasurable effect or eudaemonia. '* With respect to the supremely good—arhatship or nirvana,” says Rhys Davids, “he might, it is true, have admitted a difference, namely that this state was absolutely good, and not good because of its results. It was the supreme result or fruit, and there was ‘no beyond. But then he did not rank Nirvana exactly in the category of good, and precisely for this reason that in it moral causation culminated and ceased.” It was rather a freedom than a good. Good at which we aim in all our lower guests is sukham, in the one high quest, vimutti or Nirvana. But even the Nirvāna is spoken of in terms of pleasurable feeling and Gotama attaining his enlightenment is said to have experienced emancipation, bliss or vimuttisukham ; Nāgasena also emphatically

declares Nirvana to King Milinda to be absolute happiness or ekantasukham.

The Samkhya Kārikā also describes the object of human endeavour as being the final removal of all pains; Yoga also analyses all feelings and emotions as being nothing more than pain. It is through ignorance that we are deluded into thinking that the pains are pleasures, But it is also an ignorance that we are driven to hanker after pleasures and avoid pains. The avoidance of pain is not therefore the object of our endeavours but dissociation from samsāra. But why should we tend to dissociate ourselves from samsāra, because the tendency of our mind towards salvation (kaivalyartham pravrttešca) is as innate as the tendency towards the attaining of pleasure and binding us with the samsara. But why should we take the former course and avoid the latter, if both the tendencies are our own? The latter is an unreal connection due to ignorance, and there is no particular reason for us to follow this tendency alone ; for if it be pleasure that attracts us to this course, a careful analysis shows to us that there are in reality pains and not pleasures. The final achievement also, mukti, is dissociation from prakrti, and the testimony of the self in its own nature. It is not a state of pleasure but kaivalya— oneness. Thus it is that though the dissociation

from the prakrti involves the ultimate dissociation from all pleasure and pain, such a course is followed not with the purpose of the attainment of an ultimate state of happiness, but for removing that instinct inherent ‘in our nature which seeks to be free. Prakrti cannot realise herself only in drawing us through the bonds of ignorance but she wants to realise herself by setting us free. We are conscious of these tendencies of prakrti through the mind, its product ; we find there that both are imperative with us, when we give ourselves up to desires of enjoyment (bhogapravrtti) we have samsira, and when we give ourselves up to the tendency of liberation (katvalyapravrtti) we have liberation. The schism of šreyas and preyas is therefore innate in our nature, and that course of conduct which binds us in the meshes of the preyas, the pleasurable, and bhoga, the enjoyment, is immoral, whereas the conduct which leads us onward to the šreyas or liberation is moral. The moral dignity of the Yogin will appear in this that with him the attractions of earthly pleasure and the great pleasure of heaven are worth nothing compared with the supreme happiness that comes from the destruction of lust When the gods tempt an advancing Yogin with the transitory sensual pleasures of their heaven, “Sir will you sit here, will you rest here, here is an

attractive pleasure, here is an attractive girl, this elixir wards off old age and death,” the Yogin turns his back to all these temptations and says * Baked on the pitiless coals of the round of rebirths, wandering about in the blinding gloom of birth and death,— hardly have I found the lamp that dispels the darkness of the moral defilements, the lamp of Yoga,—when, these lust-born gusts of the things of sense threaten to put it out; how then could it be that having seen its light trieked by the mirage of the things of sense, Ishould throw myself like fuel into that same fire of the round of rebirths as it flared up again? Fare ye well, like unto dreams are ye! they are to be pitied that crave these things of sense!” Howsoever great and supreme any happiness might be it must lead to pain, so happiness cannot be the goal towards which a Yogin should move. His goal is freedom from the bondage of the prakrti and this ambition of his is ultimate and irreducible, for it is innate with prakrti to tend towards liberating the purushas from their own shackles. It is through the tendency of prakrti that men desire pleasures and thereby suffer pains, and it is through prakrti again that men desire mukti and are freed from all pleasure and pain.

The stoics also wanted to turn away from nature ; they also found the world to be full

of pain, and thus sought to return to the philosopher’s quietness of reason. But this life of reason was a life of happiness. It is only by a later modification of stoicism that cheerfulness or peace of mind, is taken as the real ultimate end, to which the exercise of virtue ig merely a means. In Zeno’s system it is good volition, and not the feeling that attends it, which constitutes the essence of good life. But even then pleasant feeling of some kind must always have been a prominent element in the popular conception of “ wellbeing,” and it is probable that the serene joys of virtue and the grieflessness which the sage was conceived to maintain amid the worst tortures, formed the main attraction of stoicism for most minds. It is this that gives stoicism its hedonistic tinge. The Yoga however did not aim at any such philosopher’s serene happiness, but the extinction of the source of happiness and pain. In the emancipated stage there was not only no pain but no pleasure also, for it was prakrti which was the feeling principle, and this was no part of a man’s essential nature as pure reason. The stoics thought that pain came only because we could not reconcile our essentially rational nature to the happiness of the world, which in essence are all rational in the highest degree. The Yoga however found that pain formed an

essential constituent of the three types of feelings —the prakrti—and could only be avoided by a complete dissociation of the purusha from the feeling stuff, the prakrti ; and consequently from the cessation of all the psychological experiences which are but composites of the ultimate feeling materials, the sattva, rajas and tamas. Such a psychological dissociation was but the other name for the dissociation from mind (citta). It is thus that the dissociation from mind and all experiences associated with it, is called mukti. When in the first stages we find that the Yogin analyses the world-experiences as painful and thus grows averse to them, we are led to trace a tinge of hedonism in it, but when we find that the practice of virtues, the cessation of worldly actions, the serene happiness and knowledge of meditation are all but means to the dissolution of Avidyā and the freedom of the pure intelligence to purusha, wo are forced to say that it is not hedonism. Even the Vedantic ideal! had to offer a state of bliss in the supreme merging of the self in the Brahman though it be of a transcendental nature, but the Yoga has no such temptation to offer, for if the state of mukti is a state of painlessness, it is because it is the pure purusha absolutely dissociated from

1 There are however Vedantists who deny that in Brahmanhood there can be any positive ānanda,

the feeling principle of prakrti. To the question why we should move ourselves to attain such a state the Yoga answer is that it is as natural a tendency of the human mind as that which takes the world as its own and holds the experiences of pleasure, pain, etc. as belonging to the purusha, the pure intelligence. The highest end of the Yogin is not to avoid pain or even the world experiences that lead to it, for then he could have been satisfied when he passed into the nirvicara or ānanda stage of samadhi; but no, he is not satisfied there, for the ultimate goal before him is the removal of avidyā and the dissolution of the prakrti. Itis easy to see that such a goal is not a goal of feeling buta goal of an innate tendency towards the destruction of avidya and the absolute freedom of the spirit. Tf to the worldly person it is held as a state of absolute painlessness, it is because the state of freedom is also the highest good, even from the worldly point of view which seeks to avoid pain; any other attempt which aims at pleasure of any kind must fail, for it will necessarily bring pain ; so the true aim of all persons ought to be the avoidance of pain, and the ultimate stage of such an aim is the dissolution of prakrti. So the mukti is not only the natural ideal of man but also the highest good, as it involves the ultimate uprooting of the source of all feelings, the prakrti.

