Sāṅkhya — the enumeration of the principles

साङ्ख्य

Also written: samkhya · sankhya · kapila · purusha prakriti · three gunas · 25 tattvas · साङ्ख्य

Sāṅkhya means 'enumeration'. It is probably the oldest of the systems, attributed to Kapila, and its vocabulary — puruṣa, prakṛti, the three guṇas, the tattvas — is used by the Gītā, by Yoga, by Āyurveda, by the Purāṇas and by the Tantras. One can hardly read the tradition without it.

Two irreducibles

	Puruṣa — पुरुष	Prakṛti — प्रकृति
What it is	Consciousness, the witness	Nature, the principle of manifestation
Active?	Never. It only witnesses	Always. All activity belongs to it
Conscious?	It is consciousness itself	Unconscious, though intelligent in its operations
Number	Many — each being has its own	One, shared
Changes?	Never	Constantly

The classic image: prakṛti is a dancer and puruṣa the audience. She performs only while watched; when the witness truly sees that he is not the dance, she withdraws. Bondage is the misattribution of prakṛti's activity to puruṣa; kaivalya is the ending of that confusion.

The three guṇas

Guṇa	Nature	In the mind	In the world
Sattva	Light, clarity, harmony	Understanding, calm, joy	Transparency, order, intelligence
Rajas	Motion, passion, energy	Craving, restlessness, striving	Activity, change, force
Tamas	Weight, inertia, concealment	Dullness, confusion, sleep	Mass, resistance, stability

The three are not good and bad. They are the three modes in which anything whatever appears, always together, always in some proportion. Even sattva binds — the Gītā says it binds by attachment to happiness and to knowledge, which is a subtler chain than the other two.

The twenty-five tattvas

Level	Tattvas
1. Consciousness	Puruṣa
2. The root of nature	Prakṛti (mūla-prakṛti, avyakta — unmanifest)
3. First evolute	Mahat / buddhi — intelligence, the faculty of determination
4. Second	Ahaṅkāra — the I-maker, the sense of being a separate doer
5. Mind	Manas — the coordinating and doubting faculty
6–10. Organs of knowing	Ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose
11–15. Organs of action	Speech, hands, feet, elimination, generation
16–20. Subtle elements	Sound, touch, form, taste, smell (tanmātras)
21–25. Gross elements	Ether, air, fire, water, earth

Sāṅkhya — the enumeration of the principles

Two irreducibles

The three guṇas

The twenty-five tattvas

The six Darśanas — the philosophies

Nyāya — the science of right reasoning

Vaiśeṣika — atoms and the categories of being

Yoga — Patañjali's system

Pūrva Mīmāṁsā — the philosophy of dharma and of language

Vedānta — the enquiry into Brahman