[2] The Samkhya school of philosophy, propounded by Rishi Kapila, holds the five tanmatras, or principle ideas, as the essential, primordial causes of the five substantial elements of physical manifestation: akasha (ether), vayu (air), agni or taijasa (fire), ap (water), and prithvi (earth), in the order of their creation.
These substantial elements are the five bhutas from whose unlimited combination comes all material forms in space and time, including living bodies.
The Upanishads hold the impossibility of the generation of anything from out of nothingness, or not-being, explain the genesis from life-force or cosmic-force, but finally aver that all creation is only an illusion or appearance.
Vidyaranya explains, in Panchadasi III.27, that: The Buddhist gandharva Pancasikha calls the ultimate truth avyakta in the state of purusha, and that consciousness is due to the conglomeration of the mind-body complex and the element of cetas, the phenomena which, though mutually independent, are not the self.
[6] Prakrti (nature, or "the ultimate basis of the empirical universe") consists of three guṇas (aspects or qualities): sattva (potential consciousness), rajas (activity), and tamas (restraint).
Under the influence of purusha (pure consciousness), prakrti first evolves to produce mahat (greatness, eminence) or buddhi (definite understanding, or intelligence), then ahamkara (ego).
The nearness of purusha disturbs prakrti, alters the equilibrium of the three gunas – sattva (illumination), rajas (stimulation and dynamism) and tamas (indifference, heaviness, and inaction) – whose combination of attributes determines the nature of all derivative principles enumerated by the Samkhya system, triggers the causal chains, and facilitates evolution.
The five tanmatras—akasa associated with ether or space, sabda associated with air, sparsha associated with tejas, ap and rasa associated with kshiti, generate the paramanus in which they partly exist as tanmatravayava or trasarenu, which the Vaisheshika school and Vijnanbhiksu, in his Yoga-vartikka, state are the gunas, and that in the tanmatras there exists the specific differentiation that constitutes the tanmatras.
They have some mass and the energy and physical characteristics—such as penetrability, power of impact, radiant heat, and viscous attraction—and affect the senses after assuming the form of paramanus, or atoms, of the bhutas (the created ones), the process being called tattavantraparinama, or primary evolution.
[12] The total sattwik aspects of the five tanmatras combine to form the antah-karana or inner-instrument consisting of manas, buddhi, citta, and ahamkara.