The notion of mukti is indeed the pivot on which all systems of Indian philosophy revolve. The word mukti is derived from the root muc to be free from. Mukti therefore means the true transcendent nature of the self free from any touch or association with prakrti. But apart from any such negative conception, there is also the positive content that in this state uncontaminated by any impurity, the self remains in itself ; of course the self cannot in any state be sullied by any impurity, but yet in the samsara stage, since the prakrti is continually transforming herself differently with reference to different souls, these transformations of prakrti as thoughts and ideas carry with them the conviction that they belong to a person, and thus there is a seeming association of the self with prakrti, by virtue of which the pure self appears as the person who enjoys and suffers, wills and thinks. Strictly speaking the self can have neither bondage nor freedom. The state of bondage is thusa state of prakriti in which the prakrti can undergo such transformations (in the shape of thought, feeling and willing) with reference to any purusha as are interpreted with reference to it or as belonging to it. The self has no consciousness in our ordinary sense of the term, but it isthe postulate of all phenomenal consciousness. The nature of the self is said to be pure cit (intelligence). This cit is not

ordinary intelligence but a transcendent entity. It is devoid of any action or feeling. This cit is never demonstrated in its absolute purity in any of our ordinary conscious states, but is revealed at the stage just preceding mukti or final emancipation. The self is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness but the transcendent intelligence of absolute homogeneity. The Upanishads had spoken of such an ātman as pure transcendent intelligence and the Simkhya- Yoga had accepted it asa legacy from them, and postulated it as being indispensable for the interpretation of conscious states. According to Samkhya-Yoga, our mental states become conscious only because they happen with reference to a purusha from whom they catch reflection. The phenomena of mental states differ from the phenomena of happenings in the objective worlā in that they happen immediately and directly with reference to a purusha, and are made of such stuff that they can catch reflection from it (purusha). What the exact nature of this purusha as pure intelligence is, we cannot say, for it is a transcendent entity.

Samkhya differs from Buddhism in holding that the mental states by their mutual correlation, movement collocation or conglomeration cannot generate consciousness. The element of consciousness in the mental states is derived from an extraneous principle. The ultimate

purpose or realisation of citta is accomplished when it succeeds at the final stage in producing in consciousness an image of this transcendent entity, the purusha ; and when this is once done the purpose or teleology of citta being fulfilled, it cannot hold itself any longer, but is disintegrated and dissolved and the purusha, the absolute, shines forth alone by itself in the eternal state of kaivalya.

But how far is man responsible for his actions, how is the problem of the relation of free will and karma to be solved? This question did not occur in this form in any prominent manner in Sanskrit works, for the supposition always was that man was free to work, and he was responsible for his karma or actions. The fact that man has to suffer for his actions to such an extent that he cannot avoid it even by death, as he will have to be born again for reaping their fruits, makes it not only necessary that there should be a harmony between the external order of necessity and change and the moral order dependent upon the realisation of an ideal by the will, but also that man should be free to act. Allthe systems of Indian Philosophy except the Cārvāka agreed upon the law of karma as determining the differences in the fortunes and experiences of pleasure and pain between man and man in social life, and the question of the opposition of freedom and karma did not rise

at all as an important point of discussion. When we however approach it with our minds steeped in western philosophy to meet the discussion of free will and determinism we find it difficult to reconcile them. If the individual should depend upon his karma of a previous birth for his mental endowments and physical environments and sufferings and enjoyments, where is the scope of his free will to act? His previous karmas brought about his present state and through that determined his present karma, and this again determines a future state and karma. There is thus throughout a process of dependent origination and decease (paticcasamuppada). The apparent soul is only a tool in the hands of this eternally moving causal nexus and it is thus that Buddhism which laid stress upon this process of karma had dismissed the soul altogether,

Looking at the problem from another point of view we find that it is determinism, psychological and external, which gives the scope for the moral struggle. If we had not to struggle against the forces leading us the other way there would be uo moral conflict, no development of moral will, and the spheres of the normative and the natural would coincide. This modifies our position with regard to the problem of free will, and we ask ourselves how far we are free, and how far we are determined. Since all karma stands in Indian Philosophy as the principle of

determinism, the question returns again, What is the nature of karma? How does it limit our freedom ?

To enquire into this problem we find that as in Buddhism so in Yoga, karma means all that we do in thought, wordand deed. The first one is called the manasa karma, and the other two the vāhya karma. These are again divided as (1) krsņa, (2) sukla, (3) suklakrsņa and (4) ašuklakrsņa. The krsņa (black) karmas are those committed by the wicked and as such are wicked actions which pass also by the name, adharma. These again are of two kinds: (1) external, of the nature of speaking ill of others, stealing others’ property, and (2) mental as in having such states as are opposed to $raddha, virya, etc. The $ukla karmas are the virtuous or meritorious ones which can happen only in the form of good mental states such as, Sraddha, virya, smrti, samādhi 2nd prajūā, which are infinitely suverior to any good actions that may be achieved in the external world. The sukla karma can thus only accrue to those who resort to study and meditation. The $uklakrsna karmas are the actions achieved in the external world and they are called white and black because actions achieved in the external world cannot be devoid of some wickedness as they must necessarily be associated with some harm at least to the living beings— yadyāvat vahissādhanasādhyam tatra sarvatrāsti

kasyacit pida; nāpi vrihyadisadhane karmant parapīdā nāsti avaghātādisamaye api pipīlikā- dibadhasambhavāt. We in ordinary circumstances are thus always in all our external actions earning dharma and adharma, and may thus be said to be lying on the bed of karmas (karmasaya). Dharma and adharma are thus called the karmāšaya and they proceeding from $ukla and ašukla karma produce pleasures and pains. The ašuklakrshņa karma belongs to those who have renounced all the fruits of their good actions to I$vara, and whose present body is the last one. They do not performany black actions, nor reap the fruits of good ones, having dedicated them all to Tévara.

The root of all karmas and hence of karma- šayas is the tivefold group of avidyà, asmita, raga, dvesha and abhinivesa, so long as they are not removed; all karmaSaya, dharma or adharma must ripen and give their fruit, but once the roots are removed, all karmas and karmāšayas are also necessarily destroyed and cannot give their fruits. The afflictions or klesas are like the streams of water which nourish the karmasayas, and thus when once the afflictions are destroyed, the innumerable vehicles of actions accumulating from beginningless time having no scope for their fruition (as the very seed of their existence, the avidyā has heen burnt) are destroyed.

