The Sānkhya Kārikā, with the Bhāshya of Gauḍapāda — trans. H. T. Colebrooke and H. H. Wilson (1837)

The translations to which I have above referred are highly creditable to the translators. That of Professor Lassen in particular is of great merit and accuracy, and is illustrated by annotations, in which he has suecessfully cleared up many of the obscurities of the original text. T have taken the plan of his notes as in some degree the

PREFACE. ix

model of my comment; and although I do not always concur in his interpretations or explanations, I have found them always entitled to attention and respect. In one or two instances, and especially in regard to the first stanza, where I have most widely differed from him, I have sought rather to vindicate the accuracy of Mr. Colebrooke, than to impugn that of Professor Lassen. Variety of interpretation in such a case as that of a difficult work, on an abstruse subject, is no more than may be expected from different interpreters ; and occasional misapprehension implies no want of either compe- “tency or care.

In the course of my attempts to elucidate the text, I have in a few instances pointed out what seemed to me to offer remarkable coincidences with the doctrines of classical philosophers. ‘That an intimate connection exists between the metaphysical systems of the Hindus and those of the Greeks is generally admitted, although its extent has not yet been fully made out. We are scarcely yet indeed in possession of the means of instituting an accurate comparison, as the text books of the Hindus have not been printed or translated, and general dissertations, however comprehensive or profound, are insufficient for the purpose. The present publication will go same way, perhaps, towards supplying the deficiency, and may afford, as far as it extends, authentic materials for the use of those better qualified classical scholars who may be curious to ascertain in what degree the speculations of Plato and Aristotle correspond with those of Kapila and Gautama, or how far the teachers of one school may have been indebted to those of another. That the Hindus derived any of their philosophical ideas from the Greeks seems very improbable; and if there is any borrowing in the case, the latter were most probably indebted to the former. It has been objected to this conjecture, that the total want of chronology in Hindu writings renders it impossible to pronounce upon their date, and that it is probable that many works regarded as ancient are really very modern, as they may c x PREFACE.

have been composed long after the wra of Christianity; the notions which they inculcate being in fact acquired from the Greeks of Alexandria, through the intercourse befween India and Egypt. That this intercourse may have exercised a mutual influence upon some parts of the philosophy of both countries in the first ages of Christianity—that resemblances, respectively interchanged, may be detected in the notions of the new Platonists or Platonic Christians and of the more modern Védantis, or in the eclectic pantheism of the Pauraniks—is not impossible; but the Greek philosophy of that period can scarcely have suggested the severer abstractions of the Sankhya, and we must go back to a remoter age for the origin of the dogmas of Kariia. In truth, the more remote the period, the closer the affinity that seems to prevail; and as far as we are acquainted with the tenets of the Ionic and Italic schools, it is with them that Hindu philosophy, unalloyed with pantheism, seems to claim kin-

; dred, rather than with the mysticism of Plato, or the subtleties of ’ Aristotle. The metempsychosis itself is an important feature in this similitude: for this belief is not to be looked upon as a mere popular superstition ; it is the main principle of all Hindu metaphysics; it is the foundation of all Hindu philosophy. The great object of their philosophical research in every system, Bralimanical or Buddhist, is the discovery of the means of putting a stop to further transmigration; the discontinuance of corporeal being; the liberation of soul from body. That such was the leading principle of the philosophy of Pythagoras we learn from ancient testimony, and it essentially influences the speculations of Plato. Concurrence in this principle involves agreement in all the most important deductions from it, and establishes, if not a mutual interchange, at least a common origin, for much of the oldest philosophy of the Greeks and the Hindus. This is a subject, however, to which T can here but thus briefly allude, and to which I would rather invite the attention of some of the eminent scholars of whom the University of Oxford has reason