Intellectual setting
The Kārikā became authoritative in a tradition later read alongside Yoga and disputed by Vedānta and Buddhist authors.
Key ideas
Dual principles
Liberation requires discriminating the plurality of conscious puruṣas from unconscious prakṛti.
Twenty-five principles
The Kārikā orders cosmology and psychology through an enumerated sequence of evolving principles.
Legacy
Its categories supplied the metaphysical vocabulary for centuries of Sāṃkhya-Yoga commentary.