Back to the library

Bibliotheca Indica; Collection of Original Works (ii) Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya, Aphorisms of the Hindu Philosophy - Vijnana Bhikshu, 1856 - Complete Book

Page 1 of 33

English

A passage for editorial review. BIBLIOTHECA INDICA: ae A Sia COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL WORKS PUBLISHED UNDER THE PATRONAGB OF THE Hou. Court of Bivectors of the Last India Company, AND THE SUPERINTENDENCE OP THB ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. ene Lt ee ght eee. ARMA | BE ne ie Ie meen : ‘ THE aoeas SANKHYA-PRAVACHANA-BH ASHYA, A COMMENTARY ON THE APHORISMS OF THE HINDU ATHEISTIC PHILOSOPHY ; By VIJNANA BHIKSHU. Eprrep sy Firz-Epwarp Hatt, M. A., ember of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, of the American Oriental Society, and of the Archeological Society of Delhi. “_" ~ CALCUTTA: PRINTED BY J. THOMAS, AT THE BAPTIST MISSION PRLSS. 1856. OfeL df F rye/ pppoe s I Se 2 es $9 om Seemann eh et . - EDITOR'S PREFACE. which the Hindus apply to their atheistic* theory, — y : 5 it, il n’est guére supposable que Colebrooke se soit trompé pila nie Vidée de Dieu, Tl n’a fait que reproduire les lirectes que l’Inde elle-méme a portées contre lui; et, comme ns incontestables ne sont pas justifi¢es pleinement par les slokas il reste que ce soient les Sofitras qui les justifient. Dans X que nous ayons traduits, cette déplorable doctrine ne s’est ivement & découvert ; mais je crois pouvoir affirmer, dés & pré- ten effet dans quelques autres, comme Vaflirment les com- diens et Colebrooke.” M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire; Pre- p sur le Sankhya, pp. 271, 272. plebrooke as entertaining the view that Kapila is atheistic: pruntée lui-méme aux commentateurs indiens.” Id, ibid., p. 5. eely exact. Colebrooke, the last of men to condescend, as a to statements in train, does much more than “ simply re- no proof of God’s existence.” Miscell. Essays, Vol. I., pp. further, I., 92—99; LIL, 56—57; V., 2—12, and 46; VI., 's Aphorisms. , in respect of charging Kapila with the denial of God. a-purdna, latter section, Pdéshapdotpatti chapter, Jaimini and ed sages of the ¢émasa order, and their writings are termed ? wr B 2 1 ze of atheism against Kapila, “borrowing it from Indian £ * He refers, by numbers, to several of Kapila’s own aphorisms, icitly atheistic; and he translates one of them—I., 92—by the — ry glance at Indian commentators, at least on the Sankhya, rinced to M. Saint-Hilaire, that they are, mostly, as delicate — 2 is that of Kapila’s Sdnkhya ;* this epithet being variously under- stood, in.accordance with the several acceptations of its imme- diate primitive, sankhyd. Inthe Mahdbhdrata, sdnkhya is allied ‘to parisankhydna and parisankhyd, ‘ exhaustive enumeration.’t The author of the Shad-dars' ana-samuchchaya, a Jaina compendium, cor- responding to Madhava Acharya’s Sarva-dars’ana-sangraha, says, in the tone of one who retails a familiar fact : meg frou afea afectraceaan: | * Sdnkhya is the denomination common to Kapila’s system and to Patan- jali’s, M. Saint-Hilaire, in the opening words of his Analysis of the Sankhys, confounds the paronymes sankhyd and sénkhya : “Le mot de Sainkhya, qui est devenu le noni du systéme de Kapila, signifie nombre ; .et, pris adjective- ment, numéral. II signifie encore, dans une acception assez voisine : calcul, supputation, jugement, raisonnement.” Premier Mémoire sur le Sinkhya, p. 19. : Dr. Réer also says: ‘The term Sdnkhya has two meanings, enumeration and investigation.” Lecture on the Sinkhya Philosophy, p. 8. The word Sdnkhya, as affording a variety of significations, is made the subject of a laborious pun, in the initial couplet of Bhiskara Acharya’s Bija-9 ganita. + meqared yaar ofcoeeracwaa! XIL, 11393, Also: BTSeQRUAGATAT WCHS TAT UAH | Wear waa Sa vats a owe | aarfa a watawa. aISEQTY Ta | VSAM we sae g faaw gefsua on Thid., XIZ., 11409-10. One of my MSS, reads, in the first of these two passages, parisankhyd+ nidars’anam ; and, in the second, parisankhydna-dars'anam. The same MS, has sankhyam prakurute in place of sdnkhydh prakurvate. Vijnina Bhikshu, at p. 8, has sankhydm prakurvate, and tena sdnkhydh prakirtitdh instead of parisankhydya tattwatah. But, be the best readings, among these, as they may, it is abundantly plain, from the context, that Vijnana errs in supposing that any allusion is here made to sankhyd, or any cognate word, in the sense of “ratiocination” or the like. Colebrooke, who neglected to pursue -the scholiast’s citation to the fountain-head, toak it, on trust, as correct, and renders sankhyé by “judgment.” Miscell, Essays, Vol. I., p. 229, 3 Sankhyd, as the proximate source of sénkhya, denotes, agreeably to a contemporary speculator of some local celebrity, ‘enun- Nilakantha Chaturdhara, in his commentary on the Mahdbhérata, the ‘Bhérata-bhdva-dipa, ineffectually labours, with the aid of arbitrary con- structions, to gloss away the palpable import of the passages given above. In short, his predilections as a Vedanti reduce his exegetical merit, wherever the system of Kapila is under diseussion, to that of perverse ingenuity. _ In citing the Mahdbhdrata, or in referring to it, I follow, for convenience, the notation, right or wrong, of the printed edition. But I everywhere verify, or correct, the text of this edition by three very good MSS. which I have consulted. , Colebrooke says: “A system of philosophy in which precision of reckon- ing is observed in the enumeration of its principles, is denominated Sénkhya ; aterm which has been understood to signify numeral, agreeably to the usual acceptation of sankhyd, number: and hence its analogy to the Pythagorean philosophy has been presumed. But the name may be taken to imply,” &c. Miscell. Essays, Vol. I., p. 229. Adverting to these words, M. Saint-Hilaire observes: ‘Colebrooke s’est lnissé ,tromper par Vapparence et par une fausse analogie, en pronongant le to nom de Pythagore & cdté de celui de Kapila.” Premier Mémoire sur le Sankhya, p. 19. ; Again, ibid., p. 20: “Si Colebrooke a eu tort de rapprocher le nom de Pythagore de celui du philosophe indien,” &e. ; But Colebrooke, as is quite obvious from his guarded and adversative mode of expression, delivers, in the preceding extract, neither his own opinions nor even opinions which, pending the adduction of further evidence, he would be thought to accept. Professor Wilson—Sdnkhya-kérikd, Preface, p. xi.— cites, it is true, the words “and hence its analogy to the Pythagorean philo- sophy has been presumed,” and without comment as to the paternity of the surmise. It may have escaped him that he had formerly written : “The first Indian School, the leading tenets of which are described by Mr. Cole- brooke, is the Sénkhya, a term which has been understood to signify ‘nw- meral,’ and which, therefore, perhaps suggested to Sir William Jones, his comparison of it to the Pythagorean doctrine,” Quarterly Oriental Magazine, Vol. IV., pp. 11, 12: September, 1825. Colebrooke alludes, without doubt, to the following passage: “On the present occasion, it will be sufficient to say that the oldest head of a sect whose entire work is preserved, was—according to some authors—Kapila; not (?] the divine personage, a reputed grandson [?] of Brahmé, to whom B2 4 ciation - pursuant to a stated order.’* Another writer holds that it bears'the import of ‘consideration.’+ Elsewhere, it is explain- ed by ‘right knowledge ;’t and the author of the commentary in the following pages, defines it by ‘representation of the real nature of spirit, on the basis of an accurate discriminative ac- * quaintance with it, as contrasted with nature”§ Consonantly to Krishna compares himself in the Gitd, but a sage of his name, who invented the Sénkhya, or Numeral, philosophy ; which Krishna himself appears to im- pugn, in his conversation with Arjuna; and which, as far as I can recollect it \ from a few original texts, resembled, in part, the metaphysics of Pythagoras, * and, in part, the theology of Zeno.”’ Sir William Jones’s Works, Vol. L., pp. 163, 164: 4to. ed. of 1799. ” Sir William, at an earlier period, had pushed his hypothetical analogies ‘much further than this. “Of the Philosophical Schools it will be sufficient, here, to remark that the first Nydya seems analogous to the Peripatetic ; the second, sometimes called Vais'eshika, to the Ionic; the two Mimdnsés, of which the second is often distinguished by the name of Veddnla, to the! Platonic ; the first Sénkhya, to the Italic ; and the second, or Pdtanjala, to the Stoic, philosophy : so that Gautama [Gotama] corresponds with Aristotle ; Kanada, with Thales; Jaimini, with Socrates; Vyasa, with Plato; Kapila, a with Pythagoras.; and Patanjali, with Zeno. But an accurate comparison between ‘the Grecian and Indian Schools would require a considerable volume.” Ibid., Vol. I, PP- 360, 361. bed Bae ree Way 1 Waa ways Qa aad aati a veal mayer frarcat | aq atafiaa ad aang wTeiaUd waa! Deva Tirtha Swami: Sénkhya-taranga, ad init. + vafdufaawrai vem faqre | aafwaay wat oe: ere <fa wrerarearata awa | Raghundtha Tarkavagis’a Bhattéchirya: Sdn- khya-tattwa-vildsa, ad init. t see ema way afer saratramay grea! S'ridhara Swami: Subodhini, on IL., 39, of the Bhagavud-gttd. Strya Pandit, the astronomer, annotating, in his Paramdrtha-prapd, the same passage of the Gété, almost copies S‘ridhara: Weyl wal Waal Vata yaaa BISA | § The original will be found near the top of p. 8. As for the italics noticeable in the text, I would remark, once for all, that I use them to dis- tinguish ellipses.

Page 1 of 33