On being Orthodox renouncers: the Yuktidīpikā's establishment of the Sāṅkhya mode of life (Sannyāsa) in the name of the Veda

Abstract

Unlike other commentaries on the Sāṅkhyakārikā, the Yuktidīpikā (circa sixth to eighth centuries) problematised the Sāṅkhya tradition's equivocal attitudes toward the Veda. While submitting itself to the authority of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā's commentary on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 illustrates how Sāṅkhya thinkers of the post-Gupta period safeguarded the identity of Brahmin renouncers. Aligning its doctrine with the Upaniṣad, the end of the Veda, the Yuktidīpikā launched a Sāṅkhya navigation of the central concern of Indian intellectuals, Vedic hermeneutics, and attempted to secure Sāṅkhya's place within Vedic orthodoxy. This article discusses the Yuktidīpikā's strategy for surviving the peer pressure of Vedic ritualists, as represented by the Mīmāṃsakas, while maintaining Sāṅkhya superiority by exploiting the inner division within the Veda.

According to the Sāṅkhyasaptativṛtti, a commentary on Īśvarakṛṣṇa's Sāṅkhyakārikā, Kapila, the legendary founder of Sāṅkhya, approached a distinguished Brahmin named Āsuri, who was engaged in sacrifice for a thousand years, and asked: ‘Do you enjoy the duty of the householder?’ (ramase gṛhasthadharmeṇa). He was told ‘yes’, and gave the same answer when Kapila approached him again after another thousand years. On Kapila's third approach, that is, when Āsuri had performed sacrifice for 3,000 years, the latter finally answered: ‘Sir, I do not enjoy.’ Kapila then asked whether Āsuri was able to lead a celibate life (brahmacaryavāsa), to which Āsuri answered in the affirmative. In this way, Āsuri, ‘the renouncer, having abandoned the duty of the householder, and sons and wives, became the lord Kapila's disciple’ (sa evaṃ gṛhasthadharmaṃ parityajya putradārāṃś ca pravrajito bhagavataḥ kapilasya śiṣyo babhūva).¹ In this story, the lifestyle of the Sāṅkhya practitioners is clearly demarcated from that of the householder. To become a disciple of Kapila, Āsuri had to renounce at least three aspects that characterise the life of a householder: sons, wives, and the duty of sacrifice.

Īśvarakṛṣṇa's Sāṅkhyakārikā—the earliest systematic presentation of the Sāṅkhya philosophy—documents Sāṅkhya's critical attitude towards the householder's duty of sacrifice by specifying its faults in its second verse:

The revelatory means are like the perceptible means [in its being ultimately ineffective], for they are connected with impurity (aviśuddhi), destruction (kṣaya) and [relative] superiority (atiśaya). A superior method, different from both, is the (discriminative) knowledge of the manifest, the unmanifest and the knowing one (or knower—i.e., puruṣa).²

Commenting on this verse, most extant commentaries on the Sāṅkhyakārikā do not hesitate to identify the revelatory means (ānuśravika) as the sacrificial practices enjoined in the Veda and adduce various Vedic and non-Vedic sources³ to prove their defectiveness in removing the threefold existential suffering (duḥkhatraya) introduced in the first verse.⁴ These commentaries thereby manifest Sāṅkhya's distance from Indian orthodoxy as represented by the most ancient and authoritative textual corpus of Indian civilisation, the Veda.

However, those commentaries later contradict themselves by listing the Veda, with no reservation, as an exemplary case of trustworthy testimony. Sāṅkhyakārikā 4–6 introduces the three sources of valid knowledge (pramāṇa)—perception (dṛṣṭa), inference (anumāna), and trustworthy testimony (āptavacana)—without explicitly mentioning the Veda.⁵ Nevertheless, the commentaries are almost unanimous in recognising that the Veda constitutes trustworthy testimony.

Following Łucyszyna,⁶ we may organise the commentaries on Sāṅkhyakārikā 4–6 into two groups: those that merely list the Veda in the category of trustworthy testimony and those that exhibit a Mīmāṃsā-influenced view of the Veda.⁷ The following belong to the first group: the Suvarṇasaptati (sixth century), Sāṅkhyavṛtti (sixth century), Sāṅkhyasaptativṛtti (sixth century), Gauḍapādabhāṣya (sixth century), and Māṭharavṛtti (800 ce or later).⁸ Another feature these commentaries have in common is that they do not problematise their own ambiguous stance in relation to Vedic authority. They criticise the Veda for teaching a defective means of removing human suffering in Sāṅkhyakārikā 2, but in Sāṅkhyakārikā 4–6, without any sense of self-contradiction, it is counted as a source of valid knowledge.

