If Caraka’s treatment is the earliest view of Sāṃkhya that is available to us, then it has to be admitted that the earliest Sāṃkhya view did not accept prakṛti as a state of the guṇas, or guṇas as substantive entities. But the _Yoga-sūtra_, II. 19, and the _Vyāsa-bhāshya_ support the interpretation that I have adopted here, and it is very curious that if the Sāṃkhya view was known at the time to be so different from it, no reference to it should have been made. But whatever may be the original Sāṃkhya view, both the Yoga view and the later Sāṃkhya view are quite in consonance with my interpretation. In later Indian thinkers there had been a tendency to make a compromise between the Vedānta and Sāṃkhya doctrines and to identify prakṛti with the avidyā of the Vedāntists. Thus Lokācāryya writes:—“It is called prakṛti since it is the source of all change, it is called avidyā since it is opposed to knowledge, it is called māyā since it is the cause of diversion creation (_prakṛtirityucyate vikārotpādakatvāt avidyā jñānavirodhitvāt māyā vicitrasṛshṭikaratvāt_).”[12] But this is distinctly opposed to the _Vyāsa-bhāshya_ which defines avidyā as _vidyāviparītaṃ jñānāntaraṃ avidyā_, i.e. avidyā is that other knowledge which is opposed to right knowledge. In some of the Upanishads, _Svetāśvatara_ for example, we find that māyā and prakṛti are identified and the great god is said to preside over them (_māyāṃ tu prakṛtiṃ vidyāt māyinaṃ tumaheśvaraṃ_). There is a description also in the Ṛgveda, X. 92, where it is said that (_nāsadāsīt na sadāsīt tadānīṃ_), in the beginning there was neither the “Is” nor the “Is not,” which reminds one of the description of prakṛti (_niḥsattāsattaṃ_ as that in which there is no existence or non-existence). In this way it may be shown from _Gītā_ and other Sanskrit texts that an undifferentiated, unindividuated cosmic matter as the first principle, was often thought of and discussed from the earliest times. Later on this idea was utilised with modifications by the different schools of Vedāntists, the Sāṃkhyists and those who sought to make a reconciliation between them under the different names of prakṛti, avidyā and māyā. What avidyā really means according to the Pātañjala system we shall see later on; but here we see that whatever it might mean it does not mean prakṛti according to the Pātañjala system. _Vyāsa-bhāshya_, IV. 13, makes mention of māyā also in a couplet from _Shashṭitantraśāstra_; _guṇānāṃ paramaṃ rūpaṃ na dṛshṭipathamṛcchati yattu dṛshṭipathaṃ prāptaṃ tanmāyeva sutucch akaṃ._