Sankhya

Sankhya

संख्य, saṃkhya

“thinking”, “calculus”, “counting”

Sankhya is one of the views (darshana) of Hinduism, the founder of which is considered to be the sage Kapila. 

This doctrine is based on two basic concepts that exist in the world: Prakriti (one, unchangeable, eternal nature) and Purusha (individual spirit as a cosmic essence and as the soul of an individual).

Sankhya is a very ancient system. This is evident from the fact that the views of Sankhya are found in all the works of ancient India, including the Shruti, Smriti, and Puranas.

The origin of the term "sankhya" is shrouded in mystery. According to some thinkers, the term "sankhya" comes from the word sankhya, meaning "number", because this philosophy aims at the correct knowledge of reality through the enumeration of the main objects of knowledge.

Also, this word is interpreted by thinkers as follows: "sankhya" means perfect knowledge (samyag-jnana), and the philosophy, the content of which is such knowledge, is rightly called sankhya.

Like the nyaya-vaisheshika philosophical system, sankhya seeks to know reality with the practical goal of putting an end to all misery and suffering. Sankhya gives us a knowledge of ourselves that is more perfect than the theory of knowledge of other philosophical darshanas, with the possible exception of Vedanta. Thus, the word "sankhya" can be very well characterized as a purely metaphysical cognition of the Self. This is the metaphysics of dualistic realism. If the Nyayikas and Vaisheshikas admit the primary reality of many entities – atoms, minds and souls – then the sankhya recognizes the primary realities of only two types – spirit and matter (purusha and prakriti).

Following Kapila, his disciple Asuri and a follower of the last Panchashikha wrote several books in order to clearly and in detail explain the Sankhya system. But these works were eventually lost, and nothing is known about their contents. The earliest extant authoritative source on sankhya philosophy is Ishvarakrishna's work "Sankhya-karika". Other important works on the sankhya system are Gaudapada's “Sankhya-karika-bhashya”, Vachaspati's “Tattva-kaumudi”, Vijnanabhikshu's “Sankhya-sara” and Aniruddhi's “Sankhya-pravachana-sutra-vritti”.

The metaphysics of Sankhya, and especially its teaching about matter, is based mainly on its theory of causality, known as satkarya-vada, the theory of the relationship of an effect to its material cause.