ABSTRACT
The classical exposition of prakrti’s twenty-three manifest principles, or categories, occurs in the portion of the SaÅkhyakarika beginning at verse 22 and ending at verse 38. The names of these principles are well known, and their respective and collective functions have received a great deal of attention in the secondary literature. However, what remains only very dimly understood, and constitutes a source of perennial agitation and bewilderment to scholars, is the nature of the relations between the principles and, connected with this, the reason for the order in which they are said to emerge being as it is. Radhakrishnan gives voice to this agitation when he remarks that ‘It is difficult to understand the precise significance of the SaÅkhya account of evolution, and we have not seen any satisfactory explanation as to why the different steps of evolution are what they are’ (1927, II: 274). He can see no logic in the nature or order of the principles, and concludes that these things must be the result of ‘historical accidents’ rather than any process of deductive reasoning on the part of SaÅkhyan philosophers (ibid.).
