Schools of Philosophy

Samkhya

SAHNK-yuh

Also Known As Sankhya

Citation Formats

General Reference

Philosophy Atlas. "Samkhya." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://philosophy.interactiveatlas.org/schools/samkhya.

APA Style

Philosophy Atlas. (n.d.). Samkhya. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://philosophy.interactiveatlas.org/schools/samkhya

BibTeX

@misc{philosophyatlas-samkhya,
  author = {Philosophy Atlas},
  title = {Samkhya},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://philosophy.interactiveatlas.org/schools/samkhya},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Samkhya is an atheistic, dualist school of Hindu philosophy that analyzes reality into two eternal, independent principles: purusha, unchanging conscious persons, and prakriti, the single productive material principle comprising three gunas (qualities), sattva, rajas and tamas. Liberation is achieved by recognizing the fundamental difference between the two. Its classical formulation appears in Ishvarakrishna's Samkhya-Karika, though the philosophy's roots reach back through the Upanishads and the Mahabharata.

Facts

Start Year

350 1

Dates Ishvarakrishna's Samkhya-Karika, the classical codifying text; the school's conceptual roots are older, traced by the source to the Upanishads and the Mahabharata, but without a citable founding date of their own.

Region

Indian subcontinent 1

Cross-Tradition Connections