Volume-XII, Issue-II, March 2026 |
সাংখ্য দর্শনে দৃষ্ট-প্রমাণ: একটি বিশ্লেষণ মহুয়া চৌধুরী, গবেষক, কাজী নজরুল বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, আসানসোল, পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, ভারত |
Received: 01.03.2026 | Accepted: 09.03.2026 | Published Online: 31.03.2026 | Page No: | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.12.issue.02W. | |||||||
Perception (Drishta-Pramana) in Samkhya Philosophy: An Analysis Mohua Chowdhury, Research Scholar, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal, India | ||
ABSTRACT | ||
Human experience is of two kinds: pleasure and pain. All human beings seek happiness and desire liberation from suffering. The ancient Indian philosophical system of sāṃkhya asserts that the most distressing experience in human life is suffering (duḥkha). Therefore, liberation from suffering becomes the highest goal of life. According to the Sāṃkhya philosophers, the knowledge of the twenty-five principles (pañcaviṃśati tattva)- that is, the discriminative knowledge of the manifest (vyakta), the non-manifest (avyakta), the knower (jña or puruṣa)- is the only means for the complete cessation of suffering and the attainment of liberation (kaivalya). However, no rational person aspires to attain any object unless it is established through valid means of knowledge (pramāṇa) and freed from doubt. Hence, the twenty-five principles accepted in sāṃkhya must be validated through appropriate pramāṇas. The accepted pramāṇas of any Indian philosophical system must be adequate to establish all its objects of knowledge (prameya), and conversely, all its objects of knowledge must be established by its accepted pramāṇas. Indeed, without the valid establishment of objects through pramāṇa, liberation or kaivalya cannot be attained. Sāṃkhya accepts three pramāṇas— perception (pratyakṣa or dṛṣṭa), inference (anumāna), and verbal testimony (śabda). Among these, perception holds primary importance because inference and verbal testimony ultimately depend upon it, either directly or indirectly. Though perception immediately establishes only manifest entities, it serves as the foundational basis of all knowledge. This paper analytically examines the nature of perception within the sāṃkhya epistemology, as described in the earliest extant text, the sāṃkhyakārikā, along with its classical commentaries such as the Sāṃkhyatattvakaumudī and the Yuktidīpikā. | ||
Keywords: Pramā, Pramāṇa, Perception (Dṛṣṭa or Prtyakṣa pramāṇa), Ālocana-jñāna/Nirvikalpaka-jñāna (Indeterminate Cognition), Savikalpaka-jñāna (Determinate Cognition). |