In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi set out with seventy-eight followers on foot from Sabarmati Ashram to walk 241 miles to the sea. His purpose was to make salt in defiance of a British government ban. It was not a violent act, but it would undermine the legitimacy of the British Empire. Local salt production, the British feared, would allow evasion of a salt tax considered essential to government revenues. Gandhi, on the other hand, saw the salt tax as a crime against the poor, a final proof that the British, despite repeated pledges of good faith, could not be trusted to act in the interests of common people. The British had ruled India for more than a hundred years and had no intention of letting this “jewel in the crown” of their empire pass from their hands. Gandhi, on the other hand, had taken a vow never again to return to his home at the Sabarmati Ashram until India had won self-rule. The Mahatma, who would become regarded as the father of the Indian nation and the first great Asian and African anticolonialist, insisted on “holding fast to the truth,” satyāgraha, the byword of the civil disobedience movement he was about to launch. Gandhi had preached all his adult life the virtue of “non-injury,” ahiṃsā, and had shaped his own conduct by that ideal, as had generations of Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu saints before him. Echoing ancient spiritual disciplines, he urged no violence against the British but rather “soul force.” As he walked barefoot along the hot dusty roads, hundreds of villagers joined him. After breaking the law, he was joined by thousands upon thousands all over the vast Indian subcontinent who followed his nonviolent but very effective example. British authority was shaken, and independence became inevitable.
But what is India, and what was the culture from which Gandhi gathered strength to galvanize millions to confront and best the mighty British, at the time the most powerful imperial nation on earth? Postcolonial India is now one of the great “third world” countries, but this demeaning phrase hides a long history that precedes that of the “West” by centuries. Indeed, Indians were highly literate, with institutions of law and civil society, producing masterpieces of philosophy, when the English were still barbarians. India had an enormously rich philosophical tradition when European philosophy was in its infancy. Only the Chinese can claim as long an unbroken tradition as that of the philosophy preserved in the Indian intellectual language of Sanskrit. And whereas Chinese philosophy is predominantly social, ethical, and political (at least until the advent of Buddhism, a cultural import from India), all the fundamental questions are addressed in Indian philosophy and readdressed in a dozen major schools and by hundreds and hundreds of individual writers. Philosophic works in India stretch from the mystic proclamations of ancient gurus as early as 1000 B.C.E. through the sermons of the Buddha (500 B.C.E.) and polemics of Buddhist skeptics (100 C.E. to 600) and idealists (200–900) to the enormous refinements of the New Logic (1300–1850+), with thousands of texts in-between. Just the New Logic school presents achievements in philosophy of language and cognition that are so subtle that at most a handful of modern scholars have so far achieved anything comparable to a traditional pundit’s command of the system (Skt: paṇḍita, lit. “learned”). The culture of the South Asian subcontinent—the land from the mountains of Afghanistan in the west to the Himalayas in the east and including all of what are now Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal—produced a philosophical tradition of enormous diversity, power, and profundity, from which moderns like Gandhi could draw. What the British by and large did not understand—but we shall try to—is the richness of a heritage of wisdom preserved in India through three thousand years.
The principal philosophies of India and the south Asian subcontinent include, on the one hand, religious and mystical world views oriented by an other-worldly good—“salvation,” “enlightenment,” or “liberation”—as well as less esoteric systems of analysis and speculation, on the other, systems that focus on language and concerns of day-to-day life. In the modern period, philosophy is done in the universities, where there is a global perspective and much influence from the West. There the religious and mystical systems no longer dominate Indian thought as they once did. But in earlier periods, even the more earthbound thinkers concerned primarily with issues in the philosophy of everyday life address religious and mystical concerns, if only to attack the positions of others. First we shall survey, briefly, the periods of Indian philosophy. Then we shall look at both the mystical “enlightenment theories” and the logic-minded philosophies of language and sense perception. In conclusion, I make a general statement about the relevance of the views originating in the subcontinent for our global age of today.
It is convenient to divide the history of Indian philosophy into four periods: the Vedic and Upanishadic; the epic (or early classical); the classical (proper); and the modern. It is necessary to have some appreciation of the continuity and differences of these periods to have any overview of Indian philosophic thought.
The oldest documents of Indian thought are the Veda, “Revealed Knowledge,” which comprises poems and hymns to various gods. The Veda defines much subsequent Indian culture, though it is only the first of thousands of texts. The Veda is composed in Sanskrit, and Sanskrit becomes the main language of Indian culture. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language with close affinities with Greek and Latin. (English also belongs to this family.) The Veda was composed by people who called themselves Āryans—in Sanskrit the word means “high-minded” and “noble.” Aryan tribes began to invade the Indian subcontinent as early as 1500 B.C.E. The composition of the poems and hymns that make up the Veda stretched over several generations, beginning as early as 1200 B.C.E. Four collections were made. Thus, people say there are four Vedas (occasionally three). The four as a group came to be viewed as sacred in classical Hinduism, the revealed Veda.