Karmāšaya is again classified from the point of view of the time of its fruition as drstajanmavedaniya (ripening in the same life) and «adrstajanmavedaniya (ripening in another unknown life). The puņyakarmāšaya which is generated by intense purificatory action, trance and repetition of mantras and the pāpakarmāšaya which is generated by repeated evil done to men who are suffering the extreme misery of fear, disease, and helplessness or to those who place confidence or to those who are highminded and perform tapas, ripen into fruit in that very life, and may thus be called dzstajanmavedanīgya. Other kinds of actions take fruition in other future lives. The living beings in hell must be taken as an exception to drstajanmavedaniya, for as their bodies and lives are intended for sufferance alone, no karmāšaya can accumulate for them. So also, those saintly characters who have destroyed their afflictions must be taken as exceptions to adrstajanmavedaniya karmāšaya.

The karmāšayas of both kinds described above ripen themselves into the life-state, life-time, and life-experience, called the three vipākas of karmāšaya. They produce pleasure or pain according as they are the fruits of puņyakarmā- $aya or pāpakarmāšaya. It is assumed that many karmas have combined together to produce one life-state, for it each karma for its fruition would require a life, there being endless karmas,

there would not be sufficient lives available for fruition. It is therefore held that many karmas unite to produce one life-state (jati), and determine particular life-time (āyuskāta) and pleasurable or painful experiences. The virtuous or sinful karmāšayas accumulated in one life (in order to produce their effects) cause the death of the individual, and manifest themselves in producing the birth of the individual, his life-time and particular pleasurable or painful experience. The order of undergoing the experiences is the order in which the karmas manifest themselves as effects, the principal ones being manifested earlier in life. Principal karmas here refer to those which are too ready to generate their effects. We see that there is a continuity of existence all through, as the karmas of this life, when they ripen, jointly tend to fructify by causing another birth, as a means whereto death is caused and along with it life is manifested in another body formed by the refilling from prakrti (prakrtyāpūra) and the same karmāšaya regulates the life period and the experiences of that life, the karmasaya of which life again take a similar course, and manifest itself in the production of another life and so on.

But this karmāšaya regarded as ekabhavika or unigenital on account of its aecumulating in one life, must be distinguished from the vasanas regarded as anekabhavika as they remain

accumulated from thousands of previous lives from beginningless time and the mind is pervaded all over with them like knots of a fishing net. The vāsanās result from a memory of the experiences of a life generated by the fructification of the karmāšaya and kept in the citta in the form of potency or impressions (samskāra). Now we have seen before that the citta remains constant in all births and rebirths that an individual has undergone from eternity. It therefore keeps the memory of these experiences of thousands of lives in the form of samskàra or potency. These vasanas are the causes of the instinctive tendencies, habits of deriving pleasures and pains peculiar to different animal lives. Thus the habits of a dog-life and its peculiar mode of taking its experiences and of deriving pleasure and pain are very different in nature from those of a man-life, and must therefore be explained on the basis of an incipient memory in the form of potency impressions or samskāras of the experiences that an individual must have undergone in a previous dog-life of its own.

Now when by this fructification of the karmāšaya a dog-life is settled on a person, at once his corresponding vāsanās of a previous dog-life are revived and he begins to take interest in his dog-life in the manner of a dog.

If there were not this law of vāsanās, then any vāsanā might be revived in any life, and

there would be no difference of human instincts and those of other animals. The vüsanàs being of the nature of samskāras, potencies or impressions, can be revived again in time, though the time of their revival may come in even after many hundreds of years. For ouce the samskāra is formed in the citta, it cannot go out of it or be lost in the natural course, and whensoever the conditions recur they will be revived. So when the karmāšaya is on its way to fructification by the production of any birthand life-time, it helps to revive the vasanas as instinctive tendencies or memories. So the instinctive fear of death also comes from the innate memory of the experiences of the sufferings of past lives.

Returning again to the divisions of karmāšaya we find that drstajanmavedaniya karmas of unappointed fruition (axiyatavipaka) have three different courses. Thus, firstly, in the case of a Yogin they may not find any scope of fructification, and may thus be lost for good, or secondly, as effects of minor actions they may show themselves gradually, along with the effects of major actions in instalments in many lives; or thirdly, they may remain overcome for a very long time by other (edrstajanmavedaniya) karmas of appointed fruition (niyatavipaka). A man for example may do some good actions and some extremely vicious ones, so that at the time

of death the karmāšaya of these vicious actions becoming ripe and fit for appointed fruition may generate an animal life, but his good actions, the benefits of which are such as may be reaped only in a man-life will remain overcome until he by the fruition of his other deeds can earn 4 man’s life and be born again as man. Thus when we try to classify, we fiad that karmas are of two kinds: (1) those which are to be fruitful in this life (xiyatavipāka) and (2) those which are to be fruitful in other lives (aniyatavipüka). Those which are to be fruitful in this life are also called ekabhavika by Vacaspati! These may be those actions of the preceding life or lives which being on the point of fruition produced this body, or they may also be those intensive good or bad actions which produce their fruits immediately and are therefore called drstajanmavedaniya as distinguished from the fruits of the karmas of other lives enjoyed in this life and called drstajanmavedaniya (niyatavipaka). As regards the karmas accumulated in this life, some of them will be of appointed fruition and produce the life-state of another birth, but those which could not come to the stage of appointed fruition may either be

! Bhikshu and his follower Nāgeša differ from Vacaspati in holding that ekabhavika is only that action which is fruetified in the life immediately succeeding the life in which it ig accumulated. So according to him drstajaumavedaniya cannot be called ekabhavika,

lost through the man’s attaining right knowledge or may be awaiting till the coming of such a suitable birth in which they can show themselves, or they may gradually fructify in connection with the fructification of major karmas. When we attempt to get at the root of this artificial and detailed karma theory which bears a strong Jaina colouring, we see that by the karmas, some new kinds of matter stuff are produced which may be called virtue or vice. We have no reason to be shocked at such a theory in a system of thought, where ideas, emotions and all that we call mental, are but some subtle kinds of matter-stuff. This virtue-stuff or vicestuff forms, so to say, a kind of sheath which is associated with the purpose of purusha. When these have accumulated and undergone certain transformations, they require some new conditions of body, etc., for manifesting themselves into their effects. Īšvara removed the barriers of the prakrti in the suitable direction, so that through mahat new fillings-in might take place, and out of this new influx of matter-stuff from prakrti a suitable body might through the processes of evolution be made, wherein the purusha had to manifest itself and suffer the pains and pleasures destined for it by the fructifying influence of dharma or adharma stuff. This dispensation of the experiences of pleasure and pain takes place through the particular

modifications of the buddhi. So it is that dharma or adharma matter is also a particular modification of buddhi as much as other characteristics of change or life-sponteneity are. These dharma and adharma stuff remaining in buddhi subjectively, determine the pleasures and pains of the man, for it isa matter of common experience according to the Sàmkhya-Yoga theory that the ` same object (e.g. a young wife) produces pleasure in the mind of the husband and pain in the mind of andther co-wife looking at her with jealous eyes. All objects are composed of three primary feelings, and they excite different feelings in different persons according to the fructifying dharma or adharma with which their buddhis may be associated.

