Hindu Disproofs of God: Refuting Vedantic Theism in the Samkhya Sutra

Hindu Disproofs of God: Refuting Vedāntic Theism in the Sāṃkhya Sūtra [This article will be published in The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (ed., Jonardon Ganeri). PLEASE TO NOT CITE, DUPLICATE, OR DISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.] Andrew J. Nicholson Stony Brook University andrew.nicholson@stonybrook.edu June 7, 2015  1 Abstract Among Hindu philosophical schools, Sāṃkhya is well known for its atheism. The Sāṃkhya Sūtra (circa 14th c. CE) is notable as the only Sāṃkhya source text to present positive disproofs of the existence of god (Īśvara). According to this text, it is impossible for god, an eternally fulfilled being, to have the desire to create the world. Its other arguments cite the problem of suffering in the world and god’s superfluity in relation to other causal forces as additional reasons that there can exist no omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent creator of the world. This chapter concludes by discussing Vedāntic and medieval Christian responses to the disproof based on god’s lack of desire, and offers suggestions for how attention to argumentation in pre-modern Indian texts may offer new avenues of study for the comparative philosophy of religion. Keywords Sāṃkhya, Īśvara, Vedānta, Yoga, Patañjali, līlā, karma, atheism, desire, suffering  2 In the field of the comparative philosophy of religion, scholars have frequently sought to document non-Western philosophical traditions’ proofs for god’s existence. In the Indian context, a great deal has been written about the Nyāya school’s proof of the existence of god (īśvara), and about Buddhist efforts to falsify the Nyāya proof.1 The existence of god is just one among many on which Buddhists and Hindus disagree, of course. Complicating matters further, the philosophical schools we today label as Hindu did not speak with a single voice. In fact, their tenets (siddhāntas) varied greatly. Of the six commonly enumerated “affirmer” (āstika) schools, the Nyāya school maintained that a personal god exists, and that his existence can be proved by means of rational inference (anumāna). Philosophers of another of these six schools, Vedānta, sometimes tended toward a skeptical attitude about knowledge based on rational inference (anumāna).2 Rāmānuja, for instance, maintained that knowledge of god is only attained through revelation (śabda-pramāṇa), not through rational inference.3 Two other affirmer schools went even farther. Some representatives of Mīmāṃsā and Sāṃkhya not only found flaws in the well-known Naiyāyika proofs for god’s existence, but also used rational argumentation to establish god’s non-existence.4 In this chapter I will describe the Sāṃkhya Sūtra’s arguments rejecting god in the context of pre- modern Indian intellectual debates, summarize responses to these arguments from Vedāntic theists, and briefly examine these debates’ cross-cultural significance for the philosophy of religion. The Sāṃkhya school may be the oldest among all of the affirmer (āstika) schools. The sage Kapila, mythological founder of Sāṃkhya, is mentioned in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (circa 3rd c. BCE), as are central Sāṃkhya concepts. Traditional biographies of  3 the Buddha portray Prince Siddhartha as studying and subsequently rejecting Sāṃkhya doctrines prior to his awakening.5 Sāṃkhya had an undeniable influence on many Indian texts. The most famous of these is undoubtedly the Bhagavad Gītā, which combines Sāṃkhya terminology with a devotional theism focused on the god Kṛṣṇa. Sāṃkhya is described in most modern histories of Indian philosophy as an atheist system, yet this is an oversimplification. Pre-modern doxographers in India recognized both theistic (seśvara) and atheistic (nirīśvara) strains of Sāṃkhya. One notable example of theistic Sāṃkhya is Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, a text described in its most important commentary as an “exposition on Sāṃkhya” (sāṃkhya-pravacana).6 Another important Sāṃkhya commentary, Yukti Dīpikā (“Light on [Sāṃkhya] Argumentation,” circa 800 CE), rejects an opponent’s assertion that Sāṃkhya is atheistic, and briefly describes Īśvara.7 In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (circa 9th c. CE), the Sāṃkhya sage Kapila is even depicted as one of Viṣṇu’s avatars. There is no doubt that there have been a wide range of views on god (īśvara) in Sāṃkhya texts throughout the history of this important philosophical school.8 The text that I focus on here as representing atheistic Sāṃkhya is the Sāṃkhya Sūtra (“Aphorisms on Sāṃkhya”). This late work, likely authored in the 14th or 15th centuries CE, has had an outsize influence on western scholars’ understanding of the Sāṃkhya school.9 Part of this is due to the 19th century Indologist Richard Garbe’s critical Sanskrit edition and translation of the Sāṃkhya Sūtra, and to his emphasis on this text’s rigorously atheistic argumentation.10 Although some of its modern interpreters have tried to read it as merely casting doubt on the possibility of proving  4 Īśvara, Sāṃkhya-Sūtra actually goes beyond this. It presents a series arguments in to demonstrate that Īśvara does not and cannot exist. The Sāṃkhya Sūtra is a text of 527 aphorisms (sūtras) divided into six sections. These sūtras address a range of different topics in ontology, epistemology, linguistic philosophy, and soteriology. The text is traditionally ascribed to the sage named Kapila, the school’s putative founder. From a historical perspective it is difficult to establish authorship for this text, or to establish the author’s precise motivations. What is clear is that, like other sūtra-texts of pre-modern India such as the Yoga-Sūtra, the Sāṃkhya- Sūtra is not completely original. It borrows from earlier works, most obviously the Sāṃkhya Kārikā (“Verses on Sāṃkhya,” circa 2nd. c. CE). Perhaps surprisingly, it also borrows selectively from the Brahma-Sūtra, the foundational text of the rival Vedānta philosophical school.11 In systems such as Sāṃkhya, Nyāya, and Yoga, a “sūtra” refers to an aphoristic statement, often quite cryptic, which can be as short as a single word. In the context of an intellectual culture that emphasized orality, sūtras were in large part used mnemonically, a short phrase could be used as a placeholder to help a student recall a more elaborate philosophical argument. However, the precise details of the argument were sometimes unclear precisely because of the elliptical style of the sūtra. This also meant that a series of sūtras taken in isolation would be quite difficult to make sense of. That left a great deal for commentators to fill in, and competing commentators often ascribed opposing meanings to a single sūtra. The two earliest commentaries on the Sāṃkhya-Sūtra were composed by Aniruddha (15th c. CE) and Vijñānabhikṣu (16th c. CE). Little is known about Aniruddha’s philosophical commitments, and his  5 commentary is sometimes little more than a straightforward gloss to fill in the Sāṃkhya-Sūtra’s ellipses. Vijñānabhikṣu, however, one of the major systematic thinkers of the late medieval/early modern period in northern India, was a polymath who wrote substantial works on Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Vedānta, and possibly even Nyāya.12 He brought to all of these works a powerful Vedāntic theism, and was unapologetic about seeing the god Viṣṇu even in apparently atheistic works such as the Sāṃkhya Sūtra. Background of Sāṃkhya Atheism Sāṃkhya analyzes all that exists in terms of 25 principles (tattvas). The first two of these principles are the key to understanding the metaphysical dualism that underpins the entire Sāṃkhya system. One is spirit (puruṣa), understood as pure consciousness. It is eternal, passive, unchanging, and gendered male. The other is material nature (prakṛti or pradhāna). It is the female force, a dynamic, active principle that constantly evolves into manifold forms. From material nature unfold all the remaining 23 principles, which can be understood as her evolutes. This process of evolution moves from subtler to grosser manifestations. It begins with intellect (buddhi), followed by ego (ahaṃkāra). The ego further transforms itself into mind (manas), five sense-capacities (buddhīndriyas), five action-capacities (karmendriyas), five subtle elements (tanmātras), and finally five gross elements (mahābhūtas).13 It is important to keep in mind that, according to the foundational works of the Sāṃkhya school, all of these 25 principles are real. Although the phenomenal world,  6 the world of nature and its evolutes, is depicted as illusory by others in classical India, Sāṃkhya thinkers argue at length against anti-realist arguments from Advaita Vedāntins and Yogācāra Buddhists that portray the external world as a projection of consciousness. The ultimate goal for human beings, according to Sāṃkhya, is to understand the principles (tattvas) as they truly are, and in doing so to differentiate