Some Vedic hymns and poems have philosophic themes that are important in later periods. For example, we find expressed in the Veda a “henotheism” that is key to classical Hindu theology. This is the idea that one God takes many forms, that although men and women worship several different gods and goddesses, it is really one Supreme Being they all revere. Nowadays in India, it is commonly held that the different temples and sects, and gods and goddesses—Vishnu the Protector, Krishna the Divine Man, Shiva the Destroyer with his consort Parvati, the terrible Kali with her necklace of human heads, Ganesh with his elephant’s head, Saraswati the goddess of learning—are all faces and manifestations of one supreme God. Rg Veda 1.164.46 reads: “What the sages call diversely Agni [the god of fire], Yama [Death], Mātariśvan [the lord of the winds] is just one Supreme.”
Also in the Veda are numerous “cosmogonies,” stories about creation and the origins of things. Skepticism is in a few places expressed about the possibility of such explanation. For example, one hymn tells us that we cannot discover the All-Maker, for he is hidden. But positive theories seem to win the day. “On the navel of the Unborn was set the One on whom all creatures rest,” this same hymn also says (Ṛg Veda 10.82). Another hymn states that against a backdrop of neither Being nor Nonbeing, “That One by force of heat came into being” (Ṛg Veda 10.129), and still another finds the origin of this world in a sacrifice of a cosmic Person (Ṛg Veda 10.90).
Hints of mysticism are present in the Veda. The belief that important alterations of consciousness occur through shamanic practices—involving soma, a potion with psychoactive effects, or induced by heat-boxes or sweat-houses thought to be purificational, or asceticism and early forms of yoga such as prāṇāyāma, “breath-control” —can be discerned in the texts. Several scholars allege to find a shamanism throughout Vedic culture, and this consideration is most probably a forerunner of later Indian mystical views.
The breadth and importance of certain Vedic conceptions notwithstanding, the poems of the Veda tend to be about the activities of various gods. Indra, the god of rain and thunder, helps the poet’s tribe defeat its enemies. The god Soma brings poetic inspiration, and Agni, Fire, brings the riches of heaven to earth. The Veda often presents beautifully phrased and rhythmic pleas for divine aid or riches or love, and the philosophy in them is usually only implicit.
Vedic culture extended over many centuries, approximately from 1500 to 900 or 800 B.C.E. Vedic literature is a testament to the literary sensibilities of an early civilization, one deemed by later Hindu romantics a lost golden age. But it is with the Upanishads, the “secret doctrines” of a subsequent era, that Indian philosophy becomes most decisively launched. So-called early Upanishads dominate the late ancient period, and are key to the emergence of the classical philosophies of India. Indeed, several modern Indian philosophers also champion ideas first formulated in ancient Upanishads.
In the sequence of the centuries, however, what is most important about the early Upanishads (from c. 800 to c. 300 B.C.E.) is that they represent a break with the earlier literature in the freeing of an abstract intellect from myth and ritual. The Upanishads are little concerned with the gods hymned in the Veda, but report, instead, free-thinking arguments. One Upanishad recounts the sage Yājñavalkya winning first a hundred then a thousand cows in the court of King Janaka in reward for his skill in metaphysical debate. Yājñavalkya successfully challenges the ideas of a series of opponents.
Attention to good argument is not nearly as pronounced and standardized in the Upanishads as it comes to be in the classical period; but the reasoning is sometimes sharp, and the questioning penetrating, revealing conceptual impossibilities.
The content of the Upanishads is decidedly mystical, and thus only the spiritually oriented of the classical philosophies have an unmediated dependence on the Upanishads, though all later Indian philosophies are in some way indebted to the early Upanishads. The Upanishads declare the way to knowledge or “realization” of brahman. Brahman is the Absolute, the Ground of Being, or God. And such realization of Brahman, “Brahman-knowledge” (Skt: brahma-vidyā), becomes the goal of many of the numerous Indian mystic sects that have flourished in the subcontinent.