The karmas however do not penetrate into the purusha after the Jaina fashion and cannot therefore obscure his vision or weaken his will. There is no le$ya here which can colour the soul, The soul in spite of all its bad works ever remains in its original purity.

It will moreover be seen that according to the karma theory of Yoga the limitations imposed by karma lie mainly in producing the suffering of pain and the particular environment in which we are born as men, in particular social positions with peculiar advantages or disadvantages.!

! We may contrast this view with the extreme view of Gosāla aocording to whom there is no such thing as exertion, labour, power,

But the scope of self-improvement is not stopped. Man holds within his mind in the form of samskāras all the good and bad lives that he has lived and he is free to determine himself as he likes; he has also the innate instinct in his mind to tend towards final emancipation or the ultimate good; he has around him the obstacles also as the past bad lives that he has lived, and he has to exert his will and achieve his moral ideal. The objection that purusha itself is without any will or movement cannot apply, for the answer is the same as that we have for all other mental states and experiences, namely that the buddhi and the purusha together serve for all phenomenal purposes to stand asa knowing, feeling, and willing self, and the transcendental aspect need not interfere at any state of our phenomenal experences.

energy or human strength; all things are unalterably fixed, The Digha Nikaya gives the doctrine of Gosāla's system thus: “ There is no causo, either proximate or remote, for the depravity of beings; they become depraved without reason ; they become pure without cause or reason, Nothing dependa either on one’s efforts or on the efforts of others; in short nothing depends on any human efforts, for there is no such thing as power, energy, human exertion or human atrength. Everything that thinks, everything that has senses, overything that is procreated, everything that lives is destitute of force, power or energy. Their varying conditions at any time are due to fate, to their environ-

mont and thoir own nature."

(Digha Nikāya. Dial, Vol, 1, 71.)

CHAPTER XI. THE YOGA PRACTICE.

When by observing the universal Mahāvratas and filling the mind with the sweet emotions of friendliness and conpassion, and by adherence to such attainments as contentment, etc., the mind is softened, the Yogin looks to the Yoga practice for gaining a complete mastery over his mind. Yoga means the arrest of the flow of the states, and is thus a characteristic quality of the mind, for in all minds in the continual passage of the states there is always taking place a relative arrest of a certain state and the rise of another. But not until this arrest of states has become an object of the conscious efforts of will, and has helped the Yoga to loosen the knots of affliction by inclining the mind to a state of deep and steady inhibition, can it be of any use to the Yoga ideal. The river of mind, says the sage Vyāsa, flows in two directions : it flows towards the evil and it flows towards right knowledge, the good. So long as man does not find that his instinctive hankering after pleasure, sensual gratification, and worldly objects is incessantly drawing him into the meshes of pains, so long as he does not understand that the happiness of paradise of the popular forms of

worship is not only transitory but is in reality dire pain with a mere varnish of pleasure, he will not try to turn his mind towards the right and the good. So disinclination towards worldly pleasures and their attainment, vairagya, is the first desideratum. The stronger the vairāgya, the greater will be his inclination towards turning away his mind and controlling it from dissipating and corroding vices. The next desideratum is habit (abhyasa). The habit is the habit of steadying the mind. In order to strengthen it, one must most assiduously continue to practise it for a very long time, put the utmost energy of his will into the attempt, and have a staunch faith and confidence in the method he is adopting. He must habituate his mind and body to bear with indifference all sorts of privations and acquire absolute continence, brahmacaryya, and be possessed of knowledge. It is when all these accessory conditions are thoroughly fulfilled that it becomes possible for a man to acquire a steady habit. The greater the chance of distraction either from ignorance, faithlessness or any other cause, the less will be the possibility of keeping the mind steady. The accessory virtues which gradually advance Yoga development are šraddhā, vīrya, samadhi and prajūā. Sraddha means not only faith but includes a sweet hope which looks cheerfully on the practice and

brings a firm belief in the success of the attempt. Such a cheerful hope saves the Yogin from all depressions and fears, and keeps him steady in his path of toil. Viryais the firmness of will and effort which comes naturally from the firmness of faith and hope as is exemplified in Buddha when he said, ** Let my body dry up in this seat, let my bones, skin and flesh moulder away, but without attaining right knowledge which can hardly be secured even by the attempts of thousands of years, my body shall not move from this seat." From such an unflinching determination comes smrti or samadhi—the steady meditation in which the thinker loses himself in the thought. From the development of such samadhi comes prajiia or right knowledge about the true nature of prakrti and purusha; and then one should continually meditate upon this right knowledge, till at last this also loses all attraction for him and he is liberated according to the superior, inferior or middling attainment of these conditions of practice such as sraddha, etc. The Yogins can be divided into three classes, and again each of these classes may be divided further into three classes according to the degree of superior, inferior or middling energy that the Yogin is able to devote to his task, and the time within which success can be attained is determined accordingly.

Turning to the actual Yoga practice we come first to the posture of the Yogin called the àsana. He must attain such a perfect posture that all: efforts to that end should cease, and there should | not be any movement of the body. One should think how this great earth is set at rest and thus secure strength for the mind to keep itself steady in its own posture.

After having secured stability in the posture a person should try the prāņāyāmas. The pauses that come after a deep inhalation and after deep exhalation are each called prāņāyāma: the first is called external and the second internal There is however a third mode, when the lungs are neither too much dilated nor too much contracted and there is another total restraint, where cessation of both these motions takes place by a

single effort, just as water thrown on a heated stone shrivels up from all sides.