The Yuktidīpikā (sixth to eighth centuries)⁹ and Vācaspati's Tattvakaumudī (ninth or tenth century) belong to the second group. They maintain a Mīmāṃsaka-like Vedic fundamentalism. As Łucyszyna clearly demonstrates, the Tattvakaumudī, for example, upholds the authoritativeness or trustworthiness (prāmāṇya) of the Veda based on the Mīmāṃsaka doctrine of svataḥprāmāṇya (intrinsic validity of cognitions) and vedāpauruṣeyatva (the Veda's lack of an author).¹⁰ The Yuktidīpikā also makes use of the ideas that the Veda has no author and that it has an independent and unique scope of application, which are found in Mīmāṃsaka texts such as Śābarabhāṣya 1.1.2 and 1.1.5, as Łucyszyna rightly observes.¹¹

If the texts in this second group fully acknowledge the authority of the Veda in the same way as the Mīmāṃsakas, how then do they understand Sāṅkhyakārikā 2, in which Vedic sacrifice is declared to be connected with ‘impurity’ (aviśuddhi), ‘destruction’ (kṣaya), and ‘[relative] superiority’ (atiśaya)? Do they close their eyes to the self-contradiction, just as the first group of texts do? Or do they submit themselves to the Mīmāṃsakas and efface the trace of Sāṅkhya anti-Vedic sentiment found in their root verse? Focusing on the Yuktidīpikā's commentary on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2, I will discuss how the Sāṅkhya position represented in the Yuktidīpikā formulated its own way of gesturing to Vedic authority without compromising with the Mīmāṃsakas.

The discussions in the Yuktidīpikā (hereafter, YD)¹² on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 centre on the legitimacy of the Sāṅkhya followers’ lifestyle of renunciation. The YD diverges from its predecessors in its efforts to exonerate Sāṅkhya practioners from the charge of being anti-Vedic and authorise renunciation in the name of the Veda. This article will analyse how the YD developed a ‘Vedic’ way of securing Sāṅkhya religious practice and illustrate how the Sāṅkhya writers of the sixth to eighth centuries positioned their tradition as orthodox but also superior to that of ritualistic householder Brahmins such as the Mīmāṃsakas.

Embodying Vedic fundamentalism in Sāṅkhya

The YD begins its commentary on the term ‘impurity’ (aviśuddhi) in Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 with the opponent's argument (YD_WM 31:19-34:8) that ‘comes surprisingly close to Kumārila's own argumentation’.¹³ Even though the minute details in the opponent's thesis in the YD and Kumārila's discussion do not exactly correspond to each other,¹⁴ based on their extremely similar contents and flow of argumentation, we may be at least assured that the opponent in the YD is a Mīmāṃsaka who held a similar view.

The opponent begins his objection by pointing out the self-contradiction from which most of the commentaries on the Sāṅkhyakārikā suffer:

[Sāṅkhya:] There is no fault [in arguing for the impurity of animal slaughter in a Vedic sacrifice] since we do not acknowledge its (i.e., the Veda's) authority. …

[Mīmāṃsaka:] But this is unreasonable. Why? It is because you are contradicting what you acknowledge. You acknowledge three authorities [in acquiring valid knowledge when you list them in Sāṅkhyakārikā 4ab as] perception, inference, and trustworthy testimony. Now, the Veda is a trustworthy testimony and you are refuting your own doctrine by saying that it is not authoritative. Therefore, this [answer] is unreasonable.¹⁵

What is most impressive about the YD's confrontation with the Mīmāṃsaka opponent is its immediate concession to the authority of the Veda. Given that the absolute status of the Veda has been acknowledged, the YD regards it as unnecessary to answer the objection. Rather, it accuses the opponent of not properly understanding the Sāṅkhya stance toward the Veda:

Answer. That is not so. It is because you do not understand [our] intention. We disregard what [you] said abundantly because, though being excellent, they do not touch on our intention. Why? It is because we do not oppose the authoritativeness of the Veda. We do not even say that an undesirable fruit will befall the one who engages in killing enjoined by the scripture.¹⁶

Here, the YD not only flatly denies the opponent's charge against the Sāṅkhya position provoked by Īśvarakṛṣṇa's use of the term ‘impurity’ in relation to Vedic sacrifice, but even confirms that sacrificial killing has no negative consequences. In contrast to earlier commentaries that considered bloody Vedic sacrifice to be impure, the YD, endorsing the Veda as the criterion for judging morality, declares that animal slaughter in the Vedic rituals is faultless—as long as the Veda commands it.

