Classical Indian Philosophy IV: Sāṃkhya, Yoga and Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā

Puruṣa is pure consciousness: the witness (sākṣī), isolated, indifferent, the seer and not an agent. It has no guṇas and does not change. Its existence is argued in Sāṃkhyakārikā 17: aggregates exist for the sake of another (saṅghāta-parārthatvāt), as a bed exists for a sleeper; there must be something opposite to what has the three guṇas (triguṇādi-viparyayāt); there must be a controller (adhiṣṭhānāt); there must be an enjoyer (bhoktṛ-bhāvāt); and the striving for isolation (kaivalyārthaṃ pravṛtteḥ) presupposes one who is to be isolated.

Puruṣas are many (Sāṃkhyakārikā 18): birth, death and the sense organs are allotted to each separately (janana-maraṇa-karaṇānāṃ pratiniyamāt); people do not act all at once (ayugapat pravṛtteḥ); and the proportions of the guṇas differ from person to person (traiguṇya-viparyayāt). If there were one self, one person's liberation would liberate all. This pluralism is a main point on which Sāṃkhya differs from Advaita.

Their relation is described by images rather than a mechanism. Puruṣa and prakṛti come together like a lame man who can see and a blind man who can walk (Sāṃkhyakārikā 21), for the sake of puruṣa's experience and eventual isolation. Prakṛti works for puruṣa unconsciously, as milk flows for the calf (57), and withdraws once seen, as a dancer ceases after showing herself to the audience (59). Bondage is non-discrimination (aviveka): the reflection of consciousness in buddhi makes the activity of buddhi appear to be puruṣa's. Liberation (kaivalya) is discriminative knowledge (viveka-khyāti) of the two.

Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra takes over Sāṃkhya metaphysics and adds a discipline and a God. Its definition is "yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ" (1.2): yoga is the stilling of the modifications of citta. Citta is the whole inner instrument (buddhi, ahaṃkāra and manas together), an evolute of prakṛti that takes the form of its objects and reflects puruṣa's consciousness. Its theory of pramāṇa is Sāṃkhya's: "pratyakṣa-anumāna-āgamāḥ pramāṇāni" (1.7), perception, inference and verbal testimony (āgama).

The vṛttis are either kliṣṭa (afflicted, fed by the five kleśas: avidyā, asmitā, rāga, dveṣa and abhiniveśa) or akliṣṭa, and they are stilled by practice (abhyāsa) and dispassion (vairāgya). Yoga is possible only in the last two bhūmis; the first three are the ordinary distracted mind.

God (Īśvara) is "a special puruṣa untouched by afflictions, actions, their fruition and their residues" (1.24). In him the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed (1.25); he is the teacher even of the ancients, not being limited by time (1.26); and his expression is the syllable Om (1.27). Devotion to him (īśvara-praṇidhāna) is one route to samādhi (1.23) and one of the five niyamas. God does not create the world here; he is a perfect puruṣa who serves as an object of meditation and a help in removing obstacles. That is why Yoga is called seśvara (theistic) Sāṃkhya and classical Sāṃkhya nirīśvara.

Mīmāṃsā ("enquiry") is the school of Vedic exegesis founded on Jaimini's Mīmāṃsā Sūtra, with Śabara's commentary and two sub-schools, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa's (Bhāṭṭa) and Prabhākara's (Prābhākara). Its subject is dharma, defined as "that good which is known through injunction" (codanā-lakṣaṇo 'rtho dharmaḥ, 1.1.2). Since dharma is supersensible, only the Veda can reveal it, and the Veda is apauruṣeya: authorless and eternal, so free from the defects an author could introduce.

For Mīmāṃsā a cognition is valid by the very conditions that produce it (utpatti) and is known as valid along with the cognition itself (jñapti); nothing further is needed. Invalidity comes from outside: from a later sublating cognition (bādhaka-jñāna) or from discovering a defect in the cause (kāraṇa-doṣa). This protects the Veda: an authorless text has no defective cause, so its cognitions stand valid unless sublated, and nothing can sublate knowledge of the supersensible.

• Classification of śruti-vākyas: vidhi (injunction, "one desiring heaven should sacrifice"), niṣedha (prohibition, "one should not eat kalañja"), arthavāda (explanatory or eulogistic statements that have meaning only as praising a vidhi or deprecating what a niṣedha forbids), with mantra and nāmadheya (names of rites) usually added. Vidhis are further graded as apūrva-vidhi (enjoining the wholly new), niyama-vidhi (restricting an optional means) and parisaṅkhyā-vidhi (implying exclusion).
• Bhāvanā: in Kumārila's analysis the optative suffix of a vidhi expresses a productive force. Śābdī bhāvanā is the word's own impulsion of the agent; ārthī bhāvanā is the agent's activity towards a result. Every bhāvanā has three parts: sādhya (the result aimed at, such as heaven), sādhana (the means, the sacrifice) and itikartavyatā (the procedure, how it is done). Unit 3 returns to these three terms.
• Śabda-nityavāda: words, their letters and their relation to meaning are eternal (the relation is "autpattika", innate, Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.5); a spoken utterance only manifests the eternal word. Śaktivāda and jāti: the primary denotative power (śakti) of a word is fixed on the universal (jāti or ākṛti), not on the individual, which is reached by implication. Prabhākara also counts śakti, the causal potency of things, as a separate category.