The Formation of Classical Doctrine of Sāṃkhya in Ancient India

The problem area of my work relates to the history of the formation of the ancient philosophical system of India - Saṃkhya (संख्या). The purpose of my research is to clarify the ideas about the ideological sources of the classical teachings of Saṃkhya, fixed in the canonized texts of this system, such as the «Saṃkhyakarika» of Ishvara Krishna and the «Saṃkhya Karika Bhasya» of Gaudapada. Saṃkhya is a dualistic system that recognizes the existence of two substances, material (prakriti) and spiritual (purusha). At the same time, representatives of Saṃkhya identified it with orthodox religiosity: a religion that recognized the authority of the Vedas, in which dualism was not explicitly expressed. Before the classical Saṃkhya appeared (in the period of the 5th – 7th centuries), in the 5th century B.C. among wandering preachers - Śramaṇ there were teachers who preached very similar dualistic views and created their own schools. The texts of other Śramaṇ, Buddhists and Jains, as well as authoritative works of Brahmanism and Hinduism - the epics of the «Mahabharata» and «Ramayana», report about them. The doctrines of these sages received the name of the researchers "epic Saṃkhya". Today it is quite difficult to reconstruct the facts of that ancient history when the canonized teaching of the Saṃkhya was formed, but from some preserved literary monuments we can study the ideological background that nourished the thought of the ancient Saṃkhya scholars, trace how metaphysical concepts were changed and refined before they entered the classical Saṃkhya. To achieve the main goal of my work - to clarify the ideas about the ideological origins of the classical teachings of Saṃkhya - I identified three basic concepts of the Saṃkhya system. The content of these concepts was considered in the process of historical transformation of the teachings that preceded the classical version of Saṃkhya. My special attention was directed to how the ideas of the ancient Saṃkhya are becoming certain, how they change and fit into the system of orthodox thought, the canonical doctrine. The textual basis of my work was served by two groups of sources: the first group consists of texts retelling the teachings of the ancient Saṃkhya — this is the “middle” Upanishad «Katha Upanishad» and the poem «Buddhacarita»; the second group includes the texts of the classical Saṃkhya - “Saṃkhya karika” of Ishvara Krishna and “Saṃkhya Karika Bhashya” of Gaudapada. This study also used the insights from my past courseworks on related topics.