The YD instead understands the word ‘impurity’ as referring to the ‘grief in our [Sāṅkhya but maybe not Mīmāṃsaka] minds out of compassion caused by sacrificial killing’ (hiṃsānimittakaḥ kāruṇyān manasi naḥ paritāpaḥ), and thereby shifts the word's referent from what is internal to Vedic sacrifice (animal slaughter) to what is external (grief in the minds of spectators). Thus, Vedic sacrifice can no longer be characterised as impure. Calling Vedic sacrifice ‘impure’ is a practice of metaphorically expressing the ‘cause’ (i.e. killing) in reference to its ‘result’ (i.e. grief). Is this non-literal understanding justified? To the YD, Īśvarakṛṣṇa intended such a reading of the word ‘aviśuddhi’ when he employed the comparative ‘better’ in ‘that which is opposite is better’ (tadviparītaḥ śreyān; pāda c of the Sāṅkhyakārikā 2). A comparison is only possible between things of the same nature. Therefore, if Īśvarakṛṣṇa did not endorse the praiseworthiness of Vedic sacrifice, the comparative ending -īyas in śreyas (which means ‘better’) would have to be considered out of place.¹⁷

These three steps taken by the YD—namely, acknowledging Vedic authority, interpreting ‘impurity’ as a metaphorical expression, and granting the praiseworthiness of sacrifice—clearly disprove the Mīmāṃsakas’ suspicion of Sāṅkhya's non-Vedic affiliation.¹⁸ However, they do not merely exonerate Sāṅkhya's alleged heretical inclination. They forward Sāṅkhya acceptance of Mīmāṃsā's Vedic fundamentalism, which recognises that even the act of killing living beings is praiseworthy if it is committed under the Veda's mandate. The YD's shift of the referent for the word ‘impurity’ is a concession to the Mīmāṃsaka claim that only the Veda can decide whether a sacrifice is pure or not.¹⁹ The YD also confers absolute authority on the Veda over all religious matters in the language of Mīmāṃsā, such as authorlessness (apauruṣeyatva).²⁰ Positing the Veda as the ultimate reference point, the YD reshapes Sāṅkhya as a fundamentally Vedic tradition, that is, a tradition that can defend its positions based on the Veda without resorting to other methods such as human reasoning.

Having set aside ‘impurity’ as being external to the Vedic sacrifice, the YD (YD_WM 42:12–47:5) finds fault with the Vedic means of sacrifice by confirming two other characteristics that Īśvarakṛṣṇa lists: ‘destruction’ (kṣaya) and ‘relative superiority’ (atiśaya). In the course of proving the destructibility or non-eternality of the fruits of Vedic sacrifice, the YD introduces a Mīmāṃsaka objection that attempts to make use of Sāṅkhya's newly affirmed Vedic identity.

Question. [The result of Vedic sacrifice] is eternal because of the force of Vedic words. It is as follows: We are those who regard Vedic words as the authority. What the Vedic words say, that is our authority. And it (=the Veda) says this [ritual] means results in immortality, for example, ‘he overcomes death, he overcomes evil.’ Therefore, even those who do not want [to acknowledge that this ritual means results in an eternal fruit] should accept this for sure. Or, if they don't accept, they would abandon [their own] thesis that the Veda is the[ir] authority.²¹

This is not an objection but a test of the authenticity of Sāṅkhya's Vedic identity. It simply asks whether the Sāṅkhya followers really believe in what the Veda says, or how far they are willing to go along with the Veda.