Finally a word about the term ‘Vedānta’. The Upanishads came to be called Vedanta because they were in time appended to the Veda; literally the word in Sanskrit means “the end of the Veda.” On another interpretation, the Upanishads are Vedanta because they reveal the mystical secret of the Veda. In the classical period of Indian philosophy—more than a millennium after the composition of the oldest Upanishads—Vedānta became the name of a family of schools basing views explicitly in an interpretation of the Upanishads. In a philosophic context, to refer to one or another of these schools has come to be the primary usage. We shall discuss the classical schools of Vedanta in a subsequent section.
Beginning as early as the fifth century B.C.E., wandering minstrels and poets began the composition of what was to become the “Great Indian Epic,” the Mahābhārata. This text—of over 100,000 verses about a war and the adventures of five brothers leading one side—was compiled, edited, and amended over the next six or seven centuries until it reached the form in which we know it today. (Some changes occurred even later. Texts were copied on palm leaves that soon aged, and sometimes copiers themselves edited.) Amidst great battle scenes in the long poem are dialogues about what one should believe about God and creation. In addition, a wide range of abstract interests are taken up: many of the philosophies of the classical period proper are expressed in a discernible “seed” form in the epic.
Of special note is the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, known as the Bhagavad-Gītā. This portion of the epic is where Krishna reveals himself as “God incarnate.” The Gītā is a philosophic poem that has immense importance within Hinduism. We shall review the thought of the Gītā in the section entitled “Vedāntic theism.” The Gītā—other passages in the Great Epic as well—develop ideas of the early Upanishads, the original “Vedānta.”
Also noteworthy concerning the epic period is that a “Hindu” social order of caste and occupational mores calcifies during the time. Caste is a perplexing subject, particularly in relation to the history of the religion now called Hinduism.
Indeed, before proceeding further, we must ask, what is Hinduism, and we must give some thought to just what is meant by the term. For from one perspective, the words Hindu and Hinduism should not be used in discussing the ancient and classical Indian civilizations. Their current usage derives from a contrast of Hinduism with Islam and the coming of Muslims to India, who arrived in large numbers (and armies!) not until late in classical times. The word Hindu seems first to have been used by Arab traders of the ninth and tenth centuries to designate any person who lived near the Indus River. Hindustan came to be the Arabic word for greater India, and from Arabic to pass into wider usage. What best distinguishes Hinduism is only a certain difficult-to-define unity of culture in the Indian subcontinent before the Muslim invasion (c. 1100+, earlier in the Sind and Punjab), including but hardly limited to the social practices of caste. But for present purposes, what I shall mean by “Hinduism” may be described as an umbrella religion with two key characteristics: (a) a claim of adherence to the Veda or Vedic traditions (though there come to be other lineages and sacred texts) Vedānta) and (b) an endorsement of a certain social order including (with a few exceptions) practices of caste. So characterized, Hinduism has emerged by the time of the Great Epic.
It bears stressing that there is no one set or system of beliefs that can be said to be Hindu. Some Hindus are theists; some are not. Some believe in a personal salvation; others do not. I repeat, Hinduism is defined less by beliefs than by a social structure, including caste (although many today have rejected caste), along with reverence for the Veda. And it is the epic period when the characteristic Hindu patterns of society become established. The Great Epic reflects an intricate but settled organization of society. Marriage in the epic, for example, is in all but rare instances arranged by a boy’s or a girl’s parents, a practice that continues among Hindus today. And priests, called Brahmins, enjoy special privileges. A social hierarchy fixed by birth becomes established.
Buddhism also originated in the epic period. The Buddha lived in the sixth century B.C.E. He preached a goal of a supreme personal good, namely enlightenment, nirvāṇa, comparable to the “Brahman-knowledge” of Upanishadic philosophy. The Buddha was born Siddhārtha Gautama of the Śākya clan, a prince in India (or perhaps what is now southern Nepal), in the Gangetic valley.
The Buddha did not himself write anything. Records of his teachings and sermons were kept by his disciples. Probably in the midst of the reign of the Buddhist emperor Aśoka in the third century B.C.E., an enormous canon of literature sacred to “Southern” Buddhists was compiled (in the contemporary world, Southern Buddhists are in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia). “Northern” Buddhists (Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and so forth) recognize a distinct literature as sacred, though they do not entirely reject the teachings of the Southern Canon.
Indian Buddhism flourished for some seventeen centuries before succumbing to the intolerance of Islamic conquerors, and it matured in India for some seven or eight centuries before becoming prominent in the courts of China. Buddhist thinkers were great innovators in many areas of philosophy, including logic, theory of knowledge and justification for what we believe, the assumptions implicit in everyday speech, and causal reasoning.
