A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1

More information is found in the Brāhmaṇas Ancient Indian texts containing prose explanations of the Vedas and ritual instructions., but I do not think it is worthwhile to elaborate on the fragmented ideas of this period. I could have covered the Upanishad original: "Upaniṣad"; these are the late Vedic texts that form the philosophical foundations of Hinduism. period more fully, but many works on this subject have already been published in Europe, and those who wish to go into detail will certainly consult those sources. I have, therefore, limited myself to the primary intellectual current flowing through the earlier Upanishads. Mention of other currents of thought will be provided in the second volume, in connection with other systems to which they are more closely related.

It will be noticed that my treatment of early Buddhism is somewhat inconclusive in certain places. This is largely due to the ambiguous nature of the texts themselves, which were committed to writing long after Buddha's death in the form of dialogues. In these dialogues, the precision and directness required in formal philosophy were not intended. This has led modern Buddhist scholars to propose several different theories regarding the interpretation of philosophical problems in early Buddhism. It is not always easy to decide on one interpretation over another without risking being dogmatic, and the scope of my work was also too limited to allow me to engage in very elaborate discussions of textual difficulties. However, I have still developed my own theories in many places; whether they are right or wrong will be for scholars to judge.

I did not have the space to enter into any formal debates original: "polemic", but it will be found that my interpretations of these systems differ in some cases from those offered by certain European scholars who have studied them. I leave it to those who are acquainted with the literature of the subject to decide which of us may be in the right.

I have not dealt extensively with the new school of Logic (Navya-Nyāya) of Bengal. The simple reason is that most of the contributions of this school consist of inventing technical expressions and emphasizing the necessity of strict exactitude and absolute precision in logical definitions and discussions. These are almost impossible to translate into intelligible English. I have, however, incorporated whatever important differences in philosophical viewpoints I could find within that school. Discussions of a purely technical nature could not be very productive in a work like this.

The bibliography provided for the different Indian systems in the last six chapters is not exhaustive; instead, it consists mostly of books that were actually studied or consulted while writing those chapters. Exact references to the pages of the Text continues to the next page.