Excerpt from The Samkhya System, Vol. 2: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy On the other hand, it is impossible to find in the Upanisads any real basis for the Samkhya system. The Upanisadsf are essentially devoted to the discovery of an absolute, and, diverse as are the forms which the absolute may take, they do not abandon the search, nor do they allow that no such absolute exists. There are, however, elements here and there which mark the growth of ideas which later were thrown into systematic form in the Samkhya, but it is impossible to see in these fragmentary hints any indication that the Samkhya philosophy was then in process of formation. It is, of course, possible, as a matter of abstract argument, to insist that the elements in the Upanisads which suggest the later Samkhya views are really borrowings by the Upanisads of doctrines already extant in a Samkhya system, but, in the absense of the slightest evidence for the existence of such a system in the Vedic literature, it is methodologically unsound to take this hypothesis as possessing any value, in face of the natural conclusion that we have in the Upanisads scattered hints which were later amalgamated into one system. Just like the Vedanta of Samkara, or the Vedanta of Badarayana, the Samkhya is a system built on the Upanisads: from both of these it differs in that it goes radically and essentially beyond the teaching of the Upanisads. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.