The YD interestingly meets this Mīmāṃsaka challenge in a Mīmāṃsaka manner. It cites supportive passages from the Veda and, using the hermeneutical techniques for which the Mīmāṃsakas are famous, reads and interprets Vedic passages in its own favour. To corroborate its claim for the non-eternality of Vedic sacrifice,²² the YD quotes a passage from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (10.5.3, 5–6) which states that people who perform sacrifices pass into smoke, transmigrate the three realms, and finally come down to the earth again.²³ As this passage directly contradicts another Vedic passage that warrants an eternal life in heaven, the YD again proposes a deviation from the literal meaning of the given text. In understanding a Vedic sentence whose literal meaning speaks of impossibility, for example—‘he [i.e. Prajāpati] extracted his own momentum’ (sa ātmano vapām udakhidat)²⁴—one needs to postulate another, figurative, sense. Therefore, when the Vedic passage in support of the eternality of sacrificial fruits contradicts not only the other Vedic passage, but also perception and inference, the YD concludes that it is to be taken figuratively to mean not eternality (nitya), but an extended time (prakṛṣṭa).

In proving the ‘relative superiority’ (atiśaya) of Vedic sacrifice, the YD also resorts to a Vedic passage for the Sāṅkhya cause.²⁵ The Mīmāṃsaka opponent denies both attributes of ‘destruction’ and ‘relative superiority’ by having deities—supposedly eternal and absolute—as part of Vedic sacrifice inherent in its ritual materials (dravyasamavāyinīṃ devatāṃ kratāv aṅgabhāvam upagacchantīm). Having pointed out that the Sāṅkhyas do not accept such an idea, the YD further observes that, even if it were the case, the indestructible and absolute fruit can be obtained by performing any action the Veda enjoins. This is because any ritual action—as the marginal note says, even japa (muttering prayer)²⁶—involves a performer's body and, according to the Veda, a body consists of all deities. The YD then asks ironically, ‘what's the use of those [Vedic] means of slaughtering living beings?’ (kiṃ prāṇivināśahetubhiḥ). In this argumentation, the key idea of ‘body being constituted by deities’ is provided by verses found in Vedic texts such as the Atharvaveda Saṃhitā 11.8.32: ‘Therefore, the learned indeed think this [body of] a person is Brahman. It is because all deities are put together in this body’ (tasmād vai vidvān puruṣam idaṃ brahmeti manyate/ sarvā hy asmin devatāḥ śarīre ’dhisamāhitāḥ//).²⁷

In the hands of the YD confronting the Mīmāṃsakas, Sāṅkhyas followers become Mīmāṃsakas in the very general sense of being examiners of the Veda.²⁸ The Sāṅkhyas, as represented in the YD, openly acknowledged the authority of the Veda and the effectiveness of Vedic sacrifice. In so doing, the YD had to read the first defect of Vedic sacrifice—impurity—as a misplaced expression that must be understood metaphorically. However, the YD confirmed the other two defects and maintained Sāṅkhya's critical attitude. What is characteristic about this exchange is that the YD plays the Mīmāṃsaka game. Without complaining about the rule that the Veda makes the final decision, the YD attempts to demonstrate that the Veda itself teaches that the Vedic sacrifice results in non-eternal and non-absolute fruits for its performer. The YD presents the Sāṅkhyas as the insiders, that is, the Vedic Brahmins.

In search of a Vedic injunction of renunciation

The story of Kapila and Āsuri clearly illustrates the identity of Sāṅkhya practitioners as renouncers. In the Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra, the introduction of the fourfold āśrama (stage of life) system as a way of legitimising the lifestyle of renouncers is attributed to a certain demon named ‘Kapila’. Being cautious on connecting this Asura Kapila and Kapila in the Mahābhārata, Olivelle concludes that ‘there may have been at least one tradition that associated the āśrama system with Kapila and the followers of the Sāṃkhya system of philosophy’.²⁹ Although it does not mention the founder's name, the YD defends the āśrama of renunciation by refuting the Mīmāṃsakas who regard the renunciation of the householder's duty of sacrifice as a heretical practice not approved by the Veda.