Mahāvīra, who was roughly contemporary with the Buddha, founded Jainism, another religion and religious philosophy that originated in the epic period. Jainism is also concerned with “enlightenment” or “liberation.” Though not historically as prominent as some of its rivals, it has an extensive literature, and its defenders in the classical period were among the most astute philosophic minds.
Mahāvīra and the Buddha reject the validity of caste as a principle of social order. This is important as differentiating Jainism and Buddhism as “non-Hindu.”
The formation of the great schools or systems of philosophy occurs in the epic period. Unfortunately, we have little direct record of the debates and efforts of those highly creative intelligences responsible for the wide-ranging explanations—of the world and its ground, of the human in relation to nature and God, of the meaning of existence, and of details of perceptual experience and practices of everyday life—that make up the six or seven earliest of the major philosophies of classical India, the great schools. The work of the earliest system makers has become inseparable from centuries of later interpretation and advocacy. We know what we know about the formation of these schools primarily through (a) their embeddedness in epic poetry and various religious genres and (b) reconstruction based on later works that are expressly philosophic.
But within the first two centuries of the Common Era, philosophy in India makes another quantum leap, this one captured in texts expressly devoted to philosophy and exposition of the world views. The second jump centers on argument, patterns of argumentation, and the meta-issue of what counts as good and bad reasoning. Argument and defense of positions appear in earlier literature, but there is not the attention to details of reasoning—what precisely follows from what and why—that becomes the obsession by the midst of the classical age. The systems formulated as world explanations in the epic period are defended by increasingly intricate strategies.
A pivotal figure in the second revolution is the Buddhist philosopher, Nāgārjuna, who lived in the second century C.E. Nāgārjuna is bent upon establishing that our everyday world, naively assumed to be real and captured by the words we use in ordinary discourse, is not in fact real. Nāgārjuna’s fame as a philosopher derives from the penetrating questions he put to all the schools of his time, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, and indeed to much common, nonscholastic opinion. His questions were presumed to expose inadequacies in all familiar theories, with the result that (according to his followers) one would lose faith in intellectual cogitations and learn to intuit the real nature of what is, presumed to be inexpressible in words in a direct fashion. A large part of the reaction to Nāgārjuna was that advocates of positive world explanations rethought their views and concocted elaborate defenses against his attacks.
It is also around the time of Nāgārjuna that the sūtra texts of the earliest schools appear in their final forms. The Sanskrit word sūtra means literally “thread” and by extension an “aphorism” that captures in a most succinct statement a philosophic tenet. The sūtra texts of individual schools are systematic expressions of entire world views. Thus, we see that many of the great Indian schools find their earliest expression about the time of Nāgārjuna (that is, 100+ C.E.) and that their separate literatures begin to take shape. What we now see as the distinctively philosophic genres do not emerge, that is to say, until the time of the conceptual revolution centering on argument, although there are in the Upanishads, the Great Epic, and elsewhere, expressions of many central positions. The sūtra period is, then, a time of systematization organized around reasons and arguments. We shall survey the major schools of philosophy in sections to follow, many of which, in sum, are first written up as systems and expressly defended close to the time of Nāgārjuna.
There are no gaps in the “professional” philosophy expressed in Sanskrit that begins this early in the Common Era and extends into the modern period, though in the last two centuries Sanskrit has waned as a medium for original philosophic efforts. Schools do have their moments, their times of flourishing and periods of decline, but Indian philosophy as a whole continually advances, that is, becomes increasingly refined as later thinkers profit from the work of their predecessors. Two or three individuals may exist whose brilliance is so outstanding that it is legitimate to say that none of their followers surpass them, perhaps the subtle Buddhist Idealist of the seventh century, Dharmakīrti, or the great Advaita Vedāntin, Śaṅkara, of the eighth century, or the astute New Logician, Gaṅgeśa, of the fourteenth. But philosophic reasoning and reflection as a whole can only be said to advance—both in overall sophistication of argument and in the volume and scope of new texts that are innovative, though it may be argued that for sheer creativity the early classical period of the Buddha, Mahāvīra, and the Great Epic remains unsurpassed. The number of titles grows almost exponentially from the time of Nāgārjuna, reflecting advances in argument and expanse of philosophic concern. There is one unbroken tradition of philosophy in Sanskrit, and later thinkers studied and responded to the arguments of those who came before them.