spirit (puruṣa) from primordial nature and her evolutes. Nature is made up of three strands (guṇas), known as purity (sattva, represented by the color white), agitation (rajas, red), and lethargy (tamas, black). All changing states of being, including apparently “interior” or mental states such as feelings and thoughts, are accounted for in terms of the mingling of these three strands of nature. A favorite metaphor to illustrate the relation between spirit and nature is a colorless crystal placed in proximity to a colorful flower. The redness of the flower is reflected by the crystal, making that crystal appear to possess redness. But that color is extrinsic to the pure, colorless crystal. Similarly, the spirit does not possess any of the white, red, or black characteristics of nature, though we mistakenly think of ourselves as changing and as having thoughts and feelings. This false sense of selfhood is created by the ego (ahaṃkāra), itself merely one of the evolutes of nature. But when we understand ourselves as we truly are, unchanging consciousness devoid of any phenomenal content, then we escape the cycle of transmigration and suffering. This end goal, called “aloneness” (kaivalya) by Sāṃkhya, is a state of pure being in which spirit is free from association with the three guṇas that constitute the undesirable changing states of nature.  7 Though most books today on Indian philosophy retrospectively include Sāṃkhya among “Hindu schools,” this philosophy has clear affinities to Jainism and Buddhism. Just as the first noble truth of Buddhism is suffering, so too the very first aphorism of the Sāṃkhya Sūtra is, “the absolute cessation of threefold suffering (trividha-duḥkha) is the aim of the spirit (puruṣa).”14 Another of Sāṃkhya’s similarities with both these traditions is its acceptance of the law of karma without accepting a god who metes out reward to the just and punishment to the wicked. As do Jains and Buddhists, the Sāṃkhya-Kārikā and Sāṃkhya-Sūtras present karma as an automatic, impersonal force rather than a set of rules enforced by a personal creator god. Even some theistic Sāṃkhya texts, such as Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, do not suggest that god is responsible for the proper allocation of karmic rewards and punishments. This contrasts with other, more robustly theistic texts such as the Bhagavad Gītā section of the Mahābhārata and Īśvara Gītā section of the Kūrma Purāṇa. Despite obvious Sāṃkhya influences, in these two texts present the highest god (identified as Kṛṣṇa or Śiva, respectively) as being the ultimate source of karmic justice. The Sāṃkhya Sūtra on God The first hint the Sāṃkhya Sūtra gives of its thoroughgoing atheism appears in a discussion of the nature of perception (pratyakṣa) in its first chapter. After discussing the different types of perception, an imagined interlocutor interjects that the text’s discussion of perception is incomplete because it does not account for god’s perception  8 (īśvara-pratyakṣa). The representative of Sāṃkhya replies that it is unnecessary to discuss god’s perception “because Īśvara is not established” (īśvarāsiddheḥ).15 The meaning of this sūtra is disputed by pre-modern commentators. Aniruddha, the text’s earliest commentator, initially glosses this statement in a straightforward way: “If there were proof to establish Īśvara, then your concern about his perception would be justified. But there is no such proof.”16 But as Aniruddha’s argument progresses, it becomes clear that he understands this sūtra to imply not only that god cannot be proven, but also that Sāṃkhya has established his nonexistence. The subsequent sūtras in chapter one (1.93-97) offer positive arguments disproving god. Aniruddha is confident enough of these arguments that he writes at the beginning of his commentary on chapter five, “god’s non-existence (asattvam) has already been established.”17 By contrast, Vijñānabhikṣu, a commentator who came shortly after Aniruddha, reads the text as saying that although there is no proof for god, god nonetheless exists. This is part of his general strategy to see Sāṃkhya as ultimately compatible with the Vedāntic theism he espouses in his other works. He claims that Kapila, the Sāṃkhya- Sūtra’s author, was actually a theist. Because of Kapila’s concern with appealing to his audience, however, Kapila provided atheistic arguments as a “temporary concession” (abhyupagama-vāda). If this were not the author’s intent, Vijñānabhikṣu argues, the sūtra would have been worded “because of the non-existence of Īśvara (īśvarābhāvāt).” This ambiguity is enough, in the mind of the theist Vijñānabhikṣu, to allow us to read the Sāṃkhya Sūtra as ultimately affirming a creator god.18 He suggests that Kapila doesn’t hold that Īśvara does not exist, but merely that Īśvara’s existence cannot be  9 proven. If this were the Sāṃkhya-Sūtra’s actual position, it would agree with Rāmānuja, a Vedāntin who suggested that god’s existence can be known through revelation (śabda-pramāṇa) but not through inference (anumāna) or perception (pratyakṣa). However, reading sūtra 1.92 in context, Vijñānabhikṣu’s theistic interpretation seems unlikely. From Sūtras 1.93 through 1.97 and 5.1 through 5.12 present arguments to disprove Īśvara’s existence itself, and not merely the possibility proving of his existence. These disproofs were not new; readers acquainted with earlier arguments disproving god in Jainism, Buddhism, and Mīmāṃsā would have seen much that is familiar. What was new is the way that these arguments were adapted to function in the dualistic metaphysics of Sāṃkhya. Sūtras 1.93-4 argue that god would have to be either free (mukta) or bound (baddha); there is no third option. Both of these states would be impossible for a creator god who is omniscient and omnipotent. This is a common type of reductio ad absurdum argument (or prasaṅga, in Sanskrit) found in Indian philosophical texts in which both of the only two possible alternatives presented, then shown to be untenable. It is self-evident why bondage is incompatible with an omniscient, omnipotent being: being bound implies that god’s knowledge and power are limited. But why can’t god be free (mukta)? This question is examined in more detail in chapter five of the Sāṃkhya Sūtra. Aniruddha’s commentary on Sāṃkhya Sūtra 5.2 presents a cluster of arguments suggesting why a god who is free cannot be a creator. Among these is what in western traditions has been called the “problem of evil.” Here, however, the problem is posed in terms of suffering (duḥkha). This shows Sāṃkhya’s continuity with Buddhism and with  10 many other philosophies in India that took the fact of suffering as the fundamental problem, and in fact the purpose of philosophy itself. Aniruddha says: If Īśvara were an independent creator, he would create even without karma. Now if you say that he creates with karma as an auxiliary cause, then let karma be the only cause. What need is there for Īśvara? And it cannot be that the auxiliary cause obstructs the power of the primary cause, for then the primary cause would no longer be independent. Furthermore, we know from experience that all activity is either self- interested or for the sake of another. But Īśvara has no self-interested motives. Suppose his activity were for the sake of others. Then it would impossible that the created world, which consists of suffering (duḥkha), could be ascribed to him, since he is compassionate. Additionally, no activity is purely for the sake of others. Even by actions such as helping others, an agent furthers his own interests. Therefore, we must accept that karma alone is the cause of the world.19 From the incongruity of a compassionate god creating a world full of suffering, the idea of a creator god is rejected. This argument based on suffering is one argument nested in a series, some of which have received relatively little attention in modern secondary literature. The first argument presented concerns god’s relation to other causes. It was widely accepted in India by theists and atheists alike that the law of karma determines what happens to human beings: good actions eventually lead to pleasant results, or fruits (phalas), while wicked actions generate unpleasant fruits. Some schools, such as Nyāya and Vedānta, held that god functions as the  11 superintendent (adhiṣṭātṛ) of karma, ensuring its smooth and regular application to beings as they move through the cycle of transmigration (saṃsāra). However, according to sūtra 5.2 and its commentaries, positing an intelligent creator god is unnecessary, as it is perfectly logical to understand the law of karma as functioning on its own, much as scientists in the 21st century understand physical laws, such as the law of gravity, to function regularly. Few of us, even theists, insist that god is an agent who pushes down on tumbling rocks and descending airplanes to ensure that they eventually return back to the surface of the earth. This preliminary argument does not establish god’s non- existence, merely his superfluity. Yet by the principle of lāghava, the Indian analogue to Occam’s razor, Sāṃkhya argues that it is and better to assume that there is no god. After establishing that god is not a necessary postulate to explain how the world and karmic fruits come into existence, Aniruddha’s commentary presents an argument against god’s existence based on god’s psychology. We know from experience that all action is either for one’s own benefit, or for the benefit of another. But the idea that god creates solely for the benefit of other beings must be ruled out. Firstly, the created world is full of suffering, which would make no sense if we understand god to be not only omnipotent, but also compassionate (kāruṇika). Secondly, from our own experience we know that even when one aids others, one does so for one’s own sake as well. For instance, altruism brings us pleasure: it gratifies us because it makes us feel good about ourselves. Aniruddha says that this leaves only one remaining possibility, that god acts for his own benefit (svopakāra).  12 Sūtras 5.3 through 5.9 explore this possibility, that god acts out of self-interest. But if he does so, says sūtra 5.4, that would make him “just like a worldly ruler (laukikeśvaravat).” The commentator Vijñānabhikṣu explains: If it were accepted that Īśvara acts for his own benefit, then he would, like a worldly ruler, be subject to transmigration. If his desires were not fulfilled, there would be the unacceptable conclusion that he suffers. That is the meaning of the sūtra.20 Building on this observation from the standpoint of Sāṃkhya’s dualist cosmology, sūtras 5.6-8 explore the problem of desire (rāga). Without desire, it is impossible for Īśvara to be the one who creates and oversees the functioning of his creation. We see from experience that wherever there is activity, there is a desire motivating it. But if Īśvara is connected in any way to desire, then he is not eternally free.21 Desire is a part of the world of material nature (prakṛti), while according to Sāṃkhya the spirit (puruṣa) is pure consciousness, devoid of any thoughts, desires, or emotions.22 Like other Indian philosophical schools, including Buddhism and Vedānta, Sāṃkhya understands someone who is truly liberated to have conquered desire (rāga). From the standpoint of Sāṃkhya, it is indeed a problem to understand how such a being would continue to act in the world. Alternative Conceptions of God Is there any type of god that the Sāṃkhya-Sūtras can accept? The answer is a qualified “yes.” The entire argument against Īśvara in the Sāṃkhya Sūtra is devoted to  13 showing the impossibility of a creator god who is eternally free. Such a freedom would include freedom from any motivation to create. But there are other conceptions of god in pre-modern India. Just as in Buddhism, there is nothing in Sāṃkhya that would necessarily lead to the rejection of gods like Indra, Varuṇa, and Yama, super-powerful beings who are neither omniscient nor the absolute cause of the universe. Such gods are themselves bound, full of passions, and subject to transmigration, according to Sāṃkhya and Buddhist thought. This addressed by sūtra 5.5, which suggests that Īśvara could just be a “nominal” (pāribhāṣika) designation. Vijñānabhikṣu offers one example, that “Īśvara” is just the name given to the first being created in each new cycle of creation. Unexplored here is the possibility that there are still other types of beings who are free from desires yet active in the world. Perhaps the most obvious example in pre- modern South Asia were those people considered to be jīvanmukta, “liberated while living.” It was a controversial issue among philosophers whether one could be fully liberated (mukta) while still in possession of a body. However, the Sāṃkhya Sūtra explicitly accepts the existence of such beings. In sūtras 3.76-84 the text gives an explanation for how their condition arises. According to this, there are three types of persons, those of highest, middle, and lowest ability. For those of highest ability, experience ceases immediately after the act of intellectual discrimination (viveka) between the eternal spirit and the changing world of nature. However, for those of middle capability, discrimination does not immediately lead to the end of embodied existence. Due to the residue of past actions, such beings continue to exist for a certain amount of time as jīvanmuktas. Such beings have no desires or passions of their own;  14 they are only temporarily tied the world due to the karmic fruits of their previous desires. Their job is to teach those of lowest ability. Indeed, the existence of the liberated-while-living is essential for the transmission of true teachings. Without jīvanmuktas, philosophical transmissions would be like the “blind leading the blind.”23 For reasons such as these, the majority of philosophers in pre-modern India accepted that embodied liberation is a real human possibility. The Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā appear to support this position. For instance, Bhagavad Gītā 4.18 and 4.20 describe a type of activity that is, paradoxically, non-activity: He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among human beings, disciplined while engaged in all action. . . Giving up attachment to the fruits of action, eternally content and dependent on nothing, though engaged in action he does not do anything at all.”24 Advaita Vedānta commentaries on this verse associate this type of “inaction in action” with the jīvanmukta. The jīvanmukta must endure his or her previous acts that have already begun to produce results, known as prārabdha-karma. Until the fruits of these previous desire-motivated actions are burnt off, there can be no final liberation. A metaphor invoked to explain this is the potter’s wheel: even after the potter ceases to push his wheel, it spins for a time on its own before finally stopping. So too the previous desire-motivated actions of the jīvanmukta keep him tied to the world of material nature for a time, until the momentum generated by those previous actions comes to a halt. But what about the sort of being who has never engaged in any sort of desire-motivated action, who has never spun the potter’s wheel? What mechanisms  15 might there be to explain how he or she could take a body to engage in worldly and apparently goal-directed action? Some first-millennium CE Sāṃkhya texts did accept the idea of an eternally free being called Īśvara, perhaps most unambiguously in a commentary on the Sāṃkhya Kārikā called the Yukti Dīpikā (“Light on [Sāṃkhya] Reasoning,” circa 8th c. CE). The designation “Īśvara” here designation was not just nominal (pāribhāṣika) in the sense suggested by Sāṃkhya Sūtra, designating a special being who still suffers and transmigrates. According to the Yukti Dīpikā, Īśvara takes a “majestic body” (māhātmya- śarīra) and acts in the world without suffering or experiencing ignorance from his association with material nature (prakṛti). Responding to a Śiva-worshipping opponent who mistakenly accuses Sāṃkhya of denying the existence of god entirely, the author of the Yukti-Dīpikā clarifies this particular understanding of Īśvara: Opponent: What’s more, scripture teaches that he possesses a form, ‘wearing a skin,’ ‘Pināka bow in hand,’ ‘having a drawn bow,’ ‘black-crested,’ etc. If this is accepted, your view is refuted. From the language of the scriptures, a god who possesses a form is accepted, and therefore His existence is established. For it is impossible for a non-existent thing to possess a form. Reply: This too is mistaken, since you do not understand our intended meaning. We do not completely reject the particular power of Īśvara, his assuming a majestic body, etc. Our intended meaning is just that there is no being different from prakṛti and puruṣa and the instigator of these two, as you claim. Therefore, your view is refuted. The conjunction between prakṛti and puruṣa is not instigated by another being.25  16 The Yukti Dīpikā is a theistic Sāṃkhya text, but it does not accept the idea of an absolute creator god responsible for affecting “the conjunction between prakṛti and puruṣa,” the sort of god described in the Bhagavad Gītā and many Purāṇas. This Īśvara is, nonetheless, capable of taking a body and engaging in worldly activity. But what kind of activity might a being who has never experienced desire engage in, and how does he do so? Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, another first-millennium Sāṃkhya text, might offer a clue.26 Yoga Sūtra 1.24 describes a being named Īśvara who is a “special puruṣa, untouched by the afflictions, karma, the fruition of karma, and subconscious predispositions.”27 In subsequent sūtras Patañjali’s text also establishes that Īśvara is omniscient and “he is also teacher of the ancients, since he is not limited by time.”28 Patañjali that Īśvara creates the world.29 But Patañjali’s Īśvara does take embodiment in the time-bound world of material nature for the sake of teaching. Keeping in mind its historical context, a likely reading of this oft-disputed section of the Yoga Sūtra is that Īśvara is a compassionate, omniscient being who, though possessed of extraordinary power, is not an omnipotent being on whom the suffering of the created world can be blamed. The most impressive aspect of Īśvara as presented in the Yoga Sūtras is that, though embodied, he is eternally “untouched” (aparāmṛṣṭa) by all of those aspects of material nature that cause normal beings to suffer and impede their progress toward freedom. These include the “afflictions” (kleśas), which according to Patañjali are five: ignorance (avidyā), egoism (asmitā), desire (rāga), aversion (dveṣa), and clinging to life (abhiniveśa). Patañjali says that all activity is either afflicted (kliśta) or unafflicted (akliśta). What makes Īśvara special, then, is that he has never engaged in any afflicted  17 actions. Those who are liberated while living (jīvanmukta) previously engaged in action motivated by ignorance, egoism, and desire, but do so no longer. The idea of “unafflicted” action in the material world offers the possibility of a compassionate being continuing to engage in worldly activities after liberation, or indeed for a being who is eternally free to periodically intervene in human affairs out of compassion. Perhaps the closest analogue to this Īśvara is the Mahāyāna Buddhist conception of the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva, even after he or she has burnt off all prārabdha-karma, compassionately vows to put off his or her final nirvāṇa to continually re-enter the world and help other beings escape suffering. The difference between the bodhisattva and this Īśvara is that the bodhisattva at one point in time acted out of ignorance and desire. Īśvara, according to Patañjali, has never done so.30 Responses to Sāṃkhya Atheism As we see from the Yukti Dīpikā and Yoga Sūtras, it may be possible to accept Sāṃkhya’s dualism and still support the idea of a god who takes embodiment for the sake of worldly action without being dragged down by association with material nature (prakṛti). But is it possible to uphold the idea of a creator god? What responses did the theistic schools in India have for the Sāṃkhya critique based on god’s absence of desire? The most famous response is undoubtedly that creation is god’s play (līlā). In the Brahma Sūtras, the foundational text of the Vedānta school, the discussion of līlā comes in response to a challenge from a philosophical opponent, possibly a Sāṃkhya. At Brahma Sūtra 2.1.32, the opponent suggests that there could be no possible reason  18 for the highest being to create the world, due to an absolute lack of desire: “The highest being is not the creator of the world, since all creators have a motive.”31 The Vedānta response comes in the next sūtra: “But the highest being’s creation is just play (līlā), as we see in the world” (lokavat tu līlākaivalyam, 2.1.33). Vedānta commentators agree that god’s creation is itself without motive (prayojana). Rāmanuja’s example is that god is like a king playing a game with balls; he has no motives outside the game itself. Contemporary scholars of Vedānta have suggested that perhaps this is better understood as an argument by analogy. God’s activity is like human play insofar as it is an example of motiveless activity, but god does not literally play.32 Immediately following this argument for god’s motiveless play, the imagined anti-theistic interlocutor responds by with a variation on a familiar problem, the problem of suffering. If god does create, he says, then god is guilty of inequality (vaiṣamya), in his arbitrarily placing different beings on different levels in the cosmic hierarchy, and cruelty (nairghṛṇya), insofar as it is in his power that no being whatsoever should experience suffering. Brahma Sūtra 2.1.34 answers this familiar-sounding objection with a response that may be surprising. In his role as creator, Īśvara is constrained. He can only act in accord with the law of karma, and cannot contravene it. Therefore, he is not responsible for the individual’s station in the world, high or low. Solely the individual’s previous actions determine whether he or she is a millionaire or a pauper. Īśvara cannot suspend the impersonal processes of karma by immediately cutting off the fruits of previous actions and liberating a worshipper who is dear to him, for example. In the words of Śaṅkara, the influential Advaita Vedānta commentator,  19 It does not logically follow that Īśvara is guilty of inequality and cruelty. Why? It is because of his accountability (sāpekṣatvāt). If Īśvara alone, without any accountability, produced this unequal world, then he would be guilty of inequality and cruelty. However, as creator he is not free from account. He is accountable as he produces the created world. To what is he accountable? We say that he is accountable to merit (dharma) and demerit (adharma). Hence the world is unequal because of the merit and demerit of the beings who are created. It is not Īśvara’s fault.33 At first glance Śaṅkara’s argument appears to be remarkably obtuse. After all, isn’t Īśvara the creator of all beings? If he is, then why not create them from the beginning to be full of merit (dharma), and free from demerit (adharma)? In this vein, at Brahma Sūtra 2.1.35, the anti-theistic interlocutor interjects that before creation there was no difference between beings, so Īśvara could have chosen otherwise. This argument might convince those who believe that the world and individual selves had a beginning in time. However, theistic schools of philosophy in classical India were virtually unanimous in agreeing that god does not create from nothing. According to the theory of causality shared by both the Sāṃkhya and Vedānta schools, creation in general is understood as a coming to fulfillment of something that already exists in latent form.34 Śaṅkara, like other Vedānta commentators on this section, responds that god isn’t to blame for humans’ unhappy states of existence. According to Brahma Sūtra 2.1.35-36, all beings in the world are beginningless. Therefore, they have only their past actions to blame for their current condition in life. As Śaṅkara explains,  20 It makes sense that saṃsāra is beginningless. For if saṃsāra had a beginning, then since it would arise without a prior cause, even liberated beings might again find themselves in saṃsāra. Since there would be no cause of the world’s unequal allotment of pleasure and pain, results would not be due to previous good or bad actions. . .[Furthermore,] without previous good or bad actions, embodiment in saṃsāra cannot occur, yet without embodiment there can be no actions. So, if one maintains that saṃsāra has a beginning, there is the logical problem of reciprocal dependence (itaretarāśraya). However, if saṃsāra is beginningless, then their arising presents no logical problem, as in the case of the seed and the sprout. Moreover, the beginningless of saṃsāra is taught in revealed and traditional texts.35 The idea of “beginninglessness” (anāditva) is one widely shared across Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain philosophies in pre-modern India, yet it may appear to be in tension with the idea of an omniscient, absolute creator god. If the world and human selves are beginningless, as the Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā repeatedly suggest, then what is god’s role in creation?36 For the author of the Brahma Sūtra, Īśvara is in charge of overseeing the cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction that the entire world undergoes. His act of destruction is not absolute. Even after the world is destroyed, some subtle matter remains (mūlaprakṛti or pradhāna, in Sāṃkhya terminology). Nor does he create everything, as it is from that leftover stuff that god fashions the world. Human and animal selves also remain in a latent state between cycles of creation. It is these beginningless selves that once again take up bodies after the world has been created.  21 Not only is god limited insofar as he requires some material cause out of which to create, like a potter and his clay. Vedānta commentators also portray Īśvara as “accountable” (sāpekṣa) to something, namely to the past good and bad deeds of those beginningless selves. He does not, therefore, blindly assign high or low stations to beings; he determines rebirths only with regard to beings’ past actions. Nor, would it seem, can god give special dispensation to some beings who are is personal favorites, to liberate some beings whose past bad deeds might not seem to qualify them for liberation. Being accountable means allotting results that are strictly in accord with their past actions, without any room for special individual dispensations. Otherwise, the argument that god is cruel or arbitrary in his treatment of beings would be quite true. Īśvara is the governor (adhiṣṭhātṛ) of this world and of the allotment of karmic fruits. But unlike worldly governors, he does not have the power to commute a sentence that has been justly handed down by the courts. This calls into question Īśvara’s omnipotence, and perhaps brings to mind the Euthyphro dilemma.37 It also seems to contradict later Hindu devotional traditions, especially prominent in the Purāṇas, that maintain that the fruit of lifetimes of wicked actions can be wiped away instantaneously through god’s grace (prasāda). Through Vedāntic arguments that action devoid of a self-interested motive is possible (BS 2.1.33), that god is not guilty of cruelty since he acts only in accord with the law of karma (BS 2.1.34), and that the selves are beginningless and hence responsible for their own situations (BS 2.1.35), Vedāntins claim to have successfully responded to arguments of Hindu anti-theistic traditions.38 But this comes at a cost. One main tension in the Brahma Sūtra’s theism is that, while concept of play (līlā) presented  22 at BS 2.1.34 evokes the idea of a god who possesses childlike spontaneity and creativity, sūtras 2.1.35-37 seem to suggest that god’s freedom and spontaneity is merely apparent, not real. His job description requires rigid adherence to a prior set of rules in the governance of world. Otherwise, his detractors would be correct in portraying him as amoral and capricious. In this vein the historian Hajime Nakamura sets up a stark contrast between the “automaton” god of the Brahma Sūtras and the god of later devotionally-oriented Vedāntic sects: . . . the attempt to use the law of Karma to solve the problem of individual sufferings in a Brahman-created world is a special point of the philosophy of Brahma-sūtra. At the same time the Highest God was not an absolutely free personal god, because he is dependent upon external factors for world creation. Since he merely allocates the karmic effect appropriate to the individual self, his function was that of an automaton. He is a stern god and not a god of grace; he is a god who makes possible individual action, bondage, and liberation and is the basis of all things, but merely acts as a mechanism and does not positively encourage either good or bad acts on the part of individual selves. This god merely abides (sthiti) without doing anything in particular (1.3.7), for the spiritual liberation of individual self is dependent upon the religious discipline and practice of the individual. The burning bhakti worship of later Hindu sects is not seen in the Brahma-sūtra.39 Even if we accept the Vedāntic argument for the possibility of god acting purely spontaneously and without any external motive, like a king at play, the Brahma Sūtra’s subsequent arguments defending Īśvara from the charge of cruelty play into the first  23 disproof presented in Aniruddha’s commentary on Sāṃkhya Sūtra 5.2. If Īśvara is merely a large cog in the universal machine of saṃsāra, constrained by karma to follow a strict set of rules in his governance of the world, what explanatory need is there for god/Īśvara at all? It would be simpler, hence better, to eliminate god as a karmic middleman. We may simply explain the sufferings and pleasures of the world as part of an automatic, beginningless causal process, as Sāṃkhya, Buddhist, and Jaina philosophers do. And it is not only rational inference (anumāna) that leads us to this conclusion. As Aniruddha points out in his commentary on Sāṃkhya Sūtra 5.12, there is also scriptural testimony suggesting that primordial nature (prakṛti) is the cause of all worldly phenomena. According to him, one can better understand scriptural references to Īśvara’s creation of the entire universe as poetic license, a nominal Īśvara who is powerful but not ultimately responsible for world-creation.40 Comparing Anti-Theistic Argumentation Across Cultures To what extent are the anti-theistic arguments of the Sāṃkhya Sūtra applicable to other theistic traditions, such as Christian theology? Some of the arguments presented here may seem to be irrelevant outside of India. For instance, the idea of karma is more or less specific to the philosophical and theological traditions that originated in India: Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. Like Sāṃkhya, Buddhism and Jainism accept the idea of karma without seeing the need to posit an intelligent personal being ultimately in charge of its activity. However, the problem of motiveless action, so central to the Sāṃkhya disproof of god, was a problem that medieval  24 Christians also recognized.41 This issue was addressed by Christian theologians in the 13th and 14th centuries, including Meister Eckhart and Thomas Aquinas.42 Not surprisingly, Aquinas posed the question in Aristotelian terms. In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas asks, “Is God the final cause of all things?” He begins with a prima facie view, then responds with his own answer: It would seem not. For does not acting for an end mean acting from need of it? But God needs nothing. Therefore it does not become him to act for an end… To act from need is the mark only of an agent which is unfulfilled and made to be both acting on and acting upon. But this is not the case with God. He alone is supremely generous, because he does not act for his own benefit but simply to give of his goodness.43 Aquinas, like the Vedānta commentators on the Brahma Sūtras, affirms that god did not create out of some want, as that would imply that god is not perfectly fulfilled. In the dilemma suggested by the Sāṃkhya commentator Aniruddha, god is clearly not acting for his own sake, egoistically (svārtha). But nor is he acting for the sake of others, altruistically (parārtha), at least not in the sense suggested by Aniruddha. For Aquinas, at the time of creation god is alone. There is no one for whom and nothing else for which god might create. This is a central difference between Christian theology, which usually has maintained that god creates the world ex nihilo, and the Hindu traditions I have discussed. Sāṃkhya and Vedānta are clear that the world of saṃsāra is eternal, as are all of the spirits (puruṣas, in Sāṃkhya terminology) or individual selves (jīvātmans, in Vedānta terminology) that transmigrate in the world.44 This is the background for the perhaps counter-intuitive argument given by Vedānta  25 that god is not responsible for the pain suffered by individual beings in the world. Rather, their own previous actions determine their current station in the world, and the degree of suffering that they must endure. This infinite regression of past lives is not a logical problem, just a fact. Saṃsāra is eternal until, through some combination of philosophical discrimination and skillful action, the cycle of rebirths finally comes to an end. Medieval Christian theologians were familiar with the Greek idea that the world is eternal. In the 13th century, Bonaventure critiqued Aristotle’s position on the world’s eternality, along with “Latin Averroists” who rejected creation ex nihilo and embraced Aristotle’s reasoning. Aquinas ultimately accepted that the world had a beginning and was created in time. But in Vedānta and Sāṃkhya, the type of “creator god” I have explored here is not understood as the first cause of a temporally finite universe. Instead, whether he is accepted (in the case of Vedānta) or rejected (as in the Sāṃkhya Sūtra), the creator god under discussion is understood as the superintendent (adhiṣṭhātṛ) of the world. He is ultimately responsible for each cycle of its creation, preservation, and destruction, throughout eternity. As the world is beginningless and endless, so is his stewardship of it.45 The discussion of god’s creation of the world points to another central controversy that has received surprisingly little attention among comparative philosophers of religion: the question of the world’s beginning. Aquinas argued for a nuanced middle position between the Latin Averroists, who maintained that the world is beginningless, and the position of the medieval “Augustinians” who claimed to have disproved Aristotle’s claim that the world has no beginning. In the Physics, Aristotle advanced an argument for the world’s beginninglessness based on the impossibility of  26 explaining an absolute beginning of motion. Aquinas did not accept Aristotle’s argument. Nor did he accept Bonaventure’s and other “Augustinian” arguments that the creation of an eternal universe was nonsensical, and that therefore only a universe created in time could exist. For Aquinas, this was one of the questions that could only be solved by appeal to revelation, not by human reason.46 In his De Aeternitate Mundi (“On the Eternity of the World”) Aquinas argues, against the Augustinians, that it is theoretically possible that something created by god could be beginningless. He considers and rejects a series of theological arguments that claim to disprove the world’s eternality. In one important argument, Aquinas endeavors to show that it is not necessary for a cause to be prior to its effect: First, we should show that it is not necessary that an agent cause, in this case God, precede in time that which he causes, if he should so will. This can be shown in several ways. First, no cause instantaneously producing its effect necessarily precedes the effect in time. God, however, is a cause that produces effects not through motion but instantaneously. Therefore, it is not necessary that he precede his effects in time. . . Since people are accustomed to considering the type of cause that produces effects through motion, they do not easily grasp that an agent cause may fail to precede its effect in time, and so, having limited experience, they easily make a false generalization.47 God’s creation is unlike the creation of a potter or a watchmaker, who create through motion, and whose actions must precede the arising of the effect. There is a sort of causality in which cause is simultaneous with its effect. This is the sort of relation that god has to world, and hence there is nothing logically incoherent about  27 the idea of god creating an eternally existing world. According to Aquinas, it is revelation, not reason, that contradicts such an understanding of the world and its cause. Aquinas’s insight here not only vindicates the ancient Greek philosophers; it can also be read as a defense of Vedāntic conception of causality found in the Brahma Sūtras. Unlike the medieval Christians, who read the Bible as unambiguously describing a world that had both beginning and end, Vedāntins understood various passages from the Upaniṣads as a depicting a world without a beginning or end in time. By the first millennium CE, the schools we label today as “Hindu” generally accepted a cyclical cosmology in which the world has no absolute beginning or end. Yet Brahma Sūtra 1.1.2 asserts that “[It is Brahman] from which there is the origin, etc. of this [world].” Taking Aquinas’s arguments for the possibility of god or absolute being as the cause of an eternal world, we can construe brahman as ultimate causal ground from which the world arises, not the sort of cause that is temporally prior to the world.48 On the problem of the motives of the divine creator, Aquinas shows sensitivity to the same types of problems as the Vedāntic commentators on the Brahma Sūtra. Rather than accept the dilemma that god’s creation must be either egoistic or altruistic, Aquinas invokes the principle of bonum diffusivum sui, “the good is diffusive of itself.” It is in god’s nature to extend himself, to give of himself spontaneously out of his own goodness. God is not like a potter needing to create a pot to store water for himself, nor does he create a pot with the intention to help someone else. The fact of god’s overflowing generosity is, in fact, closer to the example of play (līlā) suggested by the Brahma Sūtras. Although the example invoked by Vedānta commentators regards god’s  28 joy, not his goodness, in both cases his activity is a spontaneous expression of divine perfection. Rather than a reflection of a want, as is most human activity, the type of activity expressed by god/Īśvara here indicates his lack of want, his overflowing plenitude (paripūrṇatva). In the Indian context, the success of this argument depends in part upon agreeing with the Vedāntin that there is some example (udāharaṇa) from human life of such a spontaneous, motiveless activity.49 One problem in the comparative philosophy of religion has been a tendency to exaggerate similarities and underplay the very significant differences between the intellectual traditions of Asia and the more familiar traditions of European philosophy and theology. The world “god” itself is a problem when used to translate words from Asian languages. In the context of Sāṃkhya and Vedānta argumentation, the word most often translated as “god” is īśvara, a word whose etymology suggests ownership and mastery.50 It is a word often used to describe human lords and kings, and philosophers who used this word were quite aware of the ways in which the word might be applied not only to the supreme creator, but also to this-worldly kings and to yogis who had acquired extraordinary powers through their spiritual exercises.51 There is no precise equivalent to the word īśvara in a western language and, as I have shown, some of the ideas about who īśvara is may seem quite foreign to western religious sensibilities. This has led one recent author analyzing the Nyāya school’s proofs to translate īśvara not as “god,” but as “a God-like being.”52 While calling īśvara a “God-like being,” or simply refusing to translate the word from Sanskrit, may seem admirably precise, it is also misleading. “God-like being” suggests that there is a widely accepted understanding of who or what “god” is in  29 western contexts. But, given the wide range of beings called gods in western traditions, no such widespread agreement exists. The “god” may refer to an absolute creator, but it is also often used to refer to beings, like Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, or Ogum, who are not omnipotent, omniscient, or responsible for the world’s creation. Even in strictly Christian contexts, “god” is a disputed term. Process theologians have argued since the mid-20th century, for instance, that god undergoes change, and is not omnipotent or omniscient in the sense understood by medieval theologians.53 Likewise, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew have not one but many words that are translated into the English word “god.” Theos, daimon, daimonion, deus, divas, and erus all have subtly different shades of meaning in their original languages, yet are all often translated with the English word god.54 Many ancient Greek and Near Eastern conceptions of the divine would scarcely seem more foreign to the modern west than the Hindu conceptions I have discussed in this chapter. Instead of comparing “the western conception” of god with “the Hindu conception,” we must acknowledge a multiplicity of perspectives on the divine, within western and non-western intellectual traditions. Perhaps some of this foreignness is a necessary corrective to the type of Eurocentrism that has been typical in the study of the philosophy of religion. Even in explicitly comparative studies, often the departure point for investigation is that of the Christian traditions most familiar to religious studies scholars. In its worst manifestations, this can become a game of documenting what non-western traditions have and what they lack. Such unstated biases are the reason, I believe, that most recent inquires into god’s existence in non-western traditions have begun by looking for non-Christian equivalents of the famous Christian argument from design. It has  30 been established that there are similar arguments in Nyāya philosophy. Now is the time to reverse this Eurocentric process by starting from Indian premises and presuppositions about Īśvara, for instance, and then querying western traditions for parallels and lacunae. This project of “provincializing Europe,” in the memorable phrase coined by Dipesh Chakrabarty, has come surprisingly late to philosophy and theology.55 What are the wider implications of “atheist religion” of the sort found in pre-modern India? For Buddhism, Jainism, and atheist Sāṃkhya, the beginningless activity of karma makes the existence of god superfluous, at least from the perspective of ethics. In the context of such traditions, the existence of a supreme lawgiver cannot be considered a necessary postulate of practical reason. Furthermore, it is possible to attain the highest good, according to these traditions, without an intelligent creator god. Drawing from intellectual traditions such as “Hindu atheism” might force philosophers to re-evaluate their own preconceptions, and even call in doubt familiar western arguments both for and against the existence of god.56 This is one possible future direction for the postcolonial philosophy of religion. BIBLIOGRAPHY Suggestions for Further Reading Bilimoria, Purushottama. “Hindu Doubts about God: Towards a Mīmāṃsā Deconstruction.” International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990): 481-99.  31 Bronkhorst, Johannes. “Yoga and Seśvara Sāṃkhya.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 9 (1981): 309-20. ________________________. “God in Sāṃkhya.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 27 (1983): 149-64. Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. Indian Atheism: A Marxist Analysis. Calcutta: Manisha, 1969. Clooney, Francis X. Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries Between Religions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ________________. “Evil, Divine Omnipotence, and Human Freedom: Vedānta’s Theology of Karma.” The Journal of Religion 69 (1989): 530-548. Griffiths, Paul J. “What Do Buddhists Hope for from Antitheistic Argument?” Faith and Philosophy 16 (1999): 506-522. Hayes, Richard P. “Principled Atheism in the Buddhist Scholastic Tradition.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (1988): 5-28.  32 Larson, Gerald and Bhattacharya, Ram Shankar (eds.). Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies vol. IV, Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Nicholson, Andrew J. Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Patil, Parimal G. Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Sinha, Nandalal (trans. and ed.), The Samkhya Philosophy. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1979. Vattanky, John. The Development of Nyāya Theism. Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 1993. 1 For an example of the former, see John Vattanky, The Development of Nyāya Theism (Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 1993); among the latter, see Parimal Patil, Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 2 In its premodern usage, āstika did not mean “theist.” For a discussion of the history and meaning of this Sanskrit term, see Andrew J. Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 166-84. 3 See Francis Clooney, Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries Between Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) for a comparative discussion of natural versus revealed theology in the Nyāya and Vedānta schools. 4 Purushottama Bilimoria describes the influential Mīmāṃsaka thinker Kumārila Bhaṭṭa as having “doubts” about God’s existence. However, in the Ślokavārttika Kumārila offers a series of arguments that, if accepted as persuasive, would deny the existence of an omnipotent world-creating God. These arguments overlap with those found in the Sāṃkhya Sūtra. See P. Bilimoria, “Hindu Doubts about God: Towards a Mīmāṃsā Deconstruction.” International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990): 481-99.  33 5 For one early biography of the Buddha that describes him as having studied Sāṃkhya, see Stephen A. Kent, “Early Sāṃkhya in the Buddhacarita,” Philosophy East and West 32 (1982): 259-278. 6 See Johannes Bronkhorst, “Yoga and Seśvara Sāṃkhya,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 9 (1981): 309. 7 See Johannes Bronkhorst, “God in Sāṃkhya,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 27 (1983): 149-64. 8 On theistic (seśvara) Sāṃkhya texts such as the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad and the Yuktidīpikā, see A. J. Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism, pp. 67-83 and Johannes Bronkhorst, “God in Sāṃkhya.” 9 For some remarks on the dating of the Sāṃkhya-Sūtra and its commentaries, see Gerald Larson and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (eds.), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies vol. IV, Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 327-333. 10 On Garbe and his influence on the modern reception of Sāṃkhya, Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism, pp. 67-83. 11 “… the sutras of the first three books appear to follow the sequence and the language of the Sāṃkhyakārikā and are probably little more than a late recasting of the older kārikās in sutra-style,” Larson and Bhattacharya, p. 327. Sāṃkhya-Sūtra 4.1.1 is a word- for-word repetition of Brahma Sūtra 4.1.1. 12 For more on Vijñānabhikṣu’s oevre, see A. J. Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism, pp. 6-9. 13 For a more thorough exposition of the Sāṃkhya evolutes, see Richard King, Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999), pp. 170-189. 14 My translation. For a translation of the Sāṃkhya-Sūtra and its two oldest commentaries, see Nandalal Sinha, The Samkhya Philosophy (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1979). 15 Sāṃkhya Sūtra 1.92 (my translation). For the commentaries on this sūtra, see Sinha, The Samkhya Philosophy, pp. 142-143. 16 yadīśvarasiddhau pramāṇam asti tadā tatpratyakṣacintopapadyate. tad eva tu nāsti. Richard Garbe (ed.), The Samkhya Sutra Vritti: Or Aniruddha’s Commentary and the Original Parts of Vedantin Mahadeva’s Commentary to the Samkhya Sutras (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1888), p. 50. 17 pūrvasiddham īśvarāsattvam. Garbe, The Samkhya Sutra Vritti, p. 179. 18 On Vijñānabhikṣu’s theistic reading of the apparently atheistic Sāṃkhya Sūtra, see A. J. Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism, pp. 84-107. 19 yadīśvaraḥ svatantraḥ kartā karmaṇā vināpi kuryāt. atha karmasahakārī kurute. karmaivāstu kim īśvareṇa. na ca sahakārī pradhānaśaktiṃ bādhate. svātantryavighātāt. kiṃ ca svārthaparārthābhyāṃ pravṛttir dṛṣṭā. na ceśvarasya svārtham asti. parārthtve kāruṇikasya duḥkhamayasṛṣṭyanupapattiḥ. na ca parārthaprvṛttiḥ paropakārādināpi svārthalābhāt pravṛtteḥ. tasmāt karmaiva jagatkāranam astu. Garbe, The Samkhya Sutra Vritti, p. 180. 20 īśvarasyāpy upakārasvīkāre laukikeśvaravad eva so ‘pi saṃsārī syāt. apūrṇakāmatayā duḥkhādiprasaṅgād ity arthaḥ. Richard Garbe (ed.), The Sāṃkhya-pravacana-bhāṣya, or Commentary on the Exposition of the Sānkhya Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1895), p. 117.  34 21 tatyoge ‘pi na nityamuktaḥ. Garbe, The Sāṃkhya-pravacana-bhāṣya, p. 118. 22 Vijñānabhikṣu observes that for Sāṃkhya, it is impossible for Īśvara to possess desires. If Īśvara himself is the creator of prakṛti, then it would be impossible for him to possess any desire to create. This is because desire is a part of prakṛti; prior to the existence of prakṛti, there could be no desire, as desire has not yet come into existence. This is an example of the logical flaw of mutual dependence (anyonyāśraya). Therefore, for Sāṃkhya the logical alternative is to understand prakṛti as beginningless and uncaused by any other being. See Vijñānabhikṣu’s commentary on Sāṃkhya Sūtra 5.8. 23 Sāṃkhya Sūtra 3.81 literally states “Otherwise, there would be a lineage of the blind.” (itarathāndhaparamparā). 24 karmany akarma yaḥ paśyed akarmaṇi ca karma yaḥ / sa buddhimān manuṣyeṣu sa yuktaḥ kṛtsnakarmakṛt // … tyaktvā karmaphalāsaṅgaṃ nityatṛpto nirāśrayaḥ / karmany abhipravṛtto ‘pi naiva kiñcit karoti saḥ // (Bhagavad Gītā 4.18, 4.20.) 25 kiṃ cānyat. śruteḥ. śrutir api cāsya mūrtim ācaṣṭe kṛttivāsāḥ pinākahasto vitatadhanvā nīlaśikhaṇḍī ityādi. tadabhyupagamāt svapakṣahānir iti cet. syān matam. yadi tarhi śrutivacanān mūrtimān īśvaraḥ parigṛhyate tena siddham asyāstitvam. kasmāt. na hy asato mūrtimattvam upapadyata iti kṛtvā. etad apy ayuktam. kasmāt. abhiprāyānavabodhāt. na hy ekāntena vayaṃ bhagavataḥ śaktiviśeṣaṃ pratyācakṣmahe māhātmyaśarīrādiparigrahāt. yathā [tu] bhavatocyate. pradhānapuruṣavyatiriktas tayoḥ prayoktā nāstīty ayam asmadabhiprāyaḥ. tasmād etasya bādhakam. ato na pradhānapuruṣayor abhisambandho ‘nyakṛtaḥ. Albrecht Wezler and Shujun Motegi (eds.), Yuktidīpikā: The Most Significant Commentary on the Sāṃkhyakārikā (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), p. 159. My translation. 26 At the time of its composition, it is likely that the Yoga Sūtra was considered a Sāṃkhya text. See Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism, pp. 79-83. 27 kleśakarmavipākāśayair aparāmṛṣṭaḥ puruṣaviśeṣa īśvaraḥ (Yoga Sūtra 1.24). See Edwin Bryant, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (New York: North Point Press, 2009), p. 87. 28 pūrveṣām api guruḥ kālenānavacchedāt (Yoga Sūtra 2.26), Bryant, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, p. 103. 29 Interestingly, Vyāsa, the earliest commentator on the Yoga Sūtra, suggests in his commentary on YS 3.45 that Īśvara uses his extraordinary powers to put the world in order after he is incarnated. Though not a creator per se, this Īśvara may have similar duties to the “governor” (adhiṣṭātṛ) described in other texts such as the Brahma Sūtra. 30 Edwin Bryant notes, regarding the idea of the jīvanmukta: “Recent scholarship has consistently and persuasively argued that it is a misconception to consider Yoga to be a radical withdrawl from the world; rather, it entails enlightened engagement with the world, that is, action stemming from akliṣṭa-vṛttis” (Bryant, Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, p. 176). 31 na prayojanavattvāt. BSB 2.1.32; V.S. Abhyankar (ed.), Sri-Bhashya by Ramanujacharya (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1914), p. 461. 32 See Hugh Nicholson, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 191-3. Nonetheless, Rāmānuja and other pre- modern commentators are happy to describe god’s activity itself as “play,” not just an activity that resembles play (līlā). 33 vaiṣamyanairghṛṇye neśvarasya prasajyete / kasmāt / sāpekṣatvāt / yadi hi nirapekṣaḥ kevala īśvaro viṣamāṃ sṛṣṭiṃ nirmimīte syātām etau doṣau vaiṣamyaṃ nairghṛṇyaṃ ca / na tu  35 nirapekṣasya nirmātṛtvam asti / sāpekṣo hīśvaro viṣamāṃ sṛṣṭiṃ nirmimīte / kim apekṣata iti cet / dharmādharmāvapekṣata iti vadāmaḥ / ataḥ sṛjyamānaprāṇidharmādharmāpekṣā viṣamā sṛṣṭir iti nāyam īśvarasyāparādhaḥ / (Śaṅkara, commmentary on 2.1.34) Brahmasūtra with the Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śaṅkarācārya (Varanasi: Chaukhambā Vidyābhavana, 1995), pp. 612-3. 34 For instance, the egg of the peacock already contains all of the peacock’s colors, albeit in latent form, not as manifest. For more on the theory that “the effect pre-exists in the cause” (satkāryavāda), see R. King, Indian Philosophy, pp. 208-221. 35 upapadyate ca saṃsārasyānāditvam / ādimattve hi saṃsārasyākasmādudbhūter muktānām api punaḥ saṃsārodbhūtiprasaṅgaḥ akṛtābhyāgamaprasaṅgaś ca sukhaduḥkhādivaiṣamyasya nirnimittatvāt . . . na ca karmāntareṇa śarīraṃ saṃbhavati na ca śarīram antareṇa karma / saṃbhavatītītaretarāśrayatvaprasaṅgaḥ /anāditve tu bījāṅkuranyāyenopapatterna kaściddoṣo bhavati / upalabhyate ca saṃsārasyānāditvaṃ śrutismṛtyoḥ / BSB 2.1.36; Brahmasūtra with the Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śaṅkarācārya (Varanasi: Chaukhambā Vidyābhavana, 1995), pp. 615-6. The realist Vedāntins Rāmānuja and Vijñānabhikṣu agree with the anti-realist Śaṅkara that it is the beginningless prior actions of beings that accounts for their present situations, and that Īśvara cannot be held responsible. For more on these Vedāntic arguments, see Francis Clooney, “Evil, Divine Omnipotence, and Human Freedom: Vedānta’s Theology of Karma.” Journal of Religion 69:4 (1989), pp. 530-548. 36 Kṛṣṇa says of the individual self as he consoles Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gītā: “It is never born, nor does it ever die. Having been, it will not cease to be. It is unborn, permanent, eternal, and ancient. It is not killed when the body is killed.” na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṃ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ / ajo nityaḥ śāśvatoyaṃ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre // Bhagavad Gītā 2.20, my translation. 37 One version of the Euthyphro dilemma is: is is just because god wills it, or does god will it because it is just? The latter would seem to limit the omnipotence of god. Though certain Sanskrit words are often translated “omnipotence,” there are often contextual differences between these words and their Christian counterparts. For instance, Yoga Sūtra 3.29 describes someone who is liberated while alive as possessing sarvabhāvādhiṣṭhātṛva. This is not exactly “omniscience,” as it is sometimes translated, but rather “governance of all beings.” Indian theologians, unlike their monotheistic counterparts, also explored the apparent paradoxes surrounding the possibility of multiple all-powerful beings. One Śaiva sect (Pravāhanityeśvaravāda, “the view that God is eternal in the way that a stream is eternal) maintained that each time a new yogi is liberated and obtains the same all-powerful state as Śiva, the previous lord willingly retires from his position. The Śaiva Siddhānta sect argued against this, saying that there is no problem of multiple all-powerful beings coming into conflict since liberated beings are also omniscient and free of vices such as greed and passion. See Alex Watson, An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation: Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Paramokṣanirāsakārikāvṛtti (Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2013), pp. 49-53. 38 The Brahma Sūtras do not identify the source of the anti-theistic arguments that Vedāntins responded to at Brahma Sūtra 2.1.32-35, their original source was likely Sāṃkhya or Mīmāṃsā. Some sūtras also attack Buddhist and Jain viewpoints, though Hajime Nakamura has suggested that those sūtras were inserted after the earliest  36 period of the Brahma Sūtras’ composition. See Hajime Nakamura, A History of Early Vedānta, Vol. 1 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), pp. 432-434. 39 Hajime Nakamura, A History of Early Vedānta, Vol. 1 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), p. 496. 40 According to Mīmāṃsā hermeneutics, for instance, the Veda’s descriptions of god’s extraordinary powers are just “supportive statements” (arthavāda). They do not reflect an objective reality, but instead are meant to encourage action, in particular, the act of ritual sacrifice. Though Mīmāṃsā and Sāṃkhya differ substantially, they are both traditions that understand the universe as beginningless and uncaused, in spite of certain Vedic statements that seem to suggest otherwise. In Vijñānabhikṣu’s commentary on sūtras 5.2-12, he argues that Kapila, the author of the sūtras, was a theist who was only espousing atheism as a “temporary concession” (abhyupagama- vāda) to win over an atheist audience. For more on Vijñānabhikṣu’s hermeneutic strategies for harmonizing Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, and Yoga teachings, see Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism, pp. 84-123. 41 Buddhists mention in passing the problem of God’s motivation, but focus on other arguments, especially the problems of God’s temporal unity and his relation to other causal forces (especially karma). See Richard Hayes, “Principled Atheism in the Buddhist Scholastic Tradition.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (1988): 11. 42 On Eckhart’s notion of God’s spontaneous “outflow” and a comparison to the Advaita Vedānta conception of līlā, see H. Nicholson, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, p. 192. 43 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (London: Blackfriars, 1963), p. 21 (1a, 44, 4). 44 Though there are a few sections in the Upaniṣads that seem to suggest the world has a beginning (see Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad. 1.2.1, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.19.1), Vedāntins often focused on one particular section to establish the world’s beginninglessness, and the idea of brahman as an eternal material cause: “‘In the beginning, son, this world was simply what is existent—one only, without a second. Now, on this point some do say: ‘In the beginning this world was simply what is nonexistent—one only, without a second. And from what is nonexistent was born what is existent.’ ‘But, son, how can that possibly be?’ he continued. ‘How can what is existent be born from what is nonexistent? On the contrary, son, in the beginning this world was simply what is existent—one only, without a second. And it thought to itself: ‘Let me become many. . .’” (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.2.1-3). Patrick Olivelle (trans.), The Early Upaniṣads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 247. 45 In Advaita Vedānta, there is an idea the brahman is the fundamental source from which all beings arise. God (īśvara) is only a lower manifestation of brahman, according to this view. 46 For more on medieval Christian arguments for and against the world’s eternality, see Norman Kretzmann and Eleonor Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 26-27. 47 Thomas Aquinas, “On the Eternity of the World (De Aeternitate Mundi),” trans. Robert T. Miller, in Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham University). http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/aquinas-eternity.asp  37 48 For a comparative discussion of Thomist and Buddhist views on creation and eternality, see Perry Schmidt-Leukel (ed.), Buddhism, Christianity, and the Question of Creation: Karmic or Divine? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 167-176. 49 This is not merely a side-issue as it might appear at first glance, since the five-step Indian logical proof requires as its third part an udāharaṇa, or example from worldly life. Without a corroborating example, the argument for god’s motiveless play would not normally be accepted. For more on the role on the udāharaṇa and the “inductive” character of Indian logic, see Bimal Matilal, The Character of Logic in India (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 1-30. 50 Īśvara is derived from the verbal root √īś. Its meanings, according to Monier-Williams, include “to own, possess, be powerful, be master of, command.” It is cognate with the German word eigen (“own”). Another Sanskrit word for god, deva, is cognate with Latin deus and divas. 51 The word aiśvarya (“extraordinary power”) is derived from the word īśvara, and can also be translated as “the state of being a mighty lord.” 52 Patil, Against a Hindu God, pp. 3, 31, 58, 91, 92. 53 Along with the idea that god undergoes change, process theologians have also taken the position that the universe has an absolute beginning in time. See “Process Theism” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/ 54 On the distinction between the Greek words daimon, daimonion, and theos, for instance, see Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), pp. 207-210. 55 North American Ph.D. programs in philosophy typically demand no knowledge of non-western traditions of their students, and often have no full-time experts in Chinese, Indian, or African philosophy on their faculties. By contrast, such a Eurocentric attitude is no longer the norm in other humanities Ph.D. programs such as history and literature. 56 For instance, recent “new atheist” critiques of religion have almost completely ignored non-Abrahamic religions. Taking Buddhist and Hindu arguments into account could add nuance to such anti-theistic discourses, as well as expose their limitations insofar as they claim to critique religion tout court.