Right after the YD's confession that Sāṅkhya does not consider Vedic sacrifice to be impure,³⁰ the Mīmāṃsaka opponent abruptly switches the discussion's agenda to the legitimacy of renunciation—sannyāsa—referring to the Vedic sentences that enjoin the lifelong duty of sacrifice: ‘Renunciation is impossible because non-separation [from the duty of ritual] is taught [in the Veda].’³¹

The Mīmāṃsakas divide the Veda into mantra and brāhmaṇa,³² and further classify the latter into vidhi (injunction), arthavāda (eulogy), and nāmadheya (name). Among these four constituents of the Veda, injunction is the most important since it prompts a human agent to perform a ritual action that brings about an unprecedented (apūrva) fruit beneficial to him.³³ Eulogy and name are subordinate to injunction. Name is an element that denotes a particular sacrifice, whereas eulogy, complementing various aspects of sacrifice, makes Vedic rituals appealing to human agents.³⁴ Eulogy thus has a significance insofar as it is construed with a specific injunction of ritual action that it eulogises.³⁵ Should the Sāṅkhyas adhere to their lifestyle of being renouncers, founded on the Veda, what the Mīmāṃsakas thus desire to know most is whether there is a direct injunction from the Veda that sanctions the dharma status of renunciation.

The Mīmāṃsakas in the YD, distinguishing between śruti (the ‘heard’ text, i.e. the ‘authorless’ Veda) and smṛti (the texts founded on the Veda whose authors are ‘remembered’), first require the Sāṅkhya opponent position to provide śruti sentences that support the idea of renunciation. Upon being offered several Upaniṣadic passages, the Mīmāṃsakas highlight the underlying imbalance of authority between the injunctive and complementary sentences of the Veda. While ritual activities are enjoined by injunctions (vidhi) marked by optative (liṅ), imperative (loṭ), and gerundive (kṛtya) endings, pro-renunciation sentences are mere eulogies (arthavāda) that have ‘the purpose of making what is enjoined attractive’ (vihitasya prarocanārtham).³⁶

At first, the YD counters this claim with several ‘consequence’ arguments (prasaṅga; reductio ad absurdum) based on the principle that any part of the Veda should not be rendered purposeless (ānarthakya). The Veda does not mandate adopting renunciation. Nevertheless, it praises renunciation and thereby makes it attractive. The YD considers the act of praising to be tantamount to the act of enjoining when it asks: ‘Why the Veda—which is not preceded by any human intellect, independent, working for the sake of what is ultimate for humans—should praise what is indeed not wanted as something to be done?’³⁷ It also reports an unidentified opinion of the followers of Śabara that ‘a praise alone without an injunction’ (antareṇa vidhiṃ stutir eva) can make the praised action look appealing.³⁸

However, the YD is not totally dissatisfied with the vidhi-centric hermeneutical scheme of the Mīmāṃsakas. Drawing on such a hermeneutical principle, it later attempts to affirm the legitimacy of renunciation within the Mīmāṃsaka vision of the Veda. Hence, the YD argues, should arthavāda serve the purpose of and be a part of vidhi, the Mīmāṃsakas need to postulate the existence of an injunction of renunciation. If it is not found, that does not mean such an injunction does not exist. It is just that more effort is needed in the search, since the scripture has been handed down through various traditions.³⁹ The YD's rejoinders are indeed ingenious, but we observe that it suffers from the same old problem that the initiators of the original āśrama system confronted. When the Gautama Dharmasūtra—which can be dated between the fifth and first centuries bce—rejected the possibility of renunciation based on the strength of ‘pratyakṣaśruti’ (expressed Vedic text) over ‘anumitaśruti’ (inferred Vedic text),⁴⁰ orthodox Brahmins had already considered and abandoned the YD's urge to find a presumptive Vedic injunction.

But the search for an injunction supporting Sāṅkhya does not end with the digression on sannyāsa on the word ‘impurity’. Later, having explained the basic meaning of the second half of Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 (YD_WM 50:13ff.), the YD introduces the Mīmāṃsakas’ argument that ritual dominates the Veda because of the existence of injunctions. The YD opposes this view, and as it does so, it presents non-ritualistic types of injunctions from the Upaniṣads:

