Comment by rramadass
1 year ago
> You can turn it the other way round and the claim would be even more valid: Atheism came later in the Sāṁkhya schools.
No, current scholarship is unanimous in accepting that the Atheistic view came first. Unless some new unknown texts come to light to make us revise the dates that is what we have to live with.
Outside of the classic sutra texts mentioned above, there is only the "Kapilopadesha" from the Bhagavatha Purana and "Kapila-Gita" from the Mahabharatha which seem to espouse proper Samkhya philosophy. All other mentions in the upanishads/vedas/puranas/itihasas seem to be just a mention without any substantial details.
The Historical Development section gives a good overview - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya#Historical_development
Most of Sāṁkhya is theistic and came first. All purāṇas are sāṁkhya and theistic. Mahābhārata is theistic. Even Īśvara Krṣṇa never rejects īśvara in the kārikas. Only Gaudapada rejects it explicitly in his commentary. The sūtras, which came much later also don't reject īśvara, they just say it's not necessary (anivārya) to discuss, just like Darwinian Evolution, it's not necessary to presuppose there's a God but theists will still say that God sets it up in the first place.
To say something is not necessary doesn't entail that it's doesn't exist or that it's philosophically untenable.
Śankara does debate with atheistic Sāṁkhya so I'm not saying that it's not the case but it's a mistake to claim that Sāṁkhya is non-theistic because that's what some authors write when it's not the case. The majority of Sāṁkhya traditions were īśvara-vāda, theistic.
Who cares what prescientific people thought first or second? The order in which they thought these prescientific thoughts has no bearing on the correctness of those thoughts.
Proverbs 17:28