Charaka-Samhita — trans. Kaviraj Avinash Chandra Kaviratna

* The order of enumeration should be knowledge, mind, sense, and ob¬ jects, or the reverse of this, that is, objects, sense, mind, and knowledge. Objects •are connected with the senses $ the latter with the mind ; the latter with know¬ ledge or concepts. — T.

+ The reading which Gangadhara adopts is slightly different, F or ‘ racih ’ he reads ‘ matah,’ making the line ‘ Chaturvingcatiko hyeshamatah &c.’ The sense remains unchanged. The four and twenty ate 1. mind, 2. the five organs of knowledge and the five organs of action, 3. the five gross objects of the senses, viz., ether and the rest, and 4. the eight included in Prakriti, viz., original Prakriti, Mahat, Ahankara (consciousness of Ego), and the five subtile forms of ether and the rest. This tale of four and twenty corresponds with that in the Sankhya system of philosophy. — T.

t Hindu philosophers distribute the inclinations of the mind (or the actions prompted by them) into three classes, viz., Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas. These are generally rendered ‘ Goodness,’ ‘ Passion,’ and ‘ Darkness.’ As long as Purusha owns the influence of Rajas and Tamas, there must be birth or body with all the attendant pleasures and pains. When completely divested of these two through the influence of Sattwa or Goodness, birth or body, with the attendant joys and sorrows, ceases, and Purusha becomes Emancipate. He is then absorbed into Eternal and Immutable Brahma or the Great Self from which has emanated every¬ thing. — T.

CHAR AKA SAMHITA.

p. 10

He that knows this truly, knows both Origin and Destruction*

There would have been no succession (of events, or creatures, ■or things), no treatment, no object to be known, no light, no dark¬ ness, no truth, no untruth, no Vedas (revealed truths), on action good or bad, no actor, no knower, were there no ‘ purusha

There would have been no dependance (of one thing on another), no pleasure, no disease, no motion, no rest, no speech, no science, no treatises, no birth, no death, no bondage, no emancipation, were there no * purusha.'’

Hence it is, that .persons conversant with causes cite ‘purusha’ as the cause :(of all things).13-4'

If the soul (or self) were not the cause, ether and the rest would be causeless. No knowledge of these could be ; nor any need for them. 48

He who would say that an earthen jar could be made without a potter and with only earth, stick, and wheel, or that a house could be built without an architrect and with only earth, straw, and wood, even he, through ignorance, and giving up both reason and the scriptures, would say that this body is capable of being made without a creator and with only the primal elements coming together (of their own accord or as the result of a fortuitous com¬ bination).50

Purusha Is realised as the cause through all those very evi¬ dences constituting the revealed and other scriptures, by which things provable are known.*51

* Purusha is the universal Cause. It is from or through Purusha that every¬ thing springs. What the Rishi lays down in this aphorism is that the charac¬ ter of Purusha as Cause is realisable from the same evidences which help us to know or understand things in general. By ‘ pramana ’ is meant that which proves ; by ‘ prameya ’ is meant 1 that which is to be proved.’ The latter in¬ cludes things in general. By ‘ Agama ’ is meant the evidence of revealed and inspired scriptures. Agama constitutes one kind of ‘ pramana ’ or proof.

In other words, what is intended is this : the same proofs which help us to know things in general, help us to understand that ‘ Purusha ’ is the one original Cause of everything. It should be noted that by ‘ Purusha ’ here is meant not the ‘ atman ’ only as dissociated from the three and twenty other incidents, but the ‘ atman ! with those incidents, that is, the aggregate called ‘ Jiva.’

CHAR AKA SAM HIT A

Some are of opinion that men sprung from men in gradual suc¬ cession are, owing to sameness of form and shape, types of their progenitors and, as such, are different without being identical with those progenitors ; that the Being constituted by the aggregate (of only the three and twenty incidents) is without that which is called Iga, and that it is that aggregate which is called Sattwa (or Purusha) and that that Sattwa is neither doer nor enjoyer (or endurer).*''2-53