If you argue that ritual is primary because there exists an injunction [for it], [I would answer]: No. It has been already answered. How was it? There is no difference that [can be] made by [the explicit existence of] an injunction. Or, even when we accept [the difference], it exists also regarding that[, that is, knowledge]. Indeed, there exists an injunctive scriptural passage for the act of knowing. How? It[, the Veda,] says as follows: ‘The self (ātman) that is free from evils, free from hunger and thirst, free from old age and death, free from sorrow; the self whose intentions are real—that is the self that should be sought, that is the self that should be investigated (so ’nveṣṭavyaḥ, sa jijñāsitavyaḥ). When someone discovers that self and perceives it, all his desires are fulfilled and he obtains all the worlds. Such words of Prajāpati are heard.’ (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 8.7.1)⁴¹ Again, it also says [as follows]: ‘Two kinds of knowledge—higher and inferior—should be known (veditavye).’ (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.1.4)⁴² Therefore, [your argument] that ritual is primary because there exists an injunction [for it] is merely your attachment to your own thesis.⁴³

The Upaniṣadic injunctions⁴⁴ the YD provides here are mandates to seek after (anveṣitavya), to investigate (jijñāsitavya), and to know (veditavya). While these are not injunctions on sacrifice, neither are they concerned with renunciation, enjoining rather with their gerundive endings cognitive acts such as knowing. The YD apparently could not solve the old problem that an injunction of renunciation does not exist. But why does it list the injunctions of knowing in support of its own position? What does the act of knowing have to do with Sāṅkhya?

Aligning the Sāṅkhya ideal with the Upaniṣad

We may answer this question by attending to the peculiarities of the YD's interpretation of the second half of Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 which runs as follows:

A superior method, different from both, is the (discriminative) knowledge of the manifest, the unmanifest and the knowing one (or knower—i.e., puruṣa) (tadviparītaḥ śreyān vyaktāvyaktajñavijñānāt//).⁴⁵

The common understanding of this line adopted in other commentaries takes ‘tad-’ as both the visible (mentioned in Sāṅkhyakārikā 1cd) and Vedic means of sacrifice (in 2ab), and posits the reason for Sāṅkhya's superiority over them in its discriminative knowledge of the 25 Sāṅkhya principles that can be categorised under the terms of the manifest (vyakta), unmanifest (avyakta), and knower (jña).⁴⁶

The YD, on the other hand, understands ‘tad-’ as heaven (svarga), realised by the performance of Vedic sacrifice. It completely disregards the visible means, which has no Vedic basis and thus is not praiseworthy,⁴⁷ and posits ‘liberation’ (mokṣa) as a better fruit that lacks the three defects of Vedic sacrifice.

The word ‘it’ (tat-) refers to the result, which has the characteristic of the attainment of heaven (svarga), achieved by the injunction of ritual activities. ‘That which is opposite to it’ refers to [something] pure (śuddha), indestructible (akṣaya), and without relative superiority (niratiśaya). [If you ask,] ‘what is that?’, [we] answer that it is liberation (mokṣa) that is ‘better.’ The following has been said. Both of those [results, that are,] heaven and liberation are praiseworthy for they are enjoined by the Veda; however, liberation is more praiseworthy.⁴⁸

In this manner, the YD has the Sāṅkhyakārikā (the root text of the classical Sāṅkhya) declare that the Sāṅkhya objective of liberation is Vedic and, at the same time, that the Sāṅkhya goal of liberation is superior in comparison to the Vedic ritualists’ goal of heaven. However, though the YD does not specify it, the ‘Veda’ that enjoins one to know and thereby liberates one from saṃsāra (transmigration) could have been more narrowly limited to a portion of the Veda, the Upaniṣad.

It is quite symptomatic that the YD, having provided the basic service of grammatically analysing the compound ‘vyakta-avyakta-jña-vijñāna’ of the root verse (YD_WM 48:15–50:12), stops using the word ‘vijñāna’ (discriminative knowledge) and, instead, employs the word ‘jñāna’ (knowledge) throughout. With the word ‘jñāna,’ it puts forward several arguments to prove that liberation arises from knowledge (jñānān mokṣaḥ). In so doing, the YD corroborates its arguments with quotations from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, and a Vedāntic text titled Paramārthasāra that commonly contain the word ‘jñāna’ or words that contain derivatives from the root ‘√vid’ (e.g. ‘ātmavid’ and ‘brahmavid’) without any reference to Sāṅkhya's 25 principles (tattva).⁴⁹

