A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 | Page 7

are doubtless many other people who hold such uninformed and
untrue beliefs, which only show their ignorance of Indian matters. It is
not necessary to say anything in order to refute these views, for what
follows will I hope show the falsity of their beliefs. If they are not
satisfied, and want to know more definitely and elaborately about the
contents of the different systems, I am afraid they will have to go to the
originals referred to in the bibliographical notices of the chapters.
There is another opinion, that the time has not yet come for an attempt
to write a history of Indian philosophy. Two different reasons are given
from two different points of view. It is said that the field of Indian

philosophy is so vast, and such a vast literature exists on each of the
systems, that it is not possible for anyone to collect his materials
directly from the original sources, before separate accounts are
prepared by specialists working in each of the particular systems. There
is some truth in this objection, but although in some of the important
systems the literature that exists is exceedingly vast, yet many of them
are more or less repetitions of the same subjects, and a judicious
selection of twenty or thirty important works on each of the systems
could certainly be made, which would give a fairly correct exposition.
In my own undertaking in this direction I have always drawn directly
from the original texts, and have always tried to collect my materials
from those sources in which they appear at their best. My space has
been very limited and I have chosen the features which appeared to me
to be the most important. I had to leave out many discussions of
difficult problems and diverse important bearings of each of the
systems to many interesting aspects of philosophy. This I hope may be
excused in a history of philosophy which does not aim at completeness.
There are indeed many defects and shortcomings, and
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these would have been much less in the case of a writer abler than the
present one. At any rate it may be hoped that the imperfections of the
present attempt will be a stimulus to those whose better and more
competent efforts will supersede it. No attempt ought to be called
impossible on account of its imperfections.
In the second place it is said that the Indians had no proper and accurate
historical records and biographies and it is therefore impossible to write
a history of Indian philosophy. This objection is also partially valid.
But this defect does not affect us so much as one would at first sight
suppose; for, though the dates of the earlier beginnings are very
obscure, yet, in later times, we are in a position to affirm some dates
and to point out priority and posteriority in the case of other thinkers.
As most of the systems developed side by side through many centuries
their mutual relations also developed, and these could be well observed.
The special nature of this development has been touched on in the

fourth chapter. Most of the systems had very early beginnings and a
continuous course of development through the succeeding centuries,
and it is not possible to take the state of the philosophy of a particular
system at a particular time and contrast it with the state of that system
at a later time; for the later state did not supersede the previous state,
but only showed a more coherent form of it, which was generally true
to the original system but was more determinate. Evolution through
history has in Western countries often brought forth the development of
more coherent types of philosophic thought, but in India, though the
types remained the same, their development through history made them
more and more coherent and determinate. Most of the parts were
probably existent in the earlier stages, but they were in an
undifferentiated state; through the criticism and conflict of the different
schools existing side by side the parts of each of the systems of thought
became more and more differentiated, determinate, and coherent. In
some cases this development has been almost imperceptible, and in
many cases the earlier forms have been lost, or so inadequately
expressed that nothing definite could be made out of them. Wherever
such a differentiation could be made in the interests of philosophy, I
have tried to do it. But I have never considered it desirable that the
philosophical interest should be subordinated to the chronological. It is
no
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doubt true that more definite chronological information would be a
very desirable thing, yet I am of opinion that the little chronological
data we have give us a fair amount of help in forming a general notion
about the