Buddhist philosophers have their heyday in the earlier centuries, but a sharp decline in Buddhist textual productivity was seen in the ninth and tenth centuries. Original Buddhist philosophic writing in Sanskrit practically disappeared by the fourteenth. Some scholars say that the Buddhists’ thunder was stolen by the school of Advaita Vedānta, which came into prominence with Śaṅkara in the eighth century and which remains prominent to this day. This school is also referred to as “Illusionism” and in its argumentative pose took over many of the ploys of Nāgārjuna. In the late classical period, theistic Vedānta is also a major movement, and followers of Śaṅkara often dispute over how to interpret the Upanishads. The Vedāntic theists have a loose alliance with a school known as Logic. Debates between the Logicians, who are realists about the objects of experience, and the Illusionists become prominent in the late classical age. (See the glossary of Sanskrit terms in appendix B for brief characterizations of the important classical schools.) And several non-Vedantic Hindu philosophies also emerge (Śaivite, Vaiṣṇavite, and Tantric).
Although thought transcends culture, philosophy is not immune from political events and social upheaval and change. We can easily imagine—indeed there is considerable evidence—that from the earliest times, the philosophers of the Indian subcontinent were largely dependent for their daily subsistence upon the munificence of kings and princes. Perhaps gifts were given from wealthy merchants to the philosophers’ monastic orders, many of the great writers having lived as monks. Success in live debates held in a king’s court could mean the flourishing of a school, with money for time to reflect and to support students, whereas defeat could mean not just intellectual embarrassment but loss of livelihood and the loss of young people’s keeping the philosophy current. Thus, the Islamic conquest of much of northern India—which occurred gradually, in waves, from the eleventh century to the height of Moghul rule in the fifteenth—affected the philosophy of the subcontinent. Admittedly, certain authors, such as the great Logician Gaṅgeśa (c. 1325), seem unaware of a Muslim presence, so thoroughly absorbed are they in the Sanskrit tradition. Yet many historians believe that the coming of Islam played a large role in the demise of Indian Buddhism, as the conquest meant the closing of Buddhist universities and a general disappearance of funds.
Indian theistic philosophies, by contrast, prospered under some of the Muslim rulers. Syncretisms emerged, and new Sanskrit theistic works focused on texts of popular religion as well as on the Upanishads. In South India, Sanskrit traditions continued little disturbed. But even there, things changed with the coming of the Europeans and in particular the British.
The British came to India late in the seventeenth century to make money in trade. They found a Moghul empire in decline along with general political fragmentation, and their greed was soon matched by a lust for power. During the eighteenth century through various deals, subterfuge, and superior technology, they consolidated a large sphere of influence, with entire principalities under their direct administration and with others administered indirectly (a weak Maharaja paid respect in title only). The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are the periods of the British “Raj.” In 1832, it was decreed that henceforth the medium of instruction in schools receiving government funds would be English exclusively; instruction in Persian (the language of the Moghuls) or in Sanskrit would not be supported.
Much traditional education was unaffected by this. Many Sanskrit pundits belonged to healthy traditions that relied on the wealth of native merchants and other prosperous non-Englishmen. But the culture of the Indian subcontinent changed, heavily influenced by the West. Conflicts of culture became manifest in many ways, from styles of dress and diet to language, education, and religion. Indians went to universities in England, and there emerged a new class of intellectuals and philosophers, with Indians expressing their views in English. Many great figures of modern Indian thought—even those reviving traditional views such as Ram Mohan Roy, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and Gandhi—wrote primarily in English.
India became independent in 1947 (the new nation smaller by the simultaneous creation of the Muslim state Pakistan by partition), but the legacy of the British survives, particularly in education. Though in primary and secondary schools the various regional vernaculars—Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, and others—are the principal media of instruction, India has a university system like that of the West, with English predominant. And the professionals who staff the departments of philosophy espouse the whole range of modern (and postmodern!) positions current in Europe and the United States. But the classical traditions have lived on, especially with traditional pundits, and the classical schools appear to be having now an increased influence within academia. In the last section, I address some of the issues of this interaction, as well as the question of the contemporary relevance of the ancient and classical views.
Now we turn to the individual philosophies of ancient and classical India. Some of these differ from one another broadly by approach and interest. Presuppositions vary widely, too—amidst intricate commonalities framing issues and intellectual movements. The philosophy of India is complex and multidimensional.
But no issue is more important throughout the long history of philosophy than the nature and possibility of the individual’s own best interest, his and her summum bonum. The question of what is the “supreme personal good” (Skt: parama-puruṣaartha ), in the phrase philosophers used to discuss competing positions, could not be ignored. Nirvana, enlightenment, liberation, supreme bliss, a life in heaven with the gods—these were among a variety of mystical and religious conceptions competing for people’s allegiance. Whole philosophies, world views, grew up around the conceptions of personal salvation. I call philosophies of this type, “enlightenment theories.” These theories are invariably implemented by teachings about self-transformative practices, a path to enlightenment, a yoga—that is, a “way” (Skt: marga).
