1
Introduction
Indian philosophy, which includes both orthodox (astika) systems,
namely, the Nyaya, Vaishesika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva mimamsa, and Vedanta
schools of philosophy, and unorthodox (nastika) systems, such as Buddhism
and Jainism, has been concerned with various philosophical problems. Significant
among these concerns have been the nature of the world (cosmology),
the nature of reality (metaphysics), logic, the nature of knowledge
(epistemology), ethics, and religion.
2
Indian Philosophy: General considerations
SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
In relation to Western philosophical thought, Indian philosophy offers
both surprising points of affinity and illuminating differences. The differences
highlight certain fundamentally new questions that the Indian philosophers
asked. The similarities reveal that, even when philosophers in India and
the West were grappling with the same problems and sometimes even suggesting
similar theories, Indian thinkers were advancing novel formulations and
argumentations. Problems that the Indian philosophers raised for consideration,
but that their Western counterparts never did, include such matters as
the origin (utpatti) and apprehension (jnapti????? rivedi) of truth (pramanya).
Problems that the Indian philosophers for the most part ignored but that
helped shape Western philosophy include the question of whether knowledge
arises from experience or from reason and distinctions such as that between
analytic and synthetic judgments or between contingent and necessary truths.
Indian thought, therefore, provides the historian of Western philosophy
with a point of view that may supplement that gained from Western thought.
A study of Indian thought, then, reveals certain inadequacies of Western
philosophical thought and makes clear that some concepts and distinctions
may not be as inevitable as they may otherwise seem. In a similar manner,
knowledge of Western thought gained by Indian philosophers has also been
advantageous to them.
Vedic hymns, Hindu scriptures dating from the 2nd millennium
BC, are the oldest extant record from India of the process by which the
human mind makes its gods and of the deep psychological processes of mythmaking
leading to profound cosmological concepts. The Upanisads (Hindu philosophical
treatises) contain one of the first conceptions of a universal, all-pervading,
spiritual reality leading to a radical monism (absolute nondualism, or
the essential unity of matter and spirit). The Upanisads also contain early
speculations by Indian philosophers about nature, life, mind, and the human
body, not to speak of ethics and social philosophy. The classical, or orthodox,
systems (darshanas) debate, sometimes with penetrating insight and
often with a degree of repetition that can become tiresome to some, such
matters as the status of the finite individual; the distinction as well
as the relation between the body, mind, and the self; the nature of knowledge
and the types of valid knowledge; the nature and origin of truth; the types
of entities that may be said to exist; the relation of realism to idealism;
the problem of whether universals or relations are basic; and the very
important problem of moksa, or salvation--its nature and the paths leading
up to it.
3
Indian Philosophy: General considerations:
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
The various Indian philosophies contain such a diversity of views, theories,
and systems that it is almost impossible to single out characteristics
that are common to all of them. Acceptance of the authority of the Vedas
characterizes all the orthodox (astika) systems, but not the unorthodox
(nastika) systems, such as Carvaka (radical materialism), Buddhism, and
Jainism. Moreover, even when philosophers professed allegiance to the Vedas,
their allegiance did little to fetter the freedom of their speculative
ventures. On the contrary, the acceptance of the authority of the Vedas
was a convenient way for a philosopher's views to become acceptable to
the orthodox, even if a thinker introduced a wholly new idea. Thus, the
Vedas could be cited to corroborate a wide diversity of views; they were
used by the Vaishesika thinkers (i.e., those who believe in ultimate particulars,
both individual souls and atoms) as much as by the Advaita (monist) philosophers.
In most Indian philosophical systems, the acceptance of the ideal
of moksa, like allegiance to the authority of the scriptures, was only
remotely connected with the systematic doctrines that were being propounded.
Many epistemological, logical, and even metaphysical doctrines were debated
and decided on purely rational grounds that did not directly bear upon
the ideal of moksa. Only the Vedanta ("end of the Vedas") philosophy and
the Samkhya (a system that accepts a real matter and a plurality of the
individual souls) philosophy may be said to have a close relationship to
the ideal of moksa. The logical systems--Nyaya, Vaishesika, and Purva-mimamsa
-- are only very remotely related. Also, both the philosophies and other
scientific treatises, including even the Kama-sutra ("Aphorisms on Love")
and the Arthashastra ("Treatise on Material Gain"), recognized the same
ideal and professed their efficacy for achieving it.