These can be regulated by keeping the eye upon space, span and numbers. Thus as the breathing becomes slower the space that it occupies also becomes smaller and smaller. Space is again of two kinds, internal and external. At the time of inhalation the breath occupies internal space which can be felt even in the soles of hands and feet, just like the slight touch of an ant. To try to feel this touch along with deep inhalation serves to lengthen the period of cessation of breathing. External space is the

distance from the tip of the nose to the most remote point up to which breath can be felt by the palm of the hand or by the movement of any light substance like cotton placed there and just as the breathing becomes slower and slower the distance traversed by it also becomes smaller and smaller. Regulations by time are seen when attention is kept over the time taken up in breathing the shortest time being a moment which is the fourth part of the twinkling of the eye. So regulation by time means the fact of our attending to the moments or ksanas spent in the acts of inspiration, pause and expiration. These pranayamas can also be measured by the number of normal durations of breaths. The time taken by the inspiration and expiration of a healthy man is the same as that which is measured by snapping the fingers after turning the hand thrice over the knee and is the measure of duration of normal breath ; the first mild attempt is called udghata and mātrās or measures are measured by 36 such ughatas; when it is double it is the second udghata, middling, when it is trebled it is the third udghāta called intense. Gradually the Yogin acquires the practice of pranayama of long duration being daily practised and being increased in succession to a day, fortnight, a month and soon. He proceeds first by mastering the first udghata, then the second and so on until the duration increases up to a day, fortnight,

a month as stated before. There is also a fourth kind of pranayama transcending all those stages of unsteady practice when the Yogin is steady in his cessation of breath. It must be remembered, however, that while the prāņayāmas are practised, the mind must be fixed by dhyāna and dhàranà to some object, external or internal, without which these will be of no avail. By the practice of pranayama mind becomes fit for concentration, and steadiness is acquired, and this steadiness is the same as concentration, as we find also in the sutra “ dkāraņāsu: ca yogyatü manasah.” 7

When by the pranayama the senses are restrained from their external objects, we have what is called pratyāhāra, by which the mind remains as if in its own nature, being altogether identified with the object of inner concentration or contemplation, and thus when this citta is again suppressed the senses which had already ceased from coming into contact with other objects and become submerged in the citta itself also cease along with it. Dhāraņā is the concentration of citta on a particular place, which is so very necessary at the time of prāņāyāmas mentioned before. The mind may thus be held steadfast in such places as the sphere of the navel, the lotus of the heart, the light in the brain, the forepart of the nose, the forepart of the tongue, or any other parts of the body,

Dhyana is the continuance, the changing flow of the mental effort, in the object of dhāraņā unmediated by any other break of conscious states.

Samadhi or trance contemplation results when by deep concentration mind becomes transformed in the form of the object of contemplation. By pratyāhāra or power of abstraction the mind desists from all other objects except the one to which it is intended to be centred; the Yogin as he thus abstracts his mind also tries to give to it some internal or external object, and this fixing on an object iscalled dharana. It should be borne in mind that in order to inhibit the obstructions arising from the shakiness and unsteadiness of the body it is necessary to practise steadfast posture and to cultivate the prāņā- yama, as also for the purpose of inhibiting the distractions arising from breathing. Gradually as an effect of steadying the mind on one object by meditation called dhyana, the mind flows steadily in that state without any interruption, and the mind even ceases to think that it is thinking the object ; it isthen transformed into the form of the object under concentration and becomes steady therein. We see therefore that samādhi is the consummation of that process which begins in dhāraņā or concentration. These three, dharani, dhyana and samadhi represent the three stages of the same process, of which the last one is the perfection, and these three are

together technically called samyama which directly leads to and is immediately followed by the samprajiiàta state. ^ Yogàngas or the attainment of moral virtues only help it indirectly. For asamprajūāta state however these three are not so intimately related, for a person who is very highly advanced, one who is the special object of God’s grace may at once by an intense vairagya and abhyasa pass into the nirodha atate or the state of absolute suppression.

As gradually the knowledge of samadi dawns through the possession of samyama, the sainyama is strengthened. With the rise of samādhiknowledge or prajiāloka the saiyama also rises higher and higher. In the beginning, the mind can hold samyama or concentrate, and become one with a gross object together with its name, etc., which is called the savitarka state; the next plane or stage of samyama is that when the mind becomes one with the object of its meditation without any consciousness of its name, ete., called nirvitarka. Next come the other two states when the mind is fixed to subtle substances called savicāra and nirvicāra.

The savitarka stage is that in which the mind becomes one with the thing together with its name and concept and is regarded as the lowest stage ; for here the gross object does not appear to the mind in its true reality but only in a false illusory way, in which it

appears in ordinary life associated with the concept and the name. This state is not different from ordinary conceptual states in which the particular thing is not only associated with the concept and its name, but also with other concepts and their various relations; thus a cow will not only appear before the mind with its concept and name only,but also along with other relations and thoughts associated with the cow, e. g., this is a cow, it belongs to so and so, it has many hairs on its body, and so forth. This state is therefore the rudimentary stage, as the mind here does not become one with the heart of reality but is only attempting to become steady and is not yet beyond the range of ordinary consciousness.

From this comes the nirvitarka stage, when the mind by its steadiness can become one with the object divested of all other association of name, concept, etc. The thing in this state does not appear as an object of consciousness but the consciousness being divested of all “ I," or “ mine ” becomes one with the object itself, so that there is no such notion here as “ I know this," but the mind becomes one with the thing, the notions of subject and object drop off, and the result is the one steady transformation of the mind as the object of its contemplation. This state brings to us the real knowledge of the thing divested of other false and illusory

associations, which instead of explaining the real nature of the objects serve only to hide them all the more. This samādhi knowledge or prajūā is called nirvitarka. The objects of this state are the grosser material objects and the senses.

When the Yogin has mastered this state, he then directs his attention to finer and subtler objects, those from which the atoms have been derived. Things now appear before the mind of the Yogin not as the conglomeration of atoms, but of the diverse tanmātras of rüpa, rasa, etc., under the limitations of time, space, and causality, and this is called the savicāra stage. It differs from the savitarka stage in that here the objects of concentration are the tanmatra and not the gross bhūta. But this stage is also negated for the formation of the indeterminate tanmatric meditation called the nirvicāra. The mind here does not feel in the savicāra stage as perceiving the tanmatras as being associated with pleasures, pains, or any other characteristic qualities, but it becomes one with it, merged as it were, as in the nirvitarka stage with reference to gross objects.

These four stages are however often counted as two, vitarkānugata including as savitarka and nirvitarka and vicārānugata including savicara and nirvicàra. The other two elevated stages that come after these are ānandānugata

and asmitanugata. In the ànandànugata stage the mind is filled with supreme bliss or happiness; and in the asmitanugata the mind is in the state of pure being when the self is ‘one with the buddhi. It will be seen therefore that the first two kinds called the vitarkanugata, and vicaranugata are those where it is the grosser and subtler forms of objects that are made the objects of meditation. The objects may no doubt vary from the bhūtas up to the prakrti herself, but still these forms of meditation have this characteristic, that unity with them is effected with themselves as objects, grāhyavishaya. In the dnandanugata however the self has elevated itself from this objective meditation and is one with the pure sattva or blissful aspect of the senses, the apperceivers of sensitivity, and this type of samadhi is therefore called grahaņavishaya.' The āsmitā- nugata is the one where the buddhi turns back to itself, and the self being one with the buddhi there is only the steady light of pure being (sattva)? Samadhi thus comes to be of four kinds: vitarka, vicāra, ananda, and asmita, and if we take each of the other varieties of vitarka and vicāra, it becomes of six kinds and when

‘ Bhikshu however does not take the pleasure or bliss belonging to the senses but &nanda as a special object of meditation,

2 Here also Bhikshu does not take it as any self-turning of buddhi but the shining of the proper nature of the purusha.

with it the nirananda and nirasmitā varietics are added, it becomes of eight kinds. All these types however have an object on which the meditation is based, and as such are known as the samprajīāta samādhi. The next stage is called the stage of nirodha when there is no actual mental stage of any kind. The mind in this state is in pure vacuity so to say; there are only some of the germs of thought in the form of potencies. The “I” of the mind remains long in this nirodha in a state of absolute objectlessness ; all the potencies are destroyed, and at last the citta is annihilated in the sense that it returns back to prakrti, never again to bind the purusha.

