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two things held apart and brought together, when the bonds or
fetters which separated fell off or perished. And Upanishat
is
also derived from Upa near, ni quite, sat to perish. Here also
the nearing of two things, and the per isI ling of something is
clearly meant. Of course, the two things brought together are
the Soul and God, and the perishable thing is certainly the
Pdsa and the Soul when bound
; by Pas a is called Pasu
accordingly
This was the condition of the Philosophic thought down to
the days of the Mahabharat, and we hold this was anterior to
the rise of Buddhism and continued for some centuries after
Gautama Buddha and till the time of Badarayana.
It was
during this time that the philosophy of India spread into and
permeated the thought of Europe,
and Professor Garbe has
lucidly proved in his short History of "The
Philosophy of
Ancient India," that the influence received by the Greeks down
to the neo-Platonic school was almost Sankhyan in its char
acter. It was during this time again, that the blending of the
Aryan and Tamilian in art and civilization and Philosophy took
place (and we could not here consider how much was common
to both, and how much each gained from the other). We have
an exactly parallel word in Tamil to the word Sankhya and
this word is erswr en) which means both number and to think ,
and both Aiwalydr and Tiruvalhtvar use the words to mean
logic and mataphysics: the primary science, on which all thought
was. built, being mathematics or the science of number, A
systematic and historical study of the Tamil works will make
good our position ;
and even to-day the most dominant cult in
the Tamil is the Sankhya and Yoga as represented in the
Upanishats or Vedanta. This system must have been
thoroughly establishad in the Tamil language and literature
before the time of Chirist and before Badaray ana s composition
of the Sarlraka Sutras. So much so, when Badarayana s
system came into vogue in Southern India, it was recognized
as a distinct school. As Badarayana professed expressly to
interpret the Upanishat or Vedanta texts, his school of
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