When Indian philosophers speak of intuitive knowledge, they are concerned
with making room for it and demonstrating its possibility, with the help
of logic--and there, as far as they are concerned, the task of philosophy
ends. Indian philosophers do not seek to justify religious faith; philosophic
wisdom itself is accorded the dignity of religious truth. Theory is not
subordinated to practice, but theory itself, as theory, is regarded as
being supremely worthy and efficacious.
Three basic concepts form the cornerstone of Indian philosophical thought:
the self, or soul (atman), works (karma, or karman), and salvation
(moksa). Leaving the Carvakas aside, all Indian philosophies concern themselves
with these three concepts and their interrelations, though this is not
to say that they accept the objective validity of these concepts in precisely
the same manner. Of these, the concept of karma, signifying moral efficacy
of human actions, seems to be the most typically Indian. The concept of
atman, not altogether absent in Western thought, corresponds, in a certain
sense, to the Western concept of a transcendental or absolute spirit self--important
differences notwithstanding. The concept of moksa as the concept of the
highest ideal has likewise been one of the concerns of Western thought,
especially during the Christian Era, though it probably has never been
as important as for the Hindu mind. Most Indian philosophies assume that
moksa is possible, and the "impossibility of moksa" (anirmoksa) is regarded
as a material fallacy likely to vitiate a philosophical theory.
In addition to karma, the lack of two other concerns further differentiates
Indian philosophical thought from Western thought in general. Since the
time of the Greeks, Western thought has been concerned with mathematics,
and, in the Christian Era, with history. Neither mathematics nor history
has ever raised philosophical problems for the Indian. In the lists of
pramanas, or ways of knowing accepted by the different schools, there is
none that includes mathematical knowledge or historical knowledge. Possibly
connected with their indifference toward mathematics is the significant
fact that Indian philosophers have not developed formal logic. The theory
of the syllogism (a valid deductive argument having two premises and a
conclusion) is, however, developed, and much sophistication has been achieved
in logical theory.
Indian logic offers an instructive example of a logic of cognitions
(jnanani) rather than of abstract propositions--a logic not sundered and
kept isolated from psychology and epistemology, because it is meant to
be the logic of man's actual striving to know what is true of the world.
4
Indian Philosophy: General considerations:
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY:
Forms of argument and presentation.
There is, in relation to Western thought, a striking difference in the
manner in which Indian philosophical thinking is presented as well as in
the mode in which it historically develops. Out of the presystematic age
of the Vedic hymns and the Upanisads and many diverse philosophical ideas
current in the pre-Buddhistic era, there emerged with the rise of the age
of the sutras (aphoristic summaries of the main points of a system) a neat
classification of systems (darshanas), a classification that was never
to be contradicted and to which no further systems are added. No new school
was founded, no new darshana came into existence. But this conformism,
like conformism to the Vedas, did not check the rise of independent thinking,
new innovations, or original insights. There is, apparently, an underlying
assumption in the Indian tradition that no individual can claim to have
seen the truth for the first time and, therefore, that an individual can
only explicate, state, and defend in a new form a truth that had been seen,
stated, and defended by countless others before him: hence the tradition
of expounding one's thoughts by affiliating oneself to one of the darshanas.
If one is to be counted as a great master (acarya), one has to
write a commentary (bhasya) on the sutras of the darshana concerned,
or one must comment on one of the bhasyas and write a tika (subcommentary).
The usual order is sutra-bhasya-varttika (collection of critical notes)-tika.
At any stage, a person may introduce a new and original point of view,
but at no stage can he claim originality for himself. Not even an author
of the sutras could do that, for he was only systematizing the thoughts
and insights of countless predecessors. The development of Indian philosophical
thought has thus been able to combine, in an almost unique manner, conformity
to tradition and adventure in thinking.
5
Indian Philosophy: General considerations:
ROLES OF SACRED TEXTS, MYTHOLOGY, AND THEISM
The role of the sacred texts in the growth of Indian philosophy is different
in each of the different systems. In those systems that may be called adhyatmavidya,
or sciences of spirituality, the sacred texts play a much greater role
than they do in the logical systems (anviksikividya). In the case of the
former, Shankara, a leading Advaita Vedanta philosopher (c. 788-820), perhaps
best laid down the principles: reasoning should be allowed freedom only
as long as it does not conflict with the scriptures. In matters regarding
supersensible reality, reasoning left to itself cannot deliver certainty,
for, according to Shankara, every thesis established by reasoning may be
countered by an opposite thesis supported by equally strong, if not stronger,
reasoning. The sacred scriptures, embodying as they do the results of intuitive
experiences of seers, therefore, should be accepted as authoritative, and
reasoning should be made subordinate to them.