Then in distinction to the enlightenment theories are philosophic efforts devoted to trying to understand activities of everyday life. Some philosophers attack problems apart from religious interests: “What are the fundamental types of things and the ways that we know them? How can we use language to mean what we say?” These are some of the questions asked.
The enlightenment theories also have views on matters to which their own mystical orientation is irrelevant: Great advances are made in logic, for instance, among Buddhist theorists. But the Buddhists and all who are engaged with the personal goal try above all to articulate what makes enlightenment possible. Thus, they see as central to the philosopher’s task the question of what is ultimately real as well as the relation of Nirvana, Brahman, or God to things of the everyday world. Since a mystical orientation is somewhat more pronounced in the older period than in the philosophy of the later classical age, we shall look first at enlightenment theories—specifically Yoga and “Analysis”—that are first expressed in the Great Epic and other early protophilosophic literature and are systematized much later in expressly philosophic texts. (“Analysis” is better known by its Sanskrit name, Sāṃkhya.)
Yoga—understood as in its common anglicized usage as meditation and various somatic practices such as asanas—was current in India at least from the time of the Great Indian Epic, and probably as early as the eighth century B.C.E. The Sanskrit word yoga occurs roughly in this sense in some of the early Upanishads (for example, Kaṭha 6.11.). Practices aimed at a transformation of consciousness may indeed predate the invasion of the tribes who spoke Sanskrit, the Aryans, as some archeological evidence suggests. But systems of philosophy that explain how such a transformation is possible appeared later. These schools took it as their task to relate the idea of the personal transformation to a way of looking at the world. The Yoga philosophy and the Sāṃkhya, “Analysis,” are schools or world views of this type. They are similar in their overall outlook, and we shall review them together, focusing primarily—but rather arbitrarily—on the Yoga school.
The Yoga-sūtra is the central Yoga text. It is part handbook on practices of yoga (a “how-to book”), part mystic psychology, and part metaphysics. The teachings about yogic practices may be the most important dimension of the text. It is after all much more “yoga” understood as a system of physical exercise than it is “Yoga” (with a capital ‘Y’) as a philosophy that the word is best known throughout the world today. But it is the metaphysics, and secondarily the psychological conceptions—the abstract ideas of the text—that give the Yoga philosophy defined by or rooted in this sūtra text its distinctness and unity. The Yoga school does not speak for all yoga proponents, all the advocates and practitioners. The Yoga school is one prominent philosophy associated with yogic practices. There are others, for example, all Buddhist schools—because all Buddhism incorporates practices mentioned in the Yogasūtra into its practical side—as well as Jainism and Vedanta.
The Yoga world view is a dualism of nature and individual consciousness. The individual achieves enlightenment when the individual consciousness breaks away from nature to stand alone, resplendent in a self-absorbed trance. This dualistic view centered on an idea of an individual supreme good in turn shapes practice and psychological concepts expressed in the Yoga-sūtra and other texts.
There are four distinct types of yogic practice mentioned in the Yoga-sūtra: effort at emotional disengagement from the world; concentration on “God” as the archetypal liberated yogin; discipline of purifying action, including the study of philosophy; and somatic discipline consisting of asanas, or stretching exercises, breath control, and immobile meditation and closed-eyed trance. Important psychological notions are associated with these practices, “subliminal impulses” (Skt: vāsanā or karma) that need to be controlled, for example. “Mental silence”—the quieting of the inner voice of thought and emotion—is the most important of these psychological notions, and yoga is defined early in the text simply as mental silence (Skt: cittavṛtti-nirodha, lit. “cessation of the fluctuations of mentality”). Nevertheless, it is above all the dualism of nature and consciousness that unifies the ideas of Yoga as a systematic philosophy.
According to this world view, in reality there is no connection between consciousness and the world. There are many consciousnesses, but they are related to one another only through a general illusion of embodiment or involvement with nature. In “liberation” (Skt: mukti), a person comes to see himself as how he really is, namely, a pure consciousness self-rapt, blissful in himself, and unaware of anything other than himself alone. (We could equally say herself—sex is not a real feature of a person but a false identification with nature like everything concerning bodies.) The Yoga-sūtra calls this state “independence” as well as “liberation,” an independence from all the appearances of the world.
