Samkhya Karika

01Kapila, first of the siddhas

Sankhya is the darshana of Maharshi Kapila. In the Gita, Bhagwan says that among the siddhas he is the sage Kapila. The Bhagavata Purana tells of Kapila born to Kardama Rishi and Devahuti, teaching his mother the path of knowledge and devotion until she was freed. Another katha places his ashram where the Ganga meets the sea: the sixty thousand sons of King Sagara disturbed his tapas and were burnt to ash, and their descendant Bhagiratha brought the Ganga down to free them. Pilgrims still bathe at Gangasagar on Makar Sankranti and take darshan at the Kapil Muni temple there.

02Ishvarakrishna's seventy verses

Kapila's own Sankhya teaching, the tradition says, was vast, the Shashtitantra of sixty topics. What the pathashala reads is Ishvarakrishna's summary of it in some seventy verses in the arya metre, which is why it is also called the Sankhya Saptati. The karikas tell their own lineage near the close: Kapila gave this purifying knowledge out of compassion to Asuri, Asuri to Panchashikha, who spread it widely, and it came down through a line of pupils to Ishvarakrishna. He says he has kept the sixty topics and left out only the illustrative stories and the refutation of rival views.

03Three kinds of suffering

The first karika starts from pain. Suffering strikes in three ways: from oneself (adhyatmika), from other beings (adhibhautika) and from the devas and nature (adhidaivika). Medicine and ritual give relief, the karika says, but not final and certain relief. That needs knowledge of the manifest, the unmanifest and the knower. Kapila, the karika says near its close, first taught this knowledge to Asuri, and Asuri to Panchashikha.

04The effect is already in the cause

Karika 9 gives five reasons why the effect exists in its cause before it appears. What does not exist cannot be produced. One takes up the right material for what one wants: milk for curd, not water. Not everything arises from everything. Only the capable cause yields what it is capable of. And the effect is of the same nature as its cause. Oil is pressed from sesame because it was already there; no one presses oil from sand. This doctrine, satkaryavada, lets Sankhya trace the whole world back to one unmanifest source, Prakriti, from which everything unfolds and into which it returns.

05Three gunas, one lamp

Sattva is light and illuminating, the karika says; rajas stimulates and moves; tamas is heavy and covers. Their natures are joy, restlessness and dullness. They overpower one another, rest on one another, give rise to one another and are always found together. How can three opposed forces work as one? As a lamp does, karika 13 answers. Oil, wick and flame are different, even opposed, yet together they give light. Every thing, every mood and every action is some mixture of the three, and the Gita's fourteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth chapters sort food, faith, charity and knowledge by the same three gunas.

06Twenty-five tattvas

Prakriti, made of the three gunas, is unconscious and ever active. Purusha is pure consciousness and does nothing. From their nearness Prakriti unfolds: mahat (buddhi), ahankara, manas, the five organs of knowing, the five of action, the five subtle elements and the five gross elements. With Prakriti and Purusha that makes twenty-five. The karika compares the two to a lame man riding on the shoulders of a blind man, and Prakriti to a dancer who stops once the audience has seen her. These same tattvas appear in the Gita, the Puranas and the Agamas.

07Many Purushas, one Prakriti

Sankhya holds that Purushas are many. Karika 18 gives the reasons: birth, death and the sense organs are allotted separately to each; beings do not all act at once; and the gunas are mixed differently in each. If there were only one Purusha, one man's birth would be everyone's. Purusha is the witness, untouched, neutral, the seer and not the doer. So who is bound? Karika 62 answers that no Purusha is ever really bound, freed or reborn. It is Prakriti, in her many forms, that is bound and freed. The bondage was a mistake about who one is.

08The dancer leaves the stage

Why does Prakriti unfold at all? For the sake of Purusha, says the karika, as unconscious milk flows for the calf. She shows him the world for his experience and then shows him that he is other than her. Karika 59 gives the image: as a dancer stops dancing once she has shown herself to the audience, Prakriti withdraws once she has shown herself to Purusha. Karika 66 completes it. One says, I have seen her, and grows indifferent; the other says, I have been seen, and ceases. When this discrimination is complete, the body may go on for a while, like a potter's wheel turning after the push, and then comes kaivalya.

09Commentaries and reach

Gaudapada's bhashya and Vachaspati Mishra's Sankhya Tattva Kaumudi are the classical commentaries; the Yuktidipika is the longest. In the sixth century the monk Paramartha carried the karika to China and translated it with a commentary. Henry Colebrooke's English version appeared in 1837. In the pathashala the karikas are learned by heart and read with the Tattva Kaumudi. The Bhagavata Purana honours Kapila as an avatar of Vishnu who taught Sankhya to his mother Devahuti.

What it contains

1. 1
   Karikas 1–8

   The book opens with the threefold suffering and asks why seen remedies and Vedic rites do not end it for good. Knowledge of the manifest, the unmanifest and the knower is offered instead. The tattvas are named in brief, and three pramanas are accepted: perception, inference and reliable testimony.

2. 2
   Karikas 9–21

   Satkaryavada is argued in five reasons, and the manifest is contrasted with the unmanifest. The three gunas are described with the image of the lamp. Proofs are given that Prakriti exists, that Purusha exists apart from it, and that Purushas are many.

3. 3
   Karikas 22–56

   Prakriti unfolds into buddhi, ahankara, the eleven senses and the elements, in their order. The subtle body that carries a being from birth to birth is described. The states of buddhi are listed: the virtues and their opposites, and the fifty forms of error, weakness, contentment and attainment.

4. 4
   Karikas 57–72

   Prakriti acts for Purusha's sake, as milk flows for the calf, and withdraws like the dancer. Discrimination ripens into kaivalya, final and certain. The closing karikas give the line of teachers from Kapila through Asuri and Panchashikha to Ishvarakrishna.

Famous verses

दुःखत्रयाभिघाताज्जिज्ञासा तदभिघातके हेतौ । दृष्टे साऽपार्था चेन्नैकान्तात्यन्ततोऽभावात् ॥

Struck by the three kinds of suffering, one inquires into the means of ending them. If it is said that visible means make the inquiry pointless, no: they do not end suffering with certainty, nor for ever.Samkhya Karika 1

मूलप्रकृतिरविकृतिर्महदाद्याः प्रकृतिविकृतयः सप्त । षोडशकस्तु विकारो न प्रकृतिर्न विकृतिः पुरुषः

The root Prakriti is not an effect. Mahat and the six that follow are both causes and effects. The sixteen are effects only. Purusha is neither cause nor effect.Samkhya Karika 3

असदकरणादुपादानग्रहणात्सर्वसम्भवाभावात् । शक्तस्य शक्यकरणात्कारणभावाच्च सत्कार्यम्

The effect exists beforehand: because the non-existent cannot be made, because a fitting material is sought, because not all comes from all, because the capable makes what it can, and because the effect has the nature of its cause.Samkhya Karika 9

पुरुषस्य दर्शनार्थं कैवल्यार्थं तथा प्रधानस्य । पङ्ग्वन्धवदुभयोरपि संयोगस्तत्कृतः सर्गः

For Purusha to see and for Pradhana to be set free, the two come together like the lame man and the blind; from that union comes creation.Samkhya Karika 21

रङ्गस्य दर्शयित्वा निवर्तते नर्तकी यथा नृत्यात् । पुरुषस्य तथात्मानं प्रकाश्य विनिवर्तते प्रकृतिः

As a dancer stops dancing after showing herself to the audience, so Prakriti withdraws after revealing herself to Purusha.Samkhya Karika 59