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Thus, sometimes the quality of sattva predominates over rajas and tamas, and such a time is characterized by the rise of knowledge in the mind through all the different sense-gates; when rajas dominates sattva and tamas, the mind is characterized by greed, efforts and endeavours for different kinds of action and the rise of passions, emotions and desires; when tamas predominates over sattva and rajas, there is ignorance, lethargy, errors, delusions and false beliefs. The different categories are avyakta, or the undifferentiated r 1 mama yonir mahad brahma tasmin garbham dadhamy aham. XIv. 3. I have interpreted mahad brahma as prakrti, following Sridhara and other commen- tators. Sankara surreptitiously introduces the word maya between mama and yoni and changes the whole meaning. 2 Gitd, xiv. 5. 3 Ibid. xvill. 40. XIV] Sdmkhya Philosophy in the Gita 463 prakrti, buddhi (intellect), ahamkara (egohood), manas (mind-organ) and the ten senses, cognitive and conative. Manas is higher and subtler than the senses, and buddhi is higher than the manas, and there is that (probably self) which transcends buddhi. Manas is regarded as the superintendent of the different senses ; it dominates them and through them enjoys the sense-objects. The relation between the buddhi and ahamkara is nowhere definitely stated. In addition to these, there is the category of the five elements (mahabhita)'. It is difficult to say whether these categories were regarded in the Gita as being the products of prakrti or as sepa- rately existing categories. It is curious that they are nowhere mentioned in the Gita as being products of prakrti, which they are in Samkhya, but on the other hand, the five elements, manas, ahamkara and buddhi are regarded as being the eightfold nature (prakrtt) of God?. It is also said that God has two different kinds of nature, a lower and a higher; the eightfold nature just referred to represents the lower nature of God, whereas His higher nature consists of the collective universe of life and spirit?. The gunas are noticed in relation to prakrti in 11. 5, 27, 29, XIII. 21, XIV. 5, XVIII. 40, and in all these places the gunas are described as being produced from prakrti, though the categories are never said to be produced from prakrti. In the Gita, 1x. 10, however, it is said that prakrti produces all that is moving and all that is static through the superintendence of God. The word prakriz is used in at least two different senses, as a primary and ultimate category and as a nature of God’s being. It is quite possible that the primary meaning of prakrti in the Gita is God’s nature; the other meaning of prakrti, as an ultimate principle from which the gunas are produced, is simply the hypostatization of God’s nature. The whole group consisting of pleasure, pain, aversion, volition, consciousness, the eleven senses, the mind-organ, the five elements, egohood, intellect (buddhi), the undifferentiated (avyakta, meaning prakrti existing, probably, as the sub-conscious mind) power of holding the senses and the power of holding together the diverse mental functions (samghata) with their modifications and changes, is called ksetra. In another place the body alone is called ksetra’. It seems, therefore, that the word hsetra signifies in its broader sense not only the body, but also the entire mental plane, involving 1 Gitd, II. 42, x11. 6 and 7, Xv. 9. * Ibid. vit. 4. 3 Jbid. vil. 5. 4 Ibid. x11. 2. 464 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. the diverse mental functions, powers, capabilities, and also the undifferentiated sub-conscious element. In this connection it may be pointed out that Asetra is a term which is specially reserved to denote the complex of body and mind, exclusive of the living principle of the self, which is called ksetra-jfiia, or the knower of the ksetra, or ksetrin, the possessor of the ksetra or the body-mind complex. It is said that, just as the sun illuminates this whole world, so does the ksetrin illuminate the whole fsetra?. It will be remembered that it is said in the Gita that God has two different natures, one the complex whole of the five elements, ahamkara, buddhi, etc., and the other the collective whole of life and spirit (jiva-bhita). It will also be remembered that, by the fertilization of God’s power in prakrti, the gunas, or the charac- teristic qualities, which pervade all that is living, come into being. The gunas, therefore, as diverse dynamic tendencies or charac- teristic qualities, pervade the entire psychosis-complex of aham- kara, buddhi, the senses, consciousness, etc., which represents the mental side of the ksetra. Ksetra-jna, or the ksetrin, is in all prob- ability the same as purusa, an all-pervading principle as subtle as akasa (space), which, though it is omnipresent, remains untouched by any of the qualities of the body, in