Presumably, the notion of individuals’ existing entirely absorbed in a state of self-bliss was meant to explain how a certain mystic trance could occur. But as a world explanation, the view does not work, for what explains the original illusion? Further, how is it possible that we are ever at any time aware of objects in nature, and how is it that we can even seem to act in the world? Consciousness and nature are supposed to be in reality absolutely distinct. Also, if consciousness is so wonderful, as the text attests, how can it be so stupid as to lose itself in nature? These were common criticisms voiced by proponents of other classical schools. The Yoga school in later writings makes some effort to solve these problems. But it fails, it seems. The school loses prominence as philosophy progresses in classical times. Yoga practices, in contrast, such as asanas and breath control, proliferate through all religious sects.
The Sāṃkhya world view is similar to Yoga, with a likewise conception of a supreme personal good. But “Sāṃkhya” means “Analysis,” and the method endorsed in this school to realize the supreme personal good is analysis of the principles of nature—twenty-four dominant “principles” (or “realities,” Skt: tattva ) are identified. In this way, an individual cognizer would be better able to disengage from nature in a mystic trance. Such intellectual discipline is thought to aid a psychological process of wholesale disidentification. Listed are “gross elements” (air, fire, water, etc.), “subtle elements,” and organs of action and knowledge. Also presented is an overlaying system of natural “qualities,” which are “strands” or “threads” (Skt: guṇa) of which all nature is composed: a strand of light; activity and passion; and inertia and darkness. The Sāṃkhya system practically disappears from the philosophic scene over time, apparently as its “analysis” of nature was felt to be inadequate.
Despite the conceptual failings in both the Yoga and the Sāṃkhya systems—which their classical adversaries came to take for granted, losing interest—the practices that motivate these views were almost universally viewed as valuable. Let me make a rather bold comparison. The Greek philosopher Socrates is not remembered as much for his particular opinions as for teaching us to question whatever view. He teaches the value of keeping one’s distance from ideas for which there are no good reasons apparent, and he establishes tough scrutiny of claims as a philosophic norm. The methods intellectualized in Yoga—and in Sāṃkhya, too—are methods of disidentification and, so to say, psychological distancing, more radical than the intellectual distancing taught by Socrates. Supposedly, we can refuse to identify with thoughts that “cross our minds” but also with our own sense experience, emotions, memories, and subconscient dispositions to action. There can be no doubt that yogic practices bring increased personal power within each of these spheres, great self-control, and a similar leverage over psychological movements as Socrates taught that we can achieve over opinions we have inherited. Surely these are important matters, however badly they may have been handled conceptually by the Yoga and Sāṃkhya philosophies.
Others conceived of a “supreme personal good” differently. The Buddha said it was nirvāṇa, an “extinction” or “blowing out” of suffering and desire.
The Buddha lived in the sixth century B.C.E. in the Gangetic valley in what is now Nepal. He was born Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Śākya clan. As a young man, the “Buddha-to-be” led a life of pleasure and enjoyment in his father’s palace, according to a popular version of his life. His father encouraged him in this because of a prophesy that the young Siddhārtha would become a religious mendicant. The prince’s father tried to protect him from the sight of anything unpleasant or evil. Once when his father was away from the palace, the prince ventured out into the world accompanied by an advisor. He encountered first a diseased person, then an old person wrinkled and decrepit, and then a corpse. Inquiring about each of these “three evils” in turn, he was told that everyone was subject to them. Then the prince declared his former life of pleasure meaningless and thus set out to find the source of evil and the power to uproot it. After an arduous ordeal of personal inspection, meditation, and transformation of desire, he became “awakened,” “enlightened” (Skt: buddha), and began a long career of teaching and directing disciples to the transformation that he had experienced.
At the center of the teaching are the “Four Noble Truths”: All is suffering; suffering has a cause, namely desire (or attachment); by uprooting the cause, there is an end to suffering in the bliss of Nirvana; and the way to this is the Eightfold Noble Path, right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation. The Four Noble Truths are the central teaching of Early Buddhism, but—as we shall see both in this and in later sections—Buddhist philosophy expands in many directions.
As mentioned earlier, Buddhism divides into Southern and Northern traditions with distinct literatures. The oldest sections of the Southern Canon include what scholars consider to be actual sermons of the Buddha. The term Early Buddhism is used to refer to the doctrines proclaimed in these sermons and in the Southern Canon generally.
In addition to the Four Noble Truths, important doctrines proclaimed in the Southern Canon include the following: the causal interdependence of things, the insubstantiality and phenomenal nature of things as mere groups of qualities or states of consciousness (Skt: dharma), and the insubstantiality of the self or soul—according cording to the Buddha, there is “no soul.” The Buddha seems to have seen false identification with the body, mind, emotions, and desires as the prime obstacle to spiritual accomplishment. Much thought and elaboration in later years were directed to an analysis of the apparent person as a “bundle” of states or qualities.
