1 - Mahajana.net

20 BUDDHIST LOGICThe Sankhya system can thus be regarded as the first serious stepthat the Indian speculation took against naive realism. It became theally of Buddhism in its fight with extreme realistic systems.4) The Yoga system.The yoga practices of concentrated meditation were a very popularfeature of religious life in ancient India and all systems of philosophy,with the only exception of the Mimamsakas, and of course of the Materialists,w r ere obliged to adapt their theories so as to afford someopportunity for the entrance of mysticism. Some scholars have exageratedthe importance of those features which Buddhism shares in commonwith the different schools of Yoga philosophy. The practical sideof both these systems, the practice of austerities and of transic meditation,their moral teachings, the theory of karma, of the defiling andpurifying moral forces are indeed in many points similar, but thissimilarity extends to the Jains and many other systems. The ontologyof the Patanjala-yoga school is borrowed almost entirely from theSankhya. But the old Yoga school, the Svayambhuva-yoga, 1 admittedthe existence of a permanent matter alongside with its impermanentbut real, qualities; it admitted the reality of a substance-to-qualityrelation and, evidently, all the consequences which this fundamentalprinciple must have had for its ontology, psychology and theology. Itenabled the Yogas to be, without contradiction, the champions of monotheismin ancient India. They believed in a personal, allmighty, omniscientand commiserative God. This feature alone separates them decidedlyfrom not only the Buddhists, but equaly from the atheisticSankhyas. 2 As a «non-radical » 8 system the old genuine Yoga schoolcould have but little in common with these two « radical" 4 schools.But its practical mysticism and its theory of karma constitutes thecommon stock of the great majority of Indian systems. Even the laterBuddhist logicians, notwithstanding all their aversion to uncritical1 These Svayambhuva Yogins were not at all sat- Jcarya-vadim, or they wereit only moderately (anekantatah) 9 in a measure in which all realists can be so designated.Cp. NK, p. 32 and Tat p., 428. 20 ff. There is no necessity at all to surmisethat the Yogas mentioned by Vatsyilyana ad NS, I, 1, 29 were Patafijala Yogasas Mr. K. Chattopadhyaya, JRAS, 1927, p, 854 ff. evidently assumes.2 On all the contradictions which arise to the Piitanjalas by assuming a personalGod cp. Tux en, Yoga, p. 62 ff,3 an-ekanta4 ekdnta.