Indian Philosophy
Indian Philosophy
General name designating a plethora of more or less systematic thinking born and cultivated in the geographic region of India among the Hindus who represent an amalgamation of adventitious and indigenous peoples, but confined at first exclusively to the caste-conscious Indo-germanic conquerors of the lands of the Indus and Ganges. Its beginnings are lost in the dim past, while a distinct emergence in tangible form is demonstrable from about 1000 B.C. Hindu idiosyncrasies are responsible for our inability to date with any degree of accuracy many of the systems, schools, and philosophers, or in some cases even to refer to the latter by name. Inasmuch as memory, not writing, has been universally favored in India, an aphoristic form (cf. sutra), subtended by copious commentaries, give Indian Philosophy its distinctive appearance. The medium is Sanskrit and the dialects derived from it. There are translations in all major Asiatic and European languages. The West became familiar with it when philologists discovered during last century the importance of Sanskrit. As a type of thinking employing unfamiliar conceptions and a terminology fluctuating in meaning (cf., e.g., rasa), it is distinct from Western speculations. Several peaks have been reached in the past, yet Indian Philosophy does not cease to act fructifyingly upon the present mind in India as elsewhere. Various factions advance conflicting claims as to the value of Indian speculation, because interpretations have not as yet become standardized. Textual criticism is now making strides, but with varying successes. Among larger histories of Indian Philosophy may be mentioned those of Deussen, Das Gupta, Bel-valkar and Ranade, and Radhakrishnan.
Philosophic speculations, heavily shrouded by “pre-logical” and symbolic language, started with the poetic, ritualistic Vedas (q.v.), luxuriating in polytheism and polyanthropoism, was then fostered by the Brahman caste in treatises called Aranyakas (q.v.) and Brahmanas (q.v.) and strongly promoted by members of the ruling caste who instituted philosophic congresses in which peripatetic teachers and women participated, and of which we know through the Upanishads (q.v.). Later, the main bulk of Indian Philosophy articulated itself organically into systems forming the nucleus for such famous schools as the Mimamsa and Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga, Nyaya and Vaisesika, and those of Buddhism and Jainism (all of which see). Numerous other philosophic and quasi philosophic systems are found in the epic literature and elsewhere (cf., e.g., Shaktism, Shivaism, Trika, Vishnuism), or remain to be discovered. Much needs to be translated by competent philosophers.
All Indian doctrines orient themselves by the Vedas, accepting or rejecting their authority. In ranging from materialism to acosmism and nihilism, from physiologism to spiritualism, realism to idealism, monism to pluralism, atheism and pantheism, Hindus believe they have exhausted all possible philosophic attitudes (cf. darsana), which they feel supplement rather than exclude each other. A unnersal feature is the fusion of religion, metaphysics, ethics and psychology, due to the universal acceptance of a psycho-physicalism, further exemplified in the typical doctrines of karma and samsara (q.v.). Rigorous logic is nevertheless applied in theology where metaphvsics passes into eschatology (cf., e.g., is) and the generally accepted belief in the cyclic nature of the cosmos oscillating between srsti (“throwing out”) and pralaya (dissolution) of the absolute reality (cf. abhasa), and in psychology, where epistemology seeks practical outlets in Yoga (q.v.). With a genius for abstraction, thinkers were and are almost invariably hedonistically motivated by the desire to overcome the evils of existence in the hope of attaining liberation (cf. moksa) and everlasting bliss (cf. ananda, nirvana). — K.F.L.