Whereas the sacred texts thus continued to exercise some influence
on philosophical thinking, the influence of mythology declined considerably
with the rise of the systems. The myths of creation and dissolution of
the universe persisted in the theistic systems but were transformed into
metaphors and models. With the Nyaya (problem of knowledge)-Vaishesika
(analysis of nature) systems, for example, the model of a potter making
pots determined much philosophical thinking, as did that of a magician
conjuring up tricks in the Advaita (nondualist) Vedanta. The nirukta (etymology)
of Yaska, a 5th-century-BC Sanskrit scholar, tells of various attempts
to interpret difficult Vedic mythologies: the adhidaivata (pertaining to
the deities), the aitihasika (pertaining to the tradition), the adhiyajna
(pertaining to the sacrifices), and the adhyatmika (pertaining to the spirit).
Such interpretations apparently prevailed in the Upanisads; the myths were
turned into symbols, though some of them persisted as models and metaphors.
The issue of theism vis-avis atheism, in the ordinary senses of
the English words, played an important role in Indian thought. The ancient
Indian tradition, however, classified the classical systems (darshanas)
into orthodox (astika) and unorthodox (nastika).
Astika does not mean "theistic," nor does nastika mean "atheistic."
Panini, a 5th-century-BC grammarian, stated that the former is one who
believes in a transcendent world (asti paralokah) and the latter is one
who does not believe in it (nasti paralokah). Astika may also mean one
who accepts the authority of the Vedas; nastika then means one who does
not accept that authority. Not all among the astika philosophers, however,
were theists, and even if they were, they did not all accord the same importance
to the concept of God in their systems. The Samkhya system did not involve
belief in the existence of God, without ceasing to be astika, and Yoga
(a mental-psychological-physical meditation system) made room for God not
on theoretical grounds but only on practical considerations. The Purva-Mimamsa
of Jaimini, the greatest philosopher of the Mimamsa school, posits various
deities to account for the significance of Vedic rituals but ignores, without
denying, the question of the existence of God. The Advaita Vedanta of Shankara
rejects atheism in order to prove that the world had its origin in a conscious,
spiritual being called Ishvara, or God, but in the long run regards the
concept of Ishvara as a concept of lower order that becomes negated by
a metaphysical knowledge of Brahman, the absolute, nondual reality. Only
the non-Advaita schools of Vedanta and the Nyaya-Vaishesika remain zealous
theists, and of these schools, the god of the Nyaya-Vaishesika school does
not create the eternal atoms, universals, or individual souls. For a truly
theistic conception of God, one has to look to the non-Advaita schools
of Vedanta, the Vaisnava, and the Shaiva philosophical systems. Whereas
Hindu religious life continues to be dominated by these last-mentioned
theistic systems, the philosophies went their own ways, far removed from
that religious demand.
6
Indian Philosophy: General considerations:
A GENERAL HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND
S.N. Dasgupta, a 20th-century Indian philosopher, has divided the history
of Indian philosophy into three periods: the prelogical (up to the beginning
of the Christian Era), the logical (from the beginning of the Christian
Era up to the 11th century AD), and the ultralogical (from the 11th century
to the 18th century). What Dasgupta calls the prelogical stage covers the
pre-Mauryan and the Mauryan periods (c. 321-185 BC) in Indian history.
The logical period begins roughly with the Kusanas (1st-2nd centuries AD)
and finds its highest development during the Gupta era (3rd-5th centuries
AD)
and the age of imperial Kanauj (7th century AD).
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Indian Philosophy: General considerations:
A GENERAL HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND: The prelogical
period.
