Prakrti

(“nature”) One of the two fundamental
principles in the Samkhya school, the
other being purusha (“person”).
Samkhya espouses an atheistic philosophical dualism, in which purusha and
prakrti—roughly, spirit and nature—are
the source of all things. Prakrti is better
conceived of as force or power rather
than a specific material object. It contains within it three different forces with
three different qualities (guna): sattva
tends toward the good, rajas towards
activity or passion, and tamas towards
darkness and decay. In the primal
prakrti these forces are in perfect equilibrium, each perfectly balancing the
others, but when prakrti’s equilibrium
is disturbed, it sets in motion a pattern
of evolution that creates both the exterior physical world and the interior
psychological world. All of these evolutes—material or psychic—have a differing balance of the three gunas,
which ultimately determines their
character as wholesome, active, or
unwholesome. For further information
see Gerald Larson and Ram Shankar
Bhattacharya (eds.), Samkhya, 1987;
and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and
Charles A. Moore (eds.), A Sourcebook in
Indian Philosophy, 1957.