It appears that all the four forms of samadhi that we have just now described were in existence even long before Buddha. This fact with many other points of resemblance which we have noticed before would offer strong ground for inferring that Buddha might have derived a large part of the groundwork of his philosophy, theoretic as well as practical, from the Yoga doctrines which were then only in a floating condition. It has often been maintained that Buddha was much indebted to Sāmkhya philosophy, but if that is true to any extent, nowhere does this indebtedness come out in so

! Bhikshu diffiers from Vācaspati and says that samadhi can only be of six kinda.

remarkable a manner as in Yoga ethics and practice, fields of enquiry which Yoga can particularly claim as its own as apart from Samkhya.

Thus to give a brief account of Buddhist dhyana after Anesaki and Takakusu, we find that dhyana is divided into four degrees. Even the first and the lowest of the four dhyānas corresponds in its quality to a state higher than the sixth of the eight constituents of Yoganga. To reach the first dhyana several preliminary practices are needed. ‘These correspond to the first five constituents of Yoga. First of all one has to keep the precepts and rules (sila) laid down by the Buddha (yama of the Yogangas); secondly to keep one’s body and mind pure and serene, living in solitary retirement away from the people in a forest or a cave and sitting crosslegged always thinking on an object. A novice should as a preparatory measure practise the meditation on love and compassion (mettakarun- ābhāvanā) in which heis to regard all sentient beings as his brothers, desiring their happiness and welfare as all the good that he would seek for himself. A novice who needs concentration of attention should practise at first the method of counting the number of his inspirations and expirations. A novice whose impure desire is too hard to be suppressed, should meditate on the impurity and impermanence of the human body.

Childers thus explains the four states with reference to the process of meditation:— He concentrates his mind upon a single thought. Gradually his soul becomes filled with a supernatural serenity, while his mind still reasons upon and investigates the subject chosen for contemplation: this is the first jhāna called vitakka. Still fixing his thoughts upon the same subject, he then frees his mind from reasoning and investigation, while the ecstasy and serenity remain, and this is the second jhāna vicāra ; next his thoughts still fixed as before, he divests himself of ecstasy and attains the third jhāna sukham, which is a state of tranquil serenity. Lastly he passes to the fourth jhana, in which the mind exalted and purified is indifferent to all emotions alike of pleasure and pain called upekkhā. The ideal of early Buddhism thus being the equilibrium of morals (Sila), meditation, dhyana, and knowledge, prajīā, is quite in harmony with the Yoga teaching. Returning back again to the Yoga meditation we find that as samadhi advances, knowledge advances too; for the reason why. our knowledge is imperfect is that the states of our knowledge are continually flowing and passing and there is no opportunity for us to go into the heart of things. As the concentration becomes deeper and more steady the real and perfect knowledge of things begins to flash before

the mind’s eye. Thus it is that as the plane of samadhi rises higher and higher, knowledge also becomes clearer and clearer, so that by the time the Yogin reaches the nirvicāra stage the steady light of perfect knowledge burns, and this is fhe highest and the truest knowledge known as rtambharā prajiia. Thus the prajūā proceeding from samadhi differs from the knowledge that we derive from the scriptures aud inference, as those are based upon concepts which only take notice of the general characteristics of things, and thus are only symbols which can never take us to the heart of reality. Perception also can take note only of : gross things and is absolutely helpless with regard to the subtler essences of things. As the right knowledge of samàdhi is gradually more and more sustained, the potencies of imperfect knowledge and ignorance of ordinary consciousness are superseded. These potencies being superseded, those states of consciousness cannot manifest themselves, and thus samādhi becomes strengthened and by the strengthening of samadhi, comes further prajūš ; new potencies of prajfia come to be accumulated, and these bring in the prajūā states, and thus further strengthen their potencies. Thus the potencies of ordinary consciousness being gradually rooted out, the Yogin remains in a new world of right knowledge or prajiié consciousness. But

it is the peculiarity of this prajiā consciousness that neither it nor its potencies serve to bind the _ purusha except by loosening the knots of avidyā

which gradually tend to disintegrate the citta and dissociate it from the purusha (xa te prajūā- krtah samskarüh klesaksayahetutvat zittam adhikaravisishtam kurvanti ; cīttam hi svakāryyād avasādayanti khyātiparyyavasanam hi cittaceshtitam— Vyāsabhashya).

When the mind is on its way to pass into the samādhi state, it is in a state of oscillation as it were between its passage into ordinary consciousness and the samādhi consciousness, until the samādhi power is sufficiently strong to prevent the invasion of ordinary consciousness. In the passage of the samadhi consciousness into higher and higher stages there is also the same oscillation, and then finally in the passage of the mind into the nirodha or asamprajfata state of absolute contentless arrest, there is the oscillation of the mind between the asamprajiiata nirodha, and the samprajüata state of the asmitā type, tillat last the nirodha potency having destroyed the samprajüàta potencies (sarnskāra), the citta having illuminated by its extreme translucent character, the true nature of the self finally returns to prakrti. Here it is that the returning process which had once begun iu the samadhi state being continued and brought to the buddhi is led back to

its ultimate equilibrium as prakrti by the gradual process of the disintegrating power, and thus the returning tendency of prakrti is finally realised. The forward movement of the prakrti had begun from beginningless time, and was satisfying itself by binding the purusha, and now the backward movement brings it back to itself, never to come out again for the bondage of the purusha. The final prajiias which help the movement of this returning process are said to be of seven kinds. The first four are as states of consciousness associated with the four stages of samādhi. The first one dawns in the form: “TI have known the world, the object of suffering and misery, I have nothing more to know of it." The second is of the form: “The grounds and roots of the samskara have been thoroughly uprooted, nothing more of it remains to be uprooted.” The third is of the form: “Removal has become a fact of direct cognition by means of inhibitive trance.’ The fourth is of the form: * The means of knowledge in the shape of discriminative knowledge has been understood." This is the four-fold freedom of conscious discrimination from external phenomena. The three prajiias that rise after this are not psychological states of mind but metaphysical and real states of the disintegrating process of the return of the citta to prakrti. These moments are as follows :—(1) The double

purposes of buddhi, bhoga (ordinary experience) and apavarga (salvation) have been realised : (2) The strong gravitating tendency of the disintegrated gunas drive them into the prakrti like heavy stones dropped from high hill tops; and they finally collapse into the prakrti substance where they remain merged for ever : (3) the purusha having passed beyond the bondage of the three, shines forth in its own pure and ultimate freedom.

