Īśvarakṛṣṇa

Almost nothing is known of the life of Īśvarakṛṣṇa. He is remembered as the author of the Sāṃkhyakārikā, “verses on Sāṃkhya”, a short work of about seventy verses, which became the classical statement of the school and is the oldest systematic Sāṃkhya text to survive. It is usually dated to the fourth or fifth century CE; it was translated into Chinese, with a commentary, by Paramārtha in the sixth.

The closing verses of the work place its author in a line of teachers going back to the sage Kapila, through Āsuri and Pañcaśikha, and say that it summarizes an older treatise, the Ṣaṣṭitantra, leaving out its illustrative stories and its arguments against rival views. That treatise is lost, and the Kārikā took its place.

The work begins from the problem of suffering in its three forms, from oneself, from other beings and from the powers of nature, and argues that neither ordinary remedies nor Vedic ritual remove it for good. It sets out the means of knowledge, the doctrine that effects pre-exist in their causes, the three guṇas, the reasons for affirming many conscious selves, and the unfolding of nature. Its similes became famous: the blind man and the lame man who travel together, the milk that flows unconsciously for the calf, and the dancer who withdraws once she has been seen.