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

Dispositions (bhdvas, ‘ conditions’) of being are considered to be threefold, innate, essential, and incidental. The first, or innate, are those four which in the first creation were cognate with the divine sage Kapiza, or virtue, knowledge, dispassion, and power. The essential are declared ; these were four sons of Branmd, Sanana, SANANDANA, SANATANA, and SanatkumAra; and these four dispositions were produced with them, who were invested with bodies of sixteen years of age (or perpetually juvenile bodies), in consequence of the relation of causes and effects (or in consequence of merit in a former existence): therefore these dispositions are called essential. Incidental are those derived through the corporeal form of a holy teacher; from which (in the first instance) knowledge is incidentally obtained by such as we are; from knowledge comes dispassion ; from dispassion, virtue; and from virtue, power. The form of a teacher is an incidental product (of nature), and therefore these dispositions are termed incidental: “ Invested by which, subtile body migrates” (ver. 40). These four dispositions are of the quality of goodness; those of darkness are their contraries: as above, “ Virtue, &c, are its faculties partaking of goodness ; those partaking of darkness are the reverse” (ver. 23). Consequently there are eight dispositions, or virtue, knowledge, dispassion, power, vice, ignorance, passion, weakness. Where do they abide? They are considered appurtenant to the instrument. Tntellect is an instrument, and to that they are appurtenant; as in ver. 23, “ Ascertainment is intellect ; virtue, knowledge,” &c. Effect; body. The uterine germ and the rest belong to it; those which are born of the mother, the germ and the rest, or the bubble, the flesh, the muscle, and the rest, which are (generated), for the development of the infant, in the union of the blood and the seminal fluid. Thus the conditions of infancy, youth, and old age are produced ; the instrumental causes of which are food and beverage; and therefore they are said to be attributes of the effect (or of the body), having, as the instrumental cause, the fruition of the sensual pleasures of eating and the like.

It was said (ver. 42), “Through the relation of means and consequences :” this is next explained.

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COMMENT.

We have here an explanation of what is to be understood by the term dispositions, used in a former passage (ver. 40).

The translation of bhdva* adopted by Mr. Colebrooke in this place is ‘disposition :’ in the passage referred to he had employed, as above remarked, ‘sentiment ;’ but it was there changed, in order to preserve consistency. Neither word perhaps exactly expresses the purport of the original, nor is it easy to find one that will precisely correspond. In some Tespects ‘condition,’ mode, or state of being, conditio, as rendered by Professor Lassen, is preferable, as better comprehending the different circumstances to which d/dva is applied ; although, as he has occasion subsequently to remark, it does not very well express all the senses in which bhava occurs. These circumstances or conditions, according to the obvious meaning of the text, are of two kinds, or intellectual and corporeal. The first comprise virtue, knowledge, dispassion, power, and their contraries; the second, the different periods of life, or embryo, infancy, youth, and senility. They are also to be regarded as respectively cause and effect ; virtue, &c. being the efficient cause, or nimitta; bodily condition the naimittika, or consequence ; as VAcneEspati explains the object of the stanza, ‘ which,’ according to him, ‘ distinguishes incidental cause and consequence, the latter being the incidental conditions of body +.”

But besides the division of conditions or dispositions into the two classes of intellectual and corporeal, they are also characterised according to their origin, as sénsiddhika, prdkrita, and vaikrita, rendered in the text ‘innate, essential, and incidental.’ Prof. Lassen translates them conditiones absolute, pendentes ab origine, pertinentes ad evoluta principia. Both the two first are innate, and some further distinction is necessary. ‘Superhuman’ or ‘ transcendental’ would perhaps best explain the first, as they are, according to the commentator, peculiar to saints and sages. According to Gavrapapa, they occur only in one instance as the cognate

Saat fafad Afafes w fra apfire Afafera: 1p. 142 conditions of the divine Kapiua, the author of the Sankhya system. The second class, which may be rendered ‘natural,’ agreeably to his view, which is a little mystical, originated with the four holy and chaste sons of Brauma. The third class, those which are incidental or constructive,