But more than any metaphysical teaching, the Buddha of Early Buddhism emphasizes the practice of meditation and compassion. Indeed, anti-intellectualism becomes a prominent theme in later Mahāyāna Buddhist writing, in particular with Nāgārjuna.
Vardhamāna Mahāvīra, the founder of Jainism, lived in the sixth century B.C.E.; he was roughly contemporary with the Buddha. Mahāvīra is also known as “the Jina,” the Victor (over passion). Some evidence suggests that Mahāvīra’s followers merged with another group to establish the religion of the Jina. Jains and Buddhists disavow all explicit allegiance to Vedic traditions and do not practice caste.
Like the scriptures of Early Buddhism, the Jain Canon is immense. Most Jain teachings are similarly focused on a path to enlightenment, with a variety of theories put forth to support practice concepts.
Of all the early Indian systems organized around a mystical summum bonum, Jain philosophy is the most renowned for an ethical commitment to the value of life. Jains are vegetarians; moreover, Jain monks have been known to wear masks so that their breathing will not cause injury to insects. Regarding even vegetable life as sentient, some Jain monks have starved themselves to death to prevent injury to others. Noninjury (Skt: ahiṃsā), an ideal popularized in modern times by Mahatma Gandhi, as was noted, was propagated in ancient and classical India foremost by Jains. Noninjury was also taught by Buddhists, whose views on many counts are close to the Jains’.
The noninjury teaching finds articulate justification in early Jain texts. Noninjury is defended by an idea of equality in soul or self. Everything that is conscious hates injury, and so anyone who realizes that others are like oneself in being conscious and hating all forms of personal injury should also realize that refraining from committing injury to others should be practiced at all times. Noninjury is a universally prescribed moral dictum. But in the details of ethical precepts, Jain monks and nuns, on the one hand, and laypersons, on the other, are said to have duties that differ. Not only asceticism but prescribed “reflections”—for example, on the impermanence of things, human helplessness, and the difficulty of enlightenment—mark the life of nuns and monks. Householders desist from dishonest business practices, lying, illicit sexual relations, and so forth, but do not aspire for “liberation” in this lifetime. As with Buddhist and other early Indian enlightenment theories, rebirth is presupposed. Jains believe that only the enlightened are liberated, that is, not reborn.
Jain thinkers are partners to the philosophical discussions of all periods of the classical civilization. Early Jain cosmology, however, stands by itself. A testament to human imaginative capacities that work from the premise that everything is alive, the cosmology had little influence outside the Jain community. (Fantastical beings are proposed, beings made of water, of earth, and so on.) But in metaphysics, later Jain thinkers became especially famous throughout the philosophic world for propagating two engaging metaphilosophical positions, “non-absolutism” and “maybe-ism.” The two may be seen as an extension of the noninjury ethic into the area of philosophic polemics. Jains declare that no metaphysical claim should be taken as absolutely true. Every view represents only one perspective among many. Further, every view should be regarded as right maybe. There is at least a grain of truth in every position, and the modality of the maybe directs the intelligence to find and appreciate what is correct in what an opponent is saying. Indeed, though not all are Jains, there are no absolute opponents, none that need simply to be intellectually vanquished with their views discarded. All have a perspective, and none has the entire truth.
Such attitudes made some Jain writers great reporters of philosophic debates, presenting the positions of all parties fairly. Sometimes within other schools, opponents’ positions are misrepresented and ridiculed, but never in Jain texts. Jains are among the best historians of Indian philosophy.
A common criticism of the Jain metaphysics of nonabsolutism found among philosophers of other schools is that the position is self-contradictory. “Nonabsolutism” is proposed as absolutely true. Its content, however, denies what it asserts, that is, when it is applied to itself. No self-contradictory position should be espoused, say the critics of the Jain philosophy. Jain defenders respond that “nonabsolutism” is not one position among rivals, but rather an overview about each of the views that take themselves to be contenders for metaphysical truth.
As mentioned, what becomes Northern Buddhism, a movement known as Mahāyāna, should not be said to reject the teachings of the Southern Canon—the division is not really a schism. Nevertheless, there are doctrinal differences between Northern and Southern Buddhists. Notably, a split occurred early in Buddhism concerning how the goal of Buddhist practice should be conceived. According to a school known as Theravāda—and Southern Buddhism in general—the “saint” (Skt: arhat) loses all individual personality in a universal impersonal, unconceptualizable bliss and awareness that somehow (how cannot