Samkhya-Yoga-Kundalini
Samkhya is one of the oldest and most influential philosophies of Hinduism. Fragments of it can be found in some of the oldest Upanishads, it is prominent in the Bhagavad Gita, and ubiquitous in other Hindu texts. While many parts of it have been adopted by virtually all branches of Hinduism, other parts are very different from the dominant strains of Hindu thought. At some point, the Samkhya philosophers broke away from their counterparts in Advaita Vedanta and became a separate school.
By all accounts, the sage Kapila is credited with being the first to organize the philosophy in a systematic way. The Tattva Samasa, consisting of only twenty-two sutras, is the earliest Samkhya text and could be the actual work of Kapila. At one time, Kapila was highly revered by the Hindus. He was called the Avatar of Vishnu and, in the Srimad Bhagavatam, there are several chapters depicting him as a Christ-like figure, complete with miraculous birth. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna states that Kapila was one of his previous incarnations. Today, Kapila has been all but forgotten.
At some time during the heyday of Samkhya philosophy, probably before 350 A.D., the Samkhya Karika of Isvarakrishna was written. This is considered to be the classical form of the philosophy and is an abridgement of a longer text called the Sixty Topics. It contains most of the important points of the philosophy and is still the main text that is used today.
Around the 8th century C.E., the well-known teacher Sankara mounted a campaign against Samkhya. Sankara was a Brahman who was concerned about the decline of the old Vedic religious practices. He was able to discredit Samkhya through the force of his dialectical skills and succeeded in restoring the old religious practices, thereby securing the livelihoods and social status of the Brahman class for centuries to come. From this time forward, Samkhya declined in influence and popularity.
There was a resurgence in interest in Samkhya around the 14th century C.E. with the writing of two commentaries on a text called the Samkhya-Pravachana-Sutram. Hindu academics tend to consider this text to be post-classical or medieval. However, the commentator Vijnana Bhiksu stated that he reconstructed it from a “sixteenth part” that remained of some much older texts. From reading this text, it is apparent that much of it pre-dates the Samkhya Karika and it contains some important parts of the philosophy that are not included in the Karika.
British academics became aware of Samkhya philosophy around the mid to late 19th century and translated these texts into English. A book called The Samkhya Philosophy by Nandalal Sinha was published in English in 1915, containing several of the most important texts. There have been a few important texts published in English since that time, most notably Classical Samkhya by Gerald Larson, first published in 1969.
The texts used as source material for this website are all from The Samkhya Philosophy by Nandalal Sinha. They are: