Bhagavad Gita · Mahabharata Codex

Kapila

कपिल · kapila

Sage honoured as the founder of the Sankhya philosophy

Much of the Gita's vocabulary comes from the system that bears his name.

Kapila is the legendary teacher of Sankhya, the philosophy that analyses the world into conscious spirit, purusha, and unconscious nature, prakriti, with its three qualities. The Gita draws on these ideas throughout, especially in chapters 2, 13 and 14. Krishna calls him the foremost of the siddhas, the perfected beings.