Why doesn't the YD directly claim the superiority of the ‘Sāṅkhya’ means of knowledge over the Vedic sacrifice? Why does it emphasise the generic principle that liberation comes from knowledge without specifying that that knowledge comprises the 25 tattvas? As we have seen, it is because the YD wants to frame the Sāṅkhya as Vedic. In the classical Upaniṣadic sources, injunctions on knowing are found, and those Upaniṣads declare that one overcomes saṃsāra through knowledge but with sacrificial actions one is bound to be reborn again. The second verse of the Sāṅkhyakārikā ends with the word ‘-vijñāna’, which may be taken as a synonym for ‘jñāna’ in a general context. The YD sees an opportunity to base Sāṅkhya on the Vedic, precisely the Upaniṣadic, foundation in that word. With Upaniṣadic injunctions on knowing, the YD could stand on the same orthodox footing with the Mīmāṃsakas; and with rich Upaniṣadic passages iterating the principle that knowledge (jñāna) rather than action (karman) is the cause of immortality, it could claim Sāṅkhya's superiority. That superiority was gained by ignoring the difference between Sāṅkhya's discriminative knowledge (vijñāna) of the 25 principles and the Upaniṣadic knowledge (jñāna) of ātman (Self), and by equating the Sāṅkhya's ideal of mokṣa with that of the Upaniṣad.

The last words of the YD on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 betray its full confidence in the path of knowledge over action. Consisting of six verses, it begins with a line in which the YD finally discloses its inclination toward the Upaniṣad: ‘the highest secret is read at the end of the Veda’.⁵⁰ In their entirety, they are designed to refute a certain Vedic ritualist who holds that the disabled, like eunuchs, attain liberation in the knowledge-based āśrama of renunciation (sannyāsāśrama),⁵¹ while others attain it in the root-āśrama (mūlāśrama) of the sacrificing householder (gṛhasthāśrama). Let me cite the last three verses for the sake of brevity.

[Knowledge] is the cause of attaining the state of isolation (kaivalya) and is the determination of reality; for these reasons, it is enjoined by the Veda, eulogised,⁵² praised by exceptional persons like Yajñavalkya.

The same knowledge, just as a girl given to a eunuch, does not shine to those blinded by desire for sensual objects, those who uphold perverse doctrine.

Therefore, having dispelled this [verbal] army of bad reasons submitted by those who follow [their own] desire, an intelligent person should indeed proceed from the āśrama [of householders] to the āśrama [of renouncers] based on sound reasoning.⁵³

Unlike the defensive voice that the YD employed in its argument with the Mīmāṃsakas, these verses straightforwardly display the antagonism that the YD bears towards the Vedic ritualists. The YD brings back the insulting label of ‘eunuch’ to the ritualists: they are so impotent that they are not capable of appreciating ‘a given girl’, that is, the path of knowledge in which the Veda instructs them. The girl does not shine in their arms since they are blinded by desire for other sensual objects that the Veda promises to the performers of sacrifice such as cattle, victory, and heaven. Being ignorant of how to discern the superiority between the two Vedic goals—heaven and liberation—they follow their desire and blame the Sāṅkhya practitioners who leave behind, just as Āsuri did, wives, sons, and the duty of lifelong sacrifice with poorly formulated arguments.

The Veda does not enjoin renunciation. It enjoins knowledge. Nevertheless, the Veda sanctions renunciation in an indirect manner. Renunciation is a Vedic way of living because the intelligent (matimat) people who devote their lives to Vedic knowledge choose to live so based on sound reasoning (yukti). And the light of such reasoning from the Lamp of Reasoning (Yuktidīpikā) is of Upaniṣadic nature in that it makes knowledge—the ‘girl’ of the Veda—shine forth and outshine the other Vedic means—sacrifice.

Conclusion

Concluding his study on the teachings of Pañcaśikha⁵⁴ in the Mahābhārata 12.211–212, Motegi makes the following general observation:⁵⁵

Sāṃkhyas teach a rigid dualism of material and spirit which inevitably denies traditional values such as the belief in brahman or the authority of the Veda; however, for certain reasons they chose not to oppose the tradition and tried to co-exist with it, unlike the Buddhists and Jains. They had to accept the traditional values to a certain extent to survive in the Hindu society as an ‘orthodox darśana.’ It is most likely that with this change Sāṃkhya finds its place as a teaching for brāhmaṇas who reside in the fourth stage of life (āśrama).