It is interesting to note that though the Samkbya metaphysics adopted by the Yoga was combated in many quarters, neither the Yoga ^ practice nor the superior character of Yoga prajīā was ever opposed by any of the other | philosophic systems of India. Throughout all ` the epochs of Indian culture we find the highest reverence paid to the Yogins who were believed not only to possess a superior sense, by which they could know the highest truth beyond the ken of ordinary vision, but also to wield the most wonderful miraculous powers which Pataiijali has described as the vibhütis of Yoga, by which the Yogin showed his powers not only over his mind and the minds of others, but also over inert external objects. It was not only superior knowledge that they possessed, but superior power as well, by which even the necessity of the normal parinàmakramaniyama could be effected according to their will We in this

positivistic age of science and scepticism have but little belief in these trances. But it may not be out of place to note here that the idea that man could pass into states of trance by which he could be in communion with the highest kind of reality was quite common in most countries.

Ecstasy was for Plotinus the culmination of religious experience, whereby the union with God and perfect knowledge of divine truth, and the ultimate goal of the moral will, are realised in direct though ineffable experience. Plotinus enjoyed this supreme initiation four times during the period when Porphyry was with him; Porphyry himself had it only once, when he was in his 68th year. It was a vision of the Absolute, * the one,” which being above thought, can only be apprehended passively by a sort of divine lapse ante the expectant soul. It is not properly a vision, for the seer no longer distinguishes himself from what he sees; indeed it is impossible to speak of them as two, for the spirit during the ecstasy has become completely one with the “ One.” This “flight of the alone to the alone" is a rare and transient privilege even for the greatest saint, and it is said that B who enjoys it “can only say that he has all his desire, and that he would not exchange his bliss for all the heaven of heavens.” From

neo-Platonism this philosophic rapture passed into Christianity though we seldom find it again in such a pure and elevated form. We trace the succession of metaphysical mystics from pseudo-Dionysius to Erigena, Echkart, Boehme, and Swedenborg. In extreme cases ecstasy produces complete insensibility. ‘ Schwester Katrej who is spoken of as a pupil of Ekhart is said to have heen carried out for burial when in a cataleptic trance. Anaesthesia of the skin is very common; the, ecstatic feels nothing when pins are driven into his flesh. Aquinas gays: “ The higher our mind is raised to the contemplation of spiritual things the mors it is abstracted from sensible things. But the final stage at which contemplation can possibly arrive is the divine substance. Therefore the mind that sees the divine substance must be wholly divorced from the bodily senses either by death or by some rapture.” Professor William James also describes many kinds of trance experiences in his ** Varieties of Religious Experience.”

Even in such modern poets as Wordsworth we find an experience similar to that of: Plotinus. Thus Wordsworth on revisiting the banks of Wye describes :—

These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration ;—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portions of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift,

Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened :—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul :

While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things." !

Tennyson again records a similar experience, “A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once as it were,

1 "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey " on rerisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour by Wordsworth.

out of the intensity of consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and wave away into boundless being, and this is not a confused state but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was almost a laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.” ' This experience is utilised by the poet in his * Anctent

Sage.”

“ For knowledge is the swallow on the lake That sees and stirs the surface shadow there But never yet hath dipt into the abyss The Abysm of Abysms, beneath, within, The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth, And the million-millionth of a grain Which cleft and cleft for ever more And ever vanishing, never vanishes To me my son more mystic than myself.”

William James also writes: “ It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus, and

1 Tennyson—A Memoir by H. Tennyson,

at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality, which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be found which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded ; looking back at my own experiences they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.”

But howsoever these experiences might be, they differ from the Yoga knowledge which is held forth as the ideal by Patafijali. The Yoga system speaks of five kinds of minds, namely, kshipta (wandering), müdha (somnambulic), vikshipta (occasionally steady or distracted), ekagra (one-pointed), and nirodha (restrained), So far as Yoga is used simply fo mean an intense stage of concentration where the ordinary mental states are arrested, it is the common characteristic of mind of all these kinds. Thus the kshipta and midha stages are those in which even a deep self-forgetting experience may take place even through the extreme intensity of ordinary emotions or instinctive passions when the ordinary outflow of states is arrested. Thus Bhatta Kaliata writes in Spanda-kārikā, “The true nature of self is there where a man is in a state

of intense anger, joy, or extreme indecision, or

running after something through extreme emotion" and Vijiana Bhairava also writes to that

effect.’ But such stages of arrest have nothing to do

with the Yoga arrest which Patañjali recommends. The states of hypnosis which belong tothe vikshipta stage resemble these states more than the samadhi of Yoga. Thus Bhatta Kallata and Utpala both describe the hypnotic method as an alternative means of producing the same kind of arrest as that which is achieved through the intensity of emotions thus described? Thus

1 Atikruddhak prahrsto và kim karomiti pā mrian, dhāvan và yat padam gacchet tatra spandah pratisthitah. (Spandapradīpikā.) krodhādyante bhaye šokē gahvare vāraņe rane kutuhale kshudādyante brahmasatta samīpagā.

There scems little doubt that the modern form of hypnotism through exterior suggestion and self-passivity was quite woll-known in India. Thus Bhatta Kallata writes :—

yamavastham samālambya yadayam mama vaksh yati tadavasyam karishye'ham iti sankalpya tishthati, tāmāšrityordhvamūrgena somastryyāvubhāvapi sāušumņedhvanyastamito hitoa brahmandagocaram tadā tasmin mahāvyomni pralīnašasibhāskare saushuptapadavanmudhah prabuddhak syādanāvrtah-

and Utpala annotates ; ayamesha Devadatto jūātā adbhūtasadvastvabhidhayyanulatighyajno yat kiūcit mama vadishyati tadavasyamaham karishye anushthāsyāmīti sankalpya yāmavasthāmaunmukhyarūpām vritim samālamvya grhītvā yastishthati tasya pumsaķ tamavastham üíritya ūrddhvamārgeņa vishuvatpravahera somasūryyāvubhūvapi astam — .gacchatah ... tadā

dvāvapyapānaprāzau ...... svayamastamito atyastamitašaši-

tasmin kale tasminmahücyomni ca paracidākāše pr praiántajfüünakriye — jadah anabhivyaktasvasvabhavak

bhaskare

according to Bhatta Kallata and Utpala we find that the difference between the trance states produced through strong emotions or through instinctive passions of a somnambulistic nature, and those cases of hypnotism which are produced by the surrendering will of the subject in conjunction with the suggestion of the hypnotiser, is that the latter is a case of trance initiated by conscious will and surrender, and thus may be taken as the samādhi of the vikshipta stage. The difference between the mind of the vikshipta stage and that of the kshipta and mūdha stages is that the former may under certain conditions be induced to go into the trance stage, whereas the latter is almost an unconscious and somnambulistic passage without any control of the subject.

