_Mahâbhâsya_ of Patañjali the grammarian (147 B.C.) [Footnote ref 1]. The subject of the two passages are the enumeration of reasons which frustrate visual perception. This however is not a doctrine concerned with the strictly technical part of Sâ@mkhya, and it is just possible that the book from which Patañjali quoted the passage, and which was probably paraphrased in the Âryâ metre by Îs'varak@r@s@na was not a Sâ@mkhya book at all. But though the subject of the verse is not one of the strictly technical parts of Sâ@mkhya, yet since such an enumeration is not seen in any other system of Indian philosophy, and as it has some special bearing as a safeguard against certain objections against the Sâ@mkhya doctrine of prak@rti, the natural and plausible supposition is that it was the verse of a Sâ@mkhya book which was paraphrased by Îs'varak@r@s@na. The earliest descriptions of a Sâ@mkhya which agrees with Îs'varak@r@s@na's Sâ@mkhya (but with an addition of Îs'vara) are to be found in Patañjali's _Yoga sûtras_ and in the _Mahâbhârata;_ but we are pretty certain that the Sâ@mkhya of Caraka we have sketched here was known to Patañjali, for in _Yoga sûtra_ I. 19 a reference is made to a view of Sâ@mkhya similar to this. From the point of view of history of philosophy the Sâ@mkhya of Caraka and Pañcas'ikha is very important; for it shows a transitional stage of thought between the Upani@sad ideas and the orthodox Sâ@mkhya doctrine as represented by Îs'varak@r@s@na. On the one hand its doctrine that the senses are material, and that effects are produced only as a result of collocations, and that the puru@sa is unconscious, brings it in close relation with Nyâya, and on the other its connections with Buddhism seem to be nearer than the orthodox Sâ@mkhya. We hear of a _Sa@s@titantras'âstra_ as being one of the oldest Sâ@mkhya works. This is described in the _Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ_ as containing two books of thirty-two and twenty-eight chapters [Footnote ref 2]. A quotation from _Râjavârttika_ (a work about which there is no definite information) in Vâcaspati Mis'ra's commentary on the Sâ@mkhya kârika_(72) says that it was called the _@Sa@s@titantra because it dealt with the existence of prak@rti, its oneness, its difference from puru@sas, its purposefulness for puru@sas, the multiplicity of puru@sas, connection and separation from puru@sas, the evolution of ___________________________________________________________________ [Footnote 1: Patañjali's Mahâbhâ@sya, IV. I. 3. _Atisannikar@sâdativiprakar@sât mûrttyantaravyavadhânât tamasâv@rtatvât indriyadaurvalyâdatipramâdât,_ etc. (Benares edition.)] [Footnote 2: _Ahirbudhnya Sa@mhitâ,_ pp. 108, 110.] 220 the categories, the inactivity of the puru@sas and the five _viparyyayas_, nine tu@s@tis, the defects of organs of twenty-eight kinds, and the eight siddhis [Footnote ref 1].