which it manifests itself. It is difficult to say what, according to the Gita, prakritz is in itself, before the fertilization of God’s energy. It does not seem that prakrti can be regarded as being identical with God. It appears more to be like an ultimate principle coexistent with God and intimately connected with Him. There is, however, no passage in the Gita by which the lower prakrti of God, consisting of the cate- gories, etc., can be identified with prakrti; for prakrti is always associated with the gunas and their production. Again, it is nowhere said in the Gita that the categories ahamkara, senses, etc., are in any way the products of the gunas; the word guna seems to imply only the enjoyable, emotional and moral or immoral qualities. It is these gunas which move us to all kinds of action, produce attachments and desires, make us enjoy or suffer, and associate us with virtues and vices. Prakrti is regarded as the mother-source from which all the knowable, enjoyable, and dynamic qualities of experience, referred to as being generated by the successive preponderance of the gunas, are produced. The categories of the psychosis and the five elements, which form the 1 Gitd, XII. 34. XIV] Sadmkhya Philosophy in the Gita 465 mental ground, do not, therefore, seem to be products of the gunas or the prakrti. They seem to constitute a group by themselves, which is referred to as being a lower nature of God, side by side with His higher nature as life and spirit. Ksetra is a complex of both the guna elements of experience and the complex categories of body and mind. There seem, therefore, to be three different principles, the apara prakrti (the lower nature), para prakrti or purusa, and prakrtt. Prakrti produces the gunas, which constitute experience-stuff; the apara prakrti holds within itself the material world of the five elements and their modifications as our bodies, the senses and the mind-categories. It seems very probable, there- fore, that a later development of Samkhya combined these two prakrtis as one, and held that the gunas produced not only the stuff of our experience, but also all the mind-categories, the senses, etc., and the five gross elements and their modifications. The gunas, therefore, are not the products of prakrti, but they themselves con- stitute prakrti, when in a state of equilibrium. In the Gita prakrti can only produce the gunas through the fertilizing energy of God; they do not constitute the prakrti, when in a state of equilibrium. It is hard to realize the connection between the apara prakrti and the prakrtiand the gunas. Theconnection, however, can be imagined to take place through the medium of God, who is the fertilizer and upholder of them both. There seems to be but one purusa, as the all-pervading fundamental life-principle which animates all bodies and enjoys and suffers by its association with its experiences, remaining at the same time unaffected and untouched by the effects of the gunas. This naturally presumes that there is also a higher and a lower purusa, of which the former is always un- attached to and unaffected by the gunas, whereas the lower purusa, which is different in different bodies, is always associated with the prakrti and its gunas and is continually affected by their operations. Thus it is said that the purusa, being in prakytz, enjoys the gunas of prakrti and this is the cause of its rebirth in good or bad bodies!. There is also in this body the higher purusa (purusah parah), which is also called paramatman, being the passive per- ceiver, thinker, upholder, enjoyer and the great lord?. The word purusa is used in the Gita in four distinct senses, firstly, in the 1 Gitd, xill. 21. e upadrastanumanta ca bharta bhokta mahesvarah paramatmeti capy ukto dehe ’smin purusah parah. Ibid. xu. 3. DiI 30 466 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. sense of purusottama, or God?; secondly, in the sense of a person? ; and the Gita distinctly speaks of the two other purusas as ksara (changeable) and aksara (unchangeable). The sara is all living beings, whereas the aksara is changeless. It is this higher self (uttamah purusah), different from the other purusa and called also paramatman, that pervades the three worlds and upholds them as their deathless God. God, however, transcends both the ksara purusa and the aksara purusa and is therefore called purusottama’*. Both prakrti and the paramatman purusa are beginningless. The paramatman purusa, being changeless and beyond the sphere of the gunas, is neither the agent of anything nor affected by the gunas, though it resides in the body. Prakrti is regarded as the ground through which all causes, effects, and their agents are determined. It is the fundamental principle of all dynamic operations, motivations and actions, whereas purusa is regarded as the principle which makes all experiences of joys and sorrows possible®.