History of India/Volume 1/Chapter 23

by Romesh Chunder Dutt

SWASTIKA.

CHAPTER XXIII

SANKHYA AND YOGA

THT true glory of the Philosophic Period consists in the philosophy of Kapila and the religion of Buddha. Both worked to some extent on the same lines; both began with the great object of affording humanity a relief from the suffering which is the lot of all living beings; both rejected the remedies which the Vedic rites offered; both declared knowledge and meditation to be the means of salvation; both adopted the doctrine of transmigration from the Upanishads; both aimed at Nirvana; and both professed an agnostic creed.

But here the parallel ends. Kapila, who probably lived a century before Buddha, started the system of philosophy, but meant it only as philosophy addressed to high thinkers and speculative scholars, and not to the masses. Buddha, on the other hand, who was probably born in the very town sanctified by the memory of the great philosopher, and was well versed in the philosophy of Kapila, possessed a deep and all-embracing sympathy, a feeling for the poor, a tear for the bereaved and the suffering. This was the secret of Buddha's great success.

The object of Kapila's philosophy was to relieve mankind from the three kinds of pain, bodily and mental, natural and extrinsic, divine or supernatural. Vedic rites are inefficacious, because they are tainted with the slaughter of living beings; the complete and final emancipation of the soul is secured by knowledge alone.

Nature and Soul are eternal and self-existent. From Nature (prakriti) is produced intellect, consciousness, the five subtle elements, the five grosser elements, the five senses of perception, the five organs of action, and the mind. Soul (purusha) produces nothing, but is only linked with Nature, until its final emancipation. Kapila does not accept the orthodox opinion of the Upanishads that all souls are portions of the Universal Soul. He asserts that each soul is separate, and has a separate existence after its emancipation from the bonds of Nature.

It will be seen that, according to Kapila, everything except purusha, or Soul, is derived from prakriti, or primordial matter, and is therefore material, so that he differs from modern materialistic philosophers only in asserting that there is a soul, independent of matter and eternal, though for a time linked with matter.

The five senses simply receive impressions; the five organs of action, such as the voice, hands, and feet, act according to their functions; but the mind (manas) is not what is implied by the English word,

A Chapel in the Elephanta Caves

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By far the best known of all the cave-temples of India are those at Elephanta, an island some six miles from Bombay. Unlike the temple at Karli, the rock-shrine at Elephanta is sacred to Brahmanisim, and especially to Siva. The caves are belie-red to hare been excavated between the ninth and eleventh centuries of our era although the pious natives who flock there in vast numbers at the great festival of Siva in the latter part of February attribute to them a fabulous antiquity and a legendary origin.

being only a sense organ which arranges the impressions and presents them to consciousness. Consciousness individualizes those impressions as " mine," and the intellect distinguishes and discriminates, and forms them into ideas.

ASCETIC AT NASIK.

Kapila recognized only three kinds of evidence, perception, inference, and testimony, and he admitted nothing which could not thus be known, so that, as neither perception, nor inference, nor testimony presented to him the idea of an external Author of all things, the Supreme Deity Was not admitted by him as knowable. On the other hand, he recognized causation, and argued the production of all formal existences from prakriti, or Nature, on five different grounds. Firstly, specific objects are finite in their nature and must have cause. Secondly, different things have common properties and must be different species of the same primary genus. Thirdly, all things are in a constant state of progression, and show an active energy of evolution which must have been derived from a primary source. Fourthly, the existing world is an effect, and there must be a primary cause. And fifthly, there is an undividedness, a real unity in the whole universe, which argues a common origin.

Purusha, or Soul, however, has a separate existence, first, because matter is apparently collected and arranged with a design, which proves, according to Kapila, not a Designer, but the existence of soul, for which the things must have been arranged. Secondly, matter furnishes materials for pleasure and pain; hence sentient nature, which feels pleasure and pain, must be different from it. Thirdly, there must be a superintending force. Fourthly, there must be a nature that enjoys. And the fifth argument is that the yearning for a higher life points to the possibility of gaining it. These were Kapila's arguments for the existence of soul independent of matter, yet he did not believe in one soul, but held that the souls of different beings are distinct one from the other, thus diverging from the teaching of the Upanishads and the Vedantic school, which is based upon them.