svapnādinā amuhyamanah prabuddhah Gniruddhah syat ‘saushuptapadavat yatha sushuptapade tatha prabuddhastu anavrta eva bhavet. An instance of hypnotism is also found in the Mahābhārata, XIII, 40, where *'Vipula," the disciple, being asked by his teacker Devašarman to protect the latter’s wife Buci from attempts at adultery on her by Indra, sat down by her, and gazed steadily with his eyes into her eyes, so that her gaze might meet his, and filled her mind with longing for what was right, Vipule thus entered her body as the wind enters space and remained there motionless, and invisible. Then making rigid the body of his teacher's wife, he stayed there devoted to guarding her and she was not aware of him. When Indra came to tempt her, Ruci could not move à muscle under the influence of Vipula, and though she wanted to assent to Indra’s proposal she could not utter & word, and only said, “ Sir what business hast thou to come here ? " against her wishes.

Indra being much disappointed went away with fright lest Vipula should curse him, ,

Almost all the different kinds of trance experiences which we find in Europe seem to belong to this vikshipta stage. These trances of the vikshipta stage must necessarily be transitory, and do not show any real spiritual development.

We should distinguish the Yoga ideal of trance which can only take place in the ekagra and the final nirodha stages of the mind from the trances of the other stages in that the former presupposes a very high degree of moral perfection, which is not a necessary desideratum of the other stages. It is when the Yogin has by a high degree of moral perfection become passionless towards objective pleasures that he begins gradually to establish himself in the trance state. The Yogin is not satistied only to transcend the objective world, but he wants to transcend the limits of his mind as well. The miraculous powers attained by the practising of the Yogin are useful to a person bent upon the Yoga ways in securing and strengthening his faith. Once he has become apathetic to all the attractions of pleasure and begun to travel in the road of Yoga, the states of trance through which he has to travel, will discover the true path for him; Yoga is itself the teacher for those that take to Yoga,’

1 yogen yogo jūātavyo yogo yogat pravarttate yo'pramattas tu yogena sa yoge ramate ciram,

The objects on which such a Yogin should at the beginning of his practice concentrate his attention have ordinarily no limits, and we find that the Yogin could meditate upon the passionless souls of many saints, upon dream consciousness, sleep or anything that he liked, for his only object was to stop the flow of his conscious states and to weaken for final destruction all the potencies of the states of consciousness. There was thus no limitation of the object of the samādhi, as the whole thing proceeds not in any miraculous way but quite naturally and consistently in accordance with the general principles of Yoga psychology. But yet the real road generally adopted by the Yogins was the meditation of Isvara. It is most likely that from the earliest period of the growth of the Yoga method, the Brahman was the object with whom the individual soul wanted to connect itself and we read in the Svetasvatara : “And when by means of the real nature of his self he sees as by a lamp, the real nature of Brahman, then having known the unborn eternal God, who is beyond all nature, he is freed from all fetters.” * When the Yogin thus meditated upon God, God was pleased to make the

Yadátmatattvena tu bralimatattsam Dipopameneha guktah prapasyet Ajam dhruvam sarvatatvairvišuddham Jiiaiva devam mucyate sarvapaésaih.

advance of his trance realisation easier for him by removing all obstacles which could stand in the way. It was by his will that all the movements of the prakrti were intelligently guided, and it was in him that the world was held, and it was unto him that the Yogin returned like a drop of water in the ocean. The knowledge that is brought about by the Yoga salvation is infinite ; all the hindrances and barriers which limit our knowledge and serve to express them in concepts are removed, and there is little to know, till at last when salvation is earned, the supreme intelligence shines forth in eternal sunshine never again to be sullied, darkened or eclipsed—the oilless lamp that forever shines.

The state of Samkhya emancipation is also the same, but more stress is laid there upon knowledge as the means of its attainment. So far as the need of the performance of outward morality is concerned Samkhya and Yoga are one. The stage of liberation is one that transceuds the sphere of moral works, and is only for those who have attained perfection in the latter. Yet it is not sufficient for a man to purge his mind of all immoral desires only, but in order to obtain salvation it is necessary that he should by continual thinking come to the thorough conviction that “ he is not all that he had been supposing himself to be, nor is the world nor

even the mind his in any way, he does not exist at all (nasmi, nākam, na me). In Buddhism also we find a similar echo, when we find that their object also consisted in the extinction of the will to be, which is the cause of all suffering ; it is the Nirvana, the extinction of what we call self and of all that we attribute to it, that is the summum bonum of the Buddhist. But the distinction remains that the destruction of the ego in Sāmkhya is only the annihilation of the phenomenal qualities of the self, which caused the notion of ego and its relation to the environing mental states and the world of matter and the consequent restoration of the self to its individuality—the self which, though noumenally always free, had been in the sphere of suffering owing to ignorance or a mere nondistinction of its own nature with that of prakrti. In Buddhism there is no such permanent entity as the self and the Nirvana is an inconceivable existence which though a state of annihilation is regarded in many texts as being a happy one. The Sāmkhya and Yoga liberation has nothing of happiness in it, it is the restoration „of the individual to its own true and pure state.

The reason why Sāmkhya does not think the Yoga method indispensable, as we can understand from a discourse of Bhisma and Yudhisthira in the Mahabharata is that here

self-knowledge is regarded as the culmination ofalleulture. The Sāmkhya sage will on the one hand try to attain the highest moral perfection attainable, and on the other proceed on a scientific enquiry through all the departments of human knowledge. Je must try to attain the highest and most wide-spread culture, until he can know the distinction of his self from the buddhi and all the products of the prakrti. The true knowledge of self is thus regarded not as a shrinking away from all science and culture but as their highest culmination.

Yoga however holds that this self-knowledge is attainable by the methodical processes of trance; and fixed faith in the surety of this process as the means of salvation is the most essential desideratum of success. Proceed on the way, the Yoga says, you will have miraculous powers and miraculous experiences, which will convince you of the truth of this method. Yoga salvation is thus attained through the perfected discipline of the will as the Samkhya goal is achieved through knowledge. As to the nature of the last existence in the emancipated states there is a view which is not only advocated by Vijiana Bhiksu but anticipated in the puranas as well, which holds that the emancipated souls return into the self of the Īsvara. It is through the highest moral elevation that this transcendent state comes when the soul

attains its freedom, and then lives in eternal

peace with itself. The saint is not merged in

him in the Vedanta fashion but holds his individuality all the same as a pure intelligence.