---
type: Concept
bundle: sankhya-darshana
bundle_version: 0.13.1
id: sesvara-samkhya
title: Seśvara Sāṃkhya
iast: Seśvara Sāṃkhya
devanagari: सेश्वर सांख्य
description: Theistic Samkhya -- a distinct, less prominent historical strand that incorporates Ishvara as an ideal Purusha to emulate (not a creator), named-and-deferred here as a future-bundle pointer (following the v0.9 Navya-Nyaya precedent) rather than given full treatment, to keep this bundle's primary nirishvara framing clean.
darshana:
- Samkhya
tags:
- sesvara
- samkhya
- theism
- history
- deferred
not:
- term: a creationist deity comparable to theistic traditions elsewhere
  why: Even in its theistic strand, Sesvara Samkhya's Ishvara is not a creator god in the way that term functions in many other traditions -- it is conceived as a perfect, ideal Purusha to be emulated, not an agent who brings the world into being. Sesvara Samkhya still retains prakriti as the self-sufficient material cause of manifestation.
- term: the primary framing of this bundle
  why: This bundle's default and primary framing is classical nirishvara Samkhya (see nirishvara.md). Sesvara Samkhya is deliberately named-and-deferred, not built out with its own full concept apparatus, to protect the sprint's scope and keep the primary treatment doctrinally clean -- matching how nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9 named-and-deferred Navya-Nyaya.
related:
- /concepts/nirishvara.md
timestamp: '2026-07-10'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Seśvara Sāṃkhya -- सेश्वर सांख्य

**Not:** a creationist deity comparable to theistic traditions elsewhere, the primary framing of this bundle

## What It Actually Means

Seśvara Sāṃkhya is a historically distinct, less prominent strand of Sāṃkhya thought that incorporates Īśvara, understood as a perfect, ideal Puruṣa rather than a creator, into an otherwise Sāṃkhya framework. It appears associated with earlier layers of Sāṃkhya-adjacent thought and resurfaces in what scholarship calls 'Later Sāṃkhya,' after the classical school's decline past roughly the eighth century CE. This file names the strand and its distinguishing feature honestly without developing it further -- a genuinely separate future-bundle undertaking, not a variant reading of the concepts built here.

## Audience Metaphor

Seśvara Sāṃkhya is like a lesser-known regional dialect of the same language family as classical Sāṃkhya -- related, historically real, but a distinct enough system that fairly representing it needs its own dedicated treatment rather than a footnote inside the main grammar.

## Citations

1. Kapila Gītā (Bhāgavata Purāṇa 3.24-33, the Kapila-Devahūti dialogue) -- verified 2026-07-10 against gitasupersite.in (IIT Kanpur / Ministry of Culture): opens at 1.1 "devahūtir uvāca," Kapila teaching Sāṃkhya-yoga to his mother Devahūti as a theistic avatāra-figure. This is the closest thing to a primary text for the Seśvara strand named in this file -- identified but not treated in full here, per the concept-lock's deferral (a Bhāgavata-sourced, devotional Kapila-as-avatāra text is a different textual register from the Sāṃkhya-Kārikā/Sāṃkhya-Pravacana-Sūtra line this bundle's primary nirīśvara treatment draws on, and deserves its own dedicated pass, not a folded-in citation)
2. General scholarly consensus on Later Samkhya historiography
3. Deferred per the v0.13 concept-lock, following the v0.9 nyaya-vaisheshika Navya-Nyaya precedent -- named, not built