We have already said that Kapila borrowed the doctrine of transmigration of souls from the Upanishads, and having borrowed this idea, he had to adapt it to his own system of philosophy. The soul, according to him, is so passive that the individuality of man is scarcely stamped on it, while the intellect, the consciousness, and the mind all belong to the material part of a man. Hence Kapila was constrained by his own rigid reasoning to assume that a subtle body, consisting of the intellect, the consciousness, the mind, and the subtle principles, migrated with the soul. This subtle body, or linga sarīra, forms the personality of an individual, and ascends to a higher region or descends to a lower with the soul, according to the virtues or vices committed in this life, nor does the soul gain final emancipation till it is freed from its subtle body by the knowledge which it acquires through its union with nature.

Even after the soul has obtained complete knowledge, it resides for a time in the body, "as a potter's wheel continues to revolve from the force of the previous impulse." This is the Nirvana of Buddha, a state of quietude, when perfect knowledge has been gained, when all passions have been restrained, all desires have been checked, and the enlightened soul awaits its final emancipation. That separation of soul and matter comes at last. Nature ceases to act, as her purpose has been accomplished, and the soul obtains an abstraction from matter, and both continue to exist eternally isolated from each other and independent of each other.

The great fault of Kapila's philosophy as a creed for the people was its agnosticism, and the Yoga system of philosophy sought to obviate this defect. The Yoga philosophy is ascribed to Patanjali, who probably lived in the second century before Christ. All that we know of the life and history of Patanjali is that his mother was called Gonika, as he himself tells us, and that he resided for a certain time in Kashmir, though he was a native of Gonarda, a place in the eastern part of India. His system is contained in his Yoga Sutra. In the first chapter of this work yoga is derived from yuj, "to join" or "to meditate," and this meditation is possible only by the suppression of the functions of the mind by constant exercise and

A HINDU DEVOTEE.

by dispassion, thus leading to Yoga, conscious or unconconscious.

The attainment of this coveted state of mind is hastened by devotion to Isvara, or God, who is regarded as a soul untouched by affliction, works, deserts, and desires.

Disease, doubt, and worldly-mindedness are obstacles to the attainment of Yoga, but may be overcome by concentration of the mind, by benevolence, by indifference to happiness or misery, and even by the regulation of the breath.

The first exercises in the performance of Yoga are asceticism, the muttering of a mantra, and devotion to God, which overcome all afflictions like ignorance, egoism, desire, and aversion, or ardent desire to live. These are the motives of work (karma), and works must bear their fruits in subsequent births, while the object of Yoga is to devise means to abstain from works, and so to preclude future births.

We have, then, the Sankhya definition of the soul and the intellect; knowledge finally severs the connection between the two, and thenceforward the soul is free, and an end is put to its reincarnation and its suffering. Knowledge passes through seven stages before it is perfect, and eight means (which remind one of the eightfold path of the Buddhists) are prescribed, by which this perfect knowledge can be obtained. The first way is abstinence from evil actions, slaughter, falsehood, theft, incontinence, and avarice; and the second consists of an obligation to perform certain acts, purification, contentment, penance, study, and devotion to God. These two means are prescribed for all, householders and ascetics alike, while the rules for Yogis are supplemented by additional duties. The third stage is the assumption of special postures for meditation; the fourth is regulation of the breath; the fifth is the abstraction of the organs from their natural functions; and the sixth, seventh, and eighth are steadfastness, contemplation, and meditation, which are the essential constituents of Yoga itself. When these three are united, occult powers are acquired, and through them one may know the past and the future, make himself invisible to men, observe the details of what is passing

UNDERGOING YOGI PENANCE.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood.

in distant regions or in the stars and planets, converse with spirits, travel in the air or through water, and acquire various superhuman powers.

It will thus be seen that as a system of philosophy Yoga is valueless; all its fundamental maxims about the soul and intellect and sensations, about the transmigration of souls and their eternity and final emancipation by knowledge, are those of the Sankhya philosophy. In fact Patanjali tried to blend the idea of a Supreme Deity with the philosophy of Kapila; but unfortunately he or his followers mixed up with it much of the superstition and the mystic practices of the age, while in still later times the philosophy of the Yoga system has been completely forgotten, and the system has degenerated into cruel and indecent Tantrika rites, or into the impostures and superstitions of the so-called Yogis of the present day.