The Sarikhya system is the work of a great sage of the name of Kapila. The Sarikhya must be a very old system of thought. Its antiquity appears from the fact that the Sarikhya tendency of thought pervades all the literature of ancient India including the srutis, smrtis and puranas.
According to tradition, the first work of the Sarikhya School is the Sankhya-siitra of Kapila. This being very brief and terse, Kapila, we are told, wrote an elaborate work entitled the Sdnkhya-pravacana sutra.
Hence the Sarikhya philosophy is also known as Sarikhyaprayacana. This system is sometimes described as the ‘atheistic Sarikhya’ (nirisvara-sarikhya), as distinguished from the Yoga which is called the ‘theistic Sarikhya’ (sesvara-sarikhya).
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The reason for this is that Kapila did not admit the existence of God and also thought that God’s existence could not be proved. But this is a controversial point.
Next to Kapila, his disciple Asuri, and Asuri’s disciple Pancasikha note some books which aimed at a clear and elaborate exposidon ‘he Sarikhya system. But these works were lost in course of time and we have no informadon about their contents.
Isvarakrsna’s Sahkhya-karika is the earliest available and authoritative textbook of the Sarikhya. Gaudapada’s Sankhya-karika-bhasya, Vacaspati’s Tattvakaumudi, Vijrianabhiksu’s Sankhya-pravacana-bhasya-vrtti are some other important works of the Sarikhya system.
The origin of the name ‘sarikhya’ is shrouded in mystery. According to some thinkers, the name ‘Sankhya’ is an adaptation from ‘sankhya’ meaning number, and has been applied to this philosophy because it aims at a right knowledge of reality by the enumeration of the ultimate objects of knowledge.
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According to others, however, the word ‘sankhya’ means perfect knowledge (samyag-jnana), and a philosophy in which we have such knowledge is justly named Sankhya.
Like the Nyaya-Vaisesika system, the Sankhya aims at the knowledge of reality for the practical purpose of putting an end to all pain and suffering.
It gives us knowledge of the self which is clearly higher than that given by the other systems, excepting perhaps the Vedanta. So it may very well be characterised as the ‘sankhya’ in the sense of a pure metaphysical knowledge of the self.
It is a metaphysic of dualistic realism. While the Nyaya and the Vaisesika admit the ultimate reality of many entities atoms, minds and souls the Sankhya recognises only two kinds of ultimate realities, namely, spirit and matter (purusa and prakrti).
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The nature of these two ultimate and other derivative realities will be considered in the Sankhya metaphysics.