Samkhya Aphorisms of Kapila

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About the Book

 The Samkhya sntras of Kapila, with English translation by Dr. J.R. Ballantyne is the most popular work and a classic of great celebrity. It presents a systematical language and style which is very helpful to understand easily the Samkhya system of the Indian philosophy.

The Samkhya Aphorisms, in all the known commentaries available on this work are exhibited word for word. The variants, now given, of the Aphorisms, afforded by accessible productions of that character, have been drawn from the works, of which only one has yet been printed, about to be specified.

                                               Preface

The present work, both in its Sanskrit portion and in its English is an amended of three volumes. I published in India, which have already become very scarce. An abridged form of those volumes? Which subsequently appeared contains nothing of the Sanskrit original b Aphorisms.

While is the following pages, all the corrections obtainable fro abridgement have been turned to account, an immense number of improved reading have been taken from another source. Three s times I carefully read Dr. Ballantyne's translation in as many different copies of it; entering suggestion, in the second copy, without reference those which had been entered in the first, and similarly making independent suggestions in my third copy. All these were, on various occasions, submitted to Dr.' Ballantyne; and such of them as did no' his approval were crossed through. The residue, many more than a thousand, have been embodied in the ensuing sheets, but are not indicated. as successively introduced. The renderings proposed in the foot-notes are, for the most part, from among those which have re occurred to me as eligible.

That Dr. Ballantyne had any thought of reissuing, in whatever the volumes mentioned at the beginning of this Advertisement, I was unaware, till some years after he had made over the abridgement of them to Professor Cowell, for publication. I Otherwise, I should have placed at his disposal the materials towards improvement of his second edition, which, at the cost of no slight drudgery, are here made available.

The Samkhya Aphorisms, in all the known commentaries of them, are exhibited word for word. The variants, now given, of the Aphorisms, afforded by accessible productions of the character, have been drawn from the words, of which only one has yet been printed, about to be specified:

I. The Samkhya-pravacana-bhasya, by Vijfiana Bhiksu, Revelant particulars I have given elsewhere. My oldest MS. of it was transcribed in 1654.

II. The Kapila-samkhya-pravacana-sutra-vritti, by Aniruddha. Of this I have consulted, besides a MS. copied in 1818, formerly the property of Dr. Ballantyne, one which I procured to be copied, in 1855, from an old MS. without date.

III. The Laghu-samkhya-sutra-vrtti, by Nagesa. Of this I have two MSS., both undated. One of them is entire; but the other is defective by the three first Books.

IV. The Samkhya-pravacana-sutra-vrtti-sara, by Vedanti Mahadeva.

Here, again, only one of two MSS. which I possess is complete. The other, which breaks off in the midst of the comment of Book II., Aph. 15, is, in places, freely interpolated from No. I. Neither of them has a date.

Nearly all my longer annotations, and some of the shorter, were scrutinized, while in the rough, by the learned Professor Cowell, but for whose searching criticisms, which cannot be valued too highly they would, in several instances, have been far less accurate than they now are.