A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 | Page 5

Salvation.........................................360 21 The Doctrine of Soul..........................................362 22 ?s'vara and Salvation.........................................363
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CHAPTER IX
M?M?@MS? PHILOSOPHY
1 A Comparative Review...........................................367 2 The M?ma@msa Literature........................................369 3 The Parata@h-prama@nya doctrine of Nyaya and the Svata@h-prama@nya doctrine of [email protected] 4 The place of Sense-organs in Perception........................375 5 Indeterminate and Determinate Perception.......................378 6 Some Ontological Problems connected with the Doctrine of Perception......................................................379 7 The Nature of Knowledge........................................382 8 The Psychology of Illusion.....................................384 9 Inference......................................................387 10 Upamana, Arthapatti...........................................391 11 S'[email protected] 12 The Prama@na of Non-perception (anupalabdhi)..................397 13 Self, Salvation, and God......................................399 14 M?ma@msa as Philosophy and Mima@msa as Ritualism..............403

CHAPTER X
THE S'A@NKARA SCHOOL OF VED?NTA
1 Comprehension of the Philosophical Issues more essential than the Dialectic of Controversy....................................406 2 The philosophical situation: a Review..........................408 3 Vedanta Literature.............................................418 4 Vedanta in [email protected] 5 Vedanta and Sa@nkara (788-820 A.D.)............................429 6 The main idea of the Vedanta philosophy........................439 7 In what sense is the world-appearance false?...................443 8 The nature of the world-appearance, phenomena..................445 9 The Definition of Aj?ana (nescience)...........................452 10 Aj?ana established by Perception and Inference................454 11 Locus and Object of Aj?ana, Aha@mkara and Anta@[email protected] 12 Anirvacyavada and the Vedanta dialectic.......................461 13 The Theory of Causation.......................................465 14 Vedanta theory of Perception and Inference....................470 15 ?tman, J?va, Is'vara, Ekaj?vavada and D@r@s@tis@r@[email protected] 16 Vedanta theory of Illusion....................................485 17 Vedanta Ethics and Vedanta Emancipation.......................489 18 Vedanta and other Indian systems..............................492
INDEX............................................................495
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The achievements of the ancient Indians in the field of philosophy are but very imperfectly known to the world at large, and it is unfortunate that the condition is no better even in India. There is a small body of Hindu scholars and ascetics living a retired life in solitude, who are well acquainted with the subject, but they do not know English and are not used to modern ways of thinking, and the idea that they ought to write books in vernaculars in order to popularize the subject does not appeal to them. Through the activity of various learned bodies and private individuals both in Europe and in India large numbers of philosophical works in Sanskrit and Pali have been published, as well as translations of a few of them, but there has been as yet little systematic attempt on the part of scholars to study them and judge their value. There are hundreds of Sanskrit works on most of the systems of Indian thought and scarcely a hundredth part of them has been translated. Indian modes of expression, entailing difficult technical philosophical terms are so different from those of European thought, that they can hardly ever be accurately translated. It is therefore very difficult for a person unacquainted with Sanskrit to understand Indian philosophical thought in its true bearing from translations. Pali is a much easier language than Sanskrit, but a knowledge of Pali is helpful in understanding only the earliest school of Buddhism, when it was in its semi-philosophical stage. Sanskrit is generally regarded as a difficult language. But no one from an acquaintance with Vedic or ordinary literary Sanskrit can have any idea of the difficulty of the logical and abstruse parts of Sanskrit philosophical literature. A man who can easily understand the Vedas. the Upani@sads, the Puranas, the Law Books and the literary works, and is also well acquainted with European philosophical thought, may find it literally impossible to understand even small portions of a work of advanced Indian logic, or the dialectical Vedanta. This is due to two reasons, the use of technical terms and of great condensation in expression, and the hidden allusions to doctrines of other systems. The
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tendency to conceiving philosophical problems in a clear and unambiguous manner is an important feature of Sanskrit thought, but from the ninth century onwards, the habit of using clear, definite, and precise expressions, began to develop in a very striking manner, and as a result of that a large number of technical terms began to be invented. These terms are seldom properly explained, and it is presupposed that the reader who wants to read the works should have a knowledge of them. Any one in olden times who took to the study of any system of philosophy, had to do so with a teacher, who explained those terms to him. The teacher himself had got it from his teacher, and he from his. There was no tendency to popularize philosophy, for the idea then prevalent was that only the chosen few who had otherwise shown their fitness, deserved to become fit students (_adhikar?_) of philosophy, under the direction of a teacher. Only those who had the grit and high moral strength to devote their whole life to the true understanding of philosophy and the rebuilding of life in accordance with the high truths of philosophy were allowed to study it.
Another difficulty which a beginner will meet is this, that sometimes the same technical terms are used in extremely different senses in different systems.