In this article, we saw how the YD attempted to ‘find Sāṅkhya's place’ in the orthodox fold of the Indian intellectual community. We traced how the YD survived the Mīmāṃsaka challenge, and now we have a more concrete picture of how Sāṅkhya followers in the sixth to eighth centuries accepted traditional values and to what extent they had to modify their reading of the root text, Sāṅkhyakārikā 2, in the process.

The YD on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 is, as a whole, proof of the thesis that the Veda sanctions the renouncers’ lifestyle. Sannyāsa, the āśrama of renunciation, was still not accepted as legitimate, at least by the Mīmāṃsakas, according to the YD. Sāṅkhya intellectuals, therefore, could not simply resort to the orthodox status of sannyāsa to substantiate their Vedic affiliation. They had to prove the Vedic basis of the sannyasāśrama by themselves. What is remarkable in the YD's proof is that it accomplished the project of legitimising sannyāsa within the Mīmāṃsakas’ vidhi-centric hermeneutical framework. It criticised the Mīmāṃsaka obsession with the actual existence of an injunction for an action, but it eventually discovered and presented injunctions in its favour. This was done through exploiting the inner division of the Veda, that is, its ritual-portion (karmakāṇḍa; kriyāvācin) and knowledge-portion (jñānakāṇḍa; jñānavācin). Observing the common goal of gnostic liberation in the Upaniṣad and Sāṅkhya, and ignoring the difference between Īśvarakṛṣṇa's vijñāna and the Upaniṣadic jñāna, the YD firmly rooted the Sāṅkhya tradition in the Veda. The place it found for Sāṅkhya was the end of the Veda.

We witness that the Indian intellectual community after the sixth century, that is, after the fall of the Gupta Empire (320–550 ce), was under pressure from the orthodoxy symbolised in the name of the Veda. Buddhists, for example, ‘by the sixth century’, contended ‘no longer with dissenting coreligionists, but with non-Buddhist challengers’.⁵⁶ And the challengers were headed by the staunchest guardian of the Veda, the Mīmāṃsakas, as evinced by their increasing presence in the writings of representative Buddhist authors such as Bhāviveka (500–570 ce), Dharmakīrti (600–660 ce), and Śāntarakṣita (725–788 ce). We may observe the same ‘Vedic challenge’ of the sixth century in the Sāṅkhya literature. Supposing that those commentaries dated to the sixth century by Larson and Bhattacarya—namely, the Suvarṇasaptati, Sāṅkhyavṛtti, Sāṅkhyasaptativṛtti, and Gauḍapādabhāṣya—predate the YD,⁵⁷ we may state that the YD on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 was a Sāṅkhya response to those who questioned the Vedic status of Sāṅkhya and against the ever-increasing pressure for Brahmanisation during the post-Gupta period. We further notice that the ‘Vedic challenge’ was the ‘Vedic turn’ for the Sāṅkhya tradition, for Vācaspati's commentary (ninth or tenth century) on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 presents an explanation that takes Vedic authority for granted.⁵⁸ While the other non-YD commentaries do not see Sāṅkhya's equivocal stance on the Veda as problematic, Vācaspati's Tattvakaumudī sees no need to confront a ‘Vedic challenge’ and thus does not show the ‘growing pains’ documented in the YD.

The YD on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2 enables us to see the Sāṅkhya tradition as dialogically engaged with other schools. Based on the authority of the Upaniṣad, the YD authorised the āśrama of renouncers, and in so doing, the YD stepped into the realm of Vedic hermeneutics. Considering the following remark by Olivelle, it seems this was inevitable: ‘The history of the āśrama system, moreover, should be firmly located within the history of Brāhmaṇical hermeneutics (mīmāṃsā)—that aspect of Brāhmaṇical theology engaged in interpreting received sacred texts.’⁵⁹ The game that the YD played was indeed hermeneutical. To win the game, the YD had to read seemingly adverse and irrelevant passages of the Veda as supporting the Sāṅkhya case. And in that hermeneutical game, at least according to its own presentation, the YD gained the upper hand over the Vedic ritualists. In the YD, Sāṅkhya participated in the general discourse of contemporary intellectuals and spoke the common language shared with other schools. By entering into the debate on the āśrama system, the YD on Sāṅkhyakārikā 2, unlike other commentaries, contributed the Sāṅkhya voice to one of the central themes that had engaged the majority of Indian intellectuals, regardless of their affiliations. In so doing, it also strengthened the place of Sāṅkhya in the intellectual history of India.