In its early prelogical phase, Indian thought, freshly developing in the
Indian subcontinent, actively confronted and assimilated the diverse currents
of pre-Aryan and non-Aryan elements in the native culture that the Aryans
sought to conquer and appropriate. The marks of this confrontation are
to be noted in every facet of Indian religion and thought: in the Vedic
hymns in the form of conflicts, with varying fortunes, between the Aryans
and the non-Aryans; in the conflict between a positive attitude toward
life that is interested in making life fuller and richer and a negative
attitude emphasizing asceticism and renunciation; in the great variety
of skeptics, naturalists, determinists, indeterminists, accidentalists,
and no-soul theorists that filled the Ganges Plain; in the rise of the
heretical, unorthodox schools of Jainism and Buddhism protesting against
the Vedic religion and the Upanisadic theory of atman; and in the continuing
confrontation, mutually enriching and nourishing, that occurred between
the Brahmanic (Hindu priestly) and Buddhist logicians, epistemologists,
and dialecticians. The Aryans, however, were soon followed by a host of
foreign invaders, Greeks, Shakas and Hunas from Central Asia, Pushtans
(Pathans), Mongols, and Mughals (Muslims). Both religious thought and philosophical
discussion received continuous challenges and confrontations. The resulting
responses have a dialectical character: sometimes new ideas have been absorbed
and orthodoxy has been modified; sometimes orthodoxy has been strengthened
and codified in order to be preserved in the face of the dangers of such
confrontation; sometimes, as in the religious life of the Christian Middle
Ages, bold attempts at synthesis of ideas have been made. Nevertheless,
through all the vicissitudes of social and cultural life, Brahmanical thought
has been able to maintain a fairly strong current of continuity.
In the chaotic intellectual climate of the pre-Mauryan era, there
were skeptics (ajnanikah) who questioned the possibility of knowledge.
There were also materialists, the chief of which were the Ajivikas (deterministic
ascetics) and the Lokayatas (the name by which Carvaka doctrines--denying
the authority of the Vedas and the soul--are generally known). Furthermore,
there existed the two unorthodox schools of yadrchhavada (accidentalists)
and svabhavavada (naturalists), who rejected the supernatural. Kapila,
the legendary founder of the Samkhya school, supposedly flourished during
the 7th century BC. Pre-Mahavira Jaina ideas were already in existence
when Mahavira (flourished 6th century BC), the founder of Jainism, initiated
his reform. Gautama the Buddha (flourished 6th-5th centuries BC) apparently
was familiar with all of these intellectual ideas and was as dissatisfied
with them as with the Vedic orthodoxy. He sought to forge a new path--though
not new in all respects--that was to assure blessedness to man. Orthodoxy,
however, sought to preserve itself in a vast Kalpa- (ritual) sutra literature--with
three parts: the Shrauta-, based on shruti (revelation); the Grhya-, based
on smrti (tradition); and the Dharma-, or rules of religious law, sutras--whereas
the philosophers tried to codify their doctrines in systematic form, leading
to the rise of the philosophical sutras. Though the writing of the sutras
continued over a long period, the sutras of most of the various darshanas
probably were completed between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. Two of the
sutras appear to have been composed in the pre-Maurya period, but after
the rise of Buddhism; these works are the Mimamsasutras of Jaimini (c.
400 BC) and the Vedanta-sutras of Badarayana (c. 500-200 BC).
The Maurya period brought, for the first time, a strong centralized
state. The Greeks had been ousted, and a new self-confidence characterized
the beginning of the period. This seems to have been the period in which
the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana were initiated, though their composition
went on through several centuries before they took the forms they now have.
Manu, a legendary lawgiver, codified the Dharma-shastra; Kautilya, a minister
of King Candragupta Maurya, systematized the science of political economy
(Arthashastra); and Patanjali, an ancient author or authors, composed the
Yoga-sutras. Brahmanism tried to adjust itself to the new communities and
cultures that were admitted into its fold: new gods--or rather, old Vedic
gods that had been rejuvenated--were worshipped; the Hindu trinity of Brahma
(the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer) came into
being; and the Pashupata (Shaivite), Bhagavata (Vaisnavite), and the Tantra
(esoteric meditative) systems were initiated. The Bhagavadgita--the most
famous work of this period--symbolized the spirit of the creative synthesis
of the age. A new ideal of karma as opposed to the more ancient one of
renunciation was emphasized. Orthodox notions were reinterpreted and given
a new symbolic meaning, as, for example, the Gita does with the notion
of yajna ("sacrifice"). Already in the pre-Christian era, Buddhism had
split up into several major sects, and the foundations for the rise of
Mahayana ("Greater Vehicle") Buddhism had been laid.
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