Creation, resulting from the union of prakr'iti (i) and purnsha (25), is material, or consisting of souls invested with gross bodies, and intellecturd, or consisting of the affec tions of intellect, its sentiments or faculties. Material creation comprises eight orders of superior beings—gods, oemi-gods, and demons; five of inferior beings—quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, and insects; besides vegetable and inorganic substances; and man, who forms a class apart. This material creation is again distributed into three classes: 1 tat of sattfca, or goodness, comprising the higher gods, with virtue prevailing in it: but onnsient; that of tamas, or darkness, where foulness or passion predominates: it com prises demons and inferior beings; and between these, that of rajas, or impurity colored condition), the human world, where passion together with misery prevails. Throughout these worlds, soul experiences pain. arising from death and transmigration, until it is finally liberated from its union with person. intelicetual creation prises those affections which obstruct, disable, content, or perfect, the understanding; these amount to fifty. Obstructions of intellect are error, conceit, passion, hatred, fear, severally subdivided into 02 species. _Disability of intellect arises from defect or injury of organs, such as deafness, blindness, etc., and from the contraries of the two next classes; making it total. of 28 species. Content is either internal or external—the one fourfold, the o.her fivefold. Internal content concerns nature, proximate cause, time, and luck; external content relates to abstinence from enjoyment upon temporal motives —viz., aversion to the trouble of acquisition, or to that of preservation, and reluctance to incur loss consequent on use, or evil attending on fruition, or offense of hurting objects by the enjoyment of them. The perfecting of intellect comprises eight species; it is direct, as preventing the three kinds of pain; or indirect, such as reasoning, oral inst•u6tiou, amicable intercourse, Cie.
Besides the 25 principles, the Siinkliya also teaches that nature has three essential gun'as, or qualities—viz., aatmt, the quality of goodness or purity; mina (lit. colored ness), the quality of passion; and tams, the quality of sin or darkness; and it classifies accordingly material and intellectual creatior. Thus. four properties of intellect par take of goodness or purity—viz., virtue, knowledge, dispassionateness, and power; and four, the reverse of the former, partake of :Au or darkness—viz.. sin, error, incontin and powerlessness. It is worthy of notice that by power the Silnkhya unders:ands eight faculties—viz., that of shrinking into a minute form, to which everything is per viods; of enlarging to a gigantic body; of assuming extreme levity; of possessing unlimited reach of organs; of irresistible will; dominion over all beings, animate or inanimate; the faculty of changing the course cf nature; and the ability to accomplish ' everything desired. The knowleage of the principles, and hence the true doetrioe, is, according to the Sankbya, obtained by three kinds of evidence—viz., percept!on, 'inference, and rirlt affirmation, which some understood to mean the teNelation of the Veda and authoritative tradition.
It will be seen from the foregoing summary that the Saidthya proper does not teach the existence of a supreme Being, by whom nature and soul were created, aid by whom the world is ruled. It was therefore accused by its opponents of being atheistical, or as denying the existence of a creator; and it is the special object of the fact system to remove this reproach, by asserting his existence, and defining his essence (see Yoga). The
truth however, is, that the Sibilthya proper inertly maintains that there is no proof for the existence of a supreme Being; and the passages quoted by the opponents to show that the founder of the Sankli•a denied l's'wara, or at supreme God, are quite compatible with the view that he confined his teaching to those taltwers or principles Which, in his opin ion, were capable of demonstration. Nor is it at all probable that the founder of the orthodox Yoga would have propounded his system as supplementary to that of the Sanhhya proper. had there been that incompatible antagonism bet weer t bent which must separate tin atheistical from a theistical philosophy. ,The SelnIthya system underwent a mythological development in the Purfin'as (q.v.). the most important of which it is followed as the basis of their cosmogony. Thus, Prakr'zti, or nature, is identified by them with ..11101, or the energy of Brahmil; and the Matsya-Pu•an'a affirms that Braldhi, or Mahar', the intellectual principle, through the three qualities, goodness, passion, and sin. being one form. becomes the three gods, Brahma, Visloi'n, and S'iva." The most important development. however. of the S'iinkliya is that by the Buddhistic doctrine, which is mainly based on it. The &Int.:Ilya system is probably the oldest of the Hindi' systems of philosophy; for its chief principles are, with more or less detail, already contained in the chief Upanishads (see VF.o.k); but whether the form in which it has Come down to us, and in which it is now spoken of ns the San khyn, is also older dam that in which the other systems are preserved, is a question as yet not solveil by Sanskrit philolog.y. That this form, however, is not the oldest one is borne out, for instance. by the differences which exist between ,the S:ltilthya doctrine of the Upanishads and the doctrine propininiled in the first book of the institutes of Maim on the out Side, :toil the doctrine of the actual Stlinkhya on the other.
The reputed founder of the actual is Ka pita (lit. tawny), who is asserted to have been n son of Brahma, or, as others prefer. an incarnation of He taught his system in Siltras (q.v.), which, distributed in six lectures, bear the name of Stinkliya Pravachana. The oldest commentary on this work is that by Aniruddha; another, is that by rijacinabliikxlcti. The best summary of the Stmlchya doctrine is given by i 8 wara Kr'ishn'a, in his ,`-'unk.hya-Karikic, edited by H. 11. Wilson, with a translation of the text by H. T. ColebrooLe, and a translation of the commentary of Gautfapada by himself (Oxford, 1i334 For the various theories concerning the word Saukhya. and the founder of the system Kapila, and for the literature relating to it, see the elaborate and excellent preface by Fitzedward Hall to his edition of the Sankhya-Pravachana, with the com mentary of Vijnilna-blilkshu, in the Bibliotheca Indica (Calcutta. 1856); and see also his valuable Contribetion toward an lades; to the Bibliography of the Indmu Pnilueophical Systents (Calcutta, 1850). Amongst essays on the Silnkhya philosophy, the most reliable still remains that by 11. T. Colebrooke, reprinted from the Trausactians of the Royal Asiatic society, in his Miscellaneous Essays (Loudon, 1837), vol. i. p. 227, tr.