an identifiable intellectual faction emerged specializing in this kind of enumera-
tion, apparently going through a number of rival versions. The Samkhya
mentioned in the Gita and elsewhere in the Mahabharata, and that was known
to Buddhists around 100 c.e., had not yet settled on a clear dualism. Emphasis
was still placed on a single overriding peak principle. There were eight Prakritis
instead of a monistic material substance; the list of categories which make up
the world was not as elaborate as it was to become later (EIP, 1987: 121–122).
This vague proto-Samkhya turned into a conscious philosophical system, per-
haps at the hands of Pañchashikha ca. 200 c.e., and definitely with Varsha-
ganya (early 300s) and Vindhyavasin, whom we find debating with the Bud-
dhists in Vasubandhu’s circle. Around 400 Ishvarakrishna produced a version
of Samkhya which became canonical, sharpening up philosophical issues ap-
parently in response to Buddhist and Vaisheshika criticism. By the next gen-
eration rival versions of Samkhya, such as Madhava’s, are referred to as
“heretical” and are lost in the subsequent attention space (EIP, 1987: 148).
The unique feature of the mature Samkhya philosophical system was that
it rigidly separated the realm of Purusha from the material world; spirit merely
looks on as a witness consciousness, illuminating without interfering in the
differentiated realm at all. Prakriti was regarded as the source from which
emanated the entire phenomenal world, including even the discriminating
intellect, ego, and mind—thereby giving this part of the Samkhya system a
rather materialist and reductionist slant.
As Samkhya took shape in the philosophical attention space, its metaphori-
cal imagery became subject to critique. Buddhists ridiculed the tension between
its monist and pluralist tendencies (Stcherbatsky, 1962: 1:18). Purusha is
supposed to be a pure unchanging light of consciousness, witnessing the
unfolding of Prakriti without interfering with it; but how can the connection
between these two substances be explained? On the side of Purusha, how can
one hold that it consists in an undifferentiated substance and yet is divided
into a plurality of individual souls? On the side of Prakriti, how explain why
matter starts evolving in the first place and why it eventually comes to rest?
The problem is exacerbated because Samkhya builds on the ontological argu-
ments of a Parmenidean immutability and self-containedness of being. Already
in the Gita (2.16) the argument was advanced, “Of the non-existent there is
no coming to be; of the existent there is no ceasing to be”; and the full-fledged
Samkhya philosopher Varshaganya held, “There is no origination for what is
not, nor destruction for what is” (Halbfass, 1992: 59). The inconsistency of
this stance with a dynamic universe, and with relations among a plurality of
substances and modes, provided a fertile field for critique. During these battles
Samkhya rose to prominence in the attention space.
Samkhya became the core philosophy of popular Hinduism by rationalizing
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