Fitzgerald, James L.
2026.
The neglect of Sāṃkhya philosophy in the Mahābhārata in favor of plotting its history: epic Sāṃkhya studies 1.
Asian Literature and Translation (ALT)
13
(2)
, pp. 155-168.
10.18573/alt.109
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Abstract
What came to be called “Sāṃkhya” philosophy was something new at the time the Mahābhārata’s Mokṣadharmaparvan collection was being compiled. Much previous scholarship that addressed the Sāṃkhya philosophy found in the epic was preoccupied with its eventual development into the classical Sāṃkhya of Īśvarakṛṣṇa. Even the best and richest of that scholarship—that of Frauwallner and Johnston—did not account adequately for epic Sāṃkhya philosophy. Their sweeping historical ambitions drew their attention and acumen away from the fundamental task of apprehending all the basic ideas and tenets of the epic Sāṃkhya texts. The ethical and soteriological arguments organizing the teachings found in the individual epic Sāṃkhya treatises were not attended to adequately. This paper calls for a continuation of the kind of direct attention to epic Sāṃkhya that was initiated at the 1998 Lausanne conference on Sāṃkhya and that is continued elsewhere in this series of “Epic Sāṃkhya Studies”.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) |
| Publisher: | Cardiff University Press |
| ISSN: | 2051-5863 |
| Date of First Compliant Deposit: | 1 September 2026 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Sep 2026 12:44 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189305 |
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