breathing and by adopting certain
postures. I have already spoken of the methods and discipline
prescribed by the Yoga and need not dwell further on the topic now.

That Buddhism has some connection with the Sankhya and Yoga has often
been noticed.[759] Some of the ideas found in the Sankhya and some of
the practices prescribed by the Yoga are clearly anterior to Gotama
and may have contributed to his mental development, but circumspection
is necessary in the use of words like Yoga, Sankhya and Vedanta. If
we take them to mean the doctrinal systems contained in certain
sutras, they are clearly all later than Buddhism. But if we assume, as
we may safely do, that the doctrine is much older than the manuals in
which we now study it, we must also remember that when we leave the
texts we are not justified in thinking of a system but merely of a
line of thought. In this sense it is clear that many ideas of the
Sankhya appear among the Jains, but the Jains know nothing of the
evolution of matter described by the Sankhya manuals and think of the
relation of the soul to matter in a more materialistic way. The notion
of the separate eternal soul was the object of the Buddha's persistent
polemics and was apparently a popular doctrine when he began
preaching. The ascetic and meditative exercises prescribed by the Yoga
were also known before his time and the Pitakas do not hide the fact
that he received instruction from two Yogis. But though he was
acquainted with the theories and practices which grew into the Yoga
and Sankhya, he did not found his religion on them for he rejected
the idea of a soul which has to be delivered and did not make
salvation dependent on the attainment of trances. If there was in his
time a systematic Sankhya philosophy explaining the nature of
suffering and the way of release, it is strange that the Pitakas
contain no criticism of it, for though to us who see these ancient
sects in perspective the resemblance of Buddhism to the Sankhya is
clear, there can be little doubt that the Buddha would have regarded
it as a most erroneous heresy, because it proposes to attain the same
objects as his own teaching but by different methods.

Sankhya ideas are not found in the oldest Upanishads, but they appear
(though not in a connected form) in those of the second stratum, such
as the Svetasvatara and Katha. It therefore seems probable, though
not proven, that the origin of these ideas is to be sought not in the
e