The earliest descriptions of a Sâ@mkhya which agrees with Îs'varak@r@s@na's Sâ@mkhya (but with an addition of Îs'vara) are to be found in Patañjali's Yoga sûtras and in the Mahâbhârata; but we are pretty certain that the Sâ@mkhya of Caraka we have sketched here was known to Patañjali, for in Yoga sûtra I. 19 a reference is made to a view of Sâ@mkhya similar to this.
From the point of view of history of philosophy the Sâ@mkhya of Caraka and Pañcas'ikha is very important; for it shows a transitional stage of thought between the Upani@sad ideas and the orthodox Sâ@mkhya doctrine as represented by Îs'varak@r@s@na. On the one hand its doctrine that the senses are material, and that effects are produced only as a result of collocations, and that the puru@sa is unconscious, brings it in close relation with Nyâya, and on the other its connections with Buddhism seem to be nearer than the orthodox Sâ@mkhya.
We hear of a Sa@s@titantras'âstra as being one of the oldest Sâ@mkhya works. This is described in the Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ as containing two books of thirty-two and twenty-eight chapters [Footnote ref 2]. A quotation from Râjavârttika (a work about which there is no definite information) in Vâcaspati Mis'ra's commentary on the Sâ@mkhya kârika_(72) says that it was called the _@Sa@s@titantra because it dealt with the existence of prak@rti, its oneness, its difference from puru@sas, its purposefulness for puru@sas, the multiplicity of puru@sas, connection and separation from puru@sas, the evolution of
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[Footnote 1: Patañjali's Mahâbhâ@sya, IV. I. 3. Atisannikar@sâdativiprakar@sât mûrttyantaravyavadhânât tamasâv@rtatvât indriyadaurvalyâdatipramâdât, etc. (Benares edition.)]
[Footnote 2: Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ, pp. 108, 110.]
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the categories, the inactivity of the puru@sas and the five viparyyayas, nine tu@s@tis, the defects of organs of twenty-eight kinds, and the eight siddhis [Footnote ref 1].
But the content of the Sa@s@titantra as given in Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ is different from it, and it appears from it that the Sâ@mkhya of the Sa@s@titantra referred to in the Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ was of a theistic character resembling the doctrine of the Pañcarâtra Vai@snavas and the Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ says that Kapila's theory of Sâ@mkhya was a Vai@s@nava one. Vijñâna Bhiksu, the greatest expounder of Sâ@mkhya, says in many places of his work Vijñânâm@rta Bhâ@sya that Sâ@mkhya was originally theistic, and that the atheistic Sâ@mkhya is only a prau@dhivâda (an exaggerated attempt to show that no supposition of Îs'vara is necessary to explain the world process) though the Mahâbhârata points out that the difference between Sâ@mkhya and Yoga is this, that the former is atheistic, while the latter is theistic. The discrepancy between the two accounts of @Sa@s@titantra suggests that the original Sa@s@titantra as referred to in the Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ was subsequently revised and considerably changed. This supposition is corroborated by the fact that Gu@naratna does not mention among the important Sâ@mkhya works @Sa@s@titantra but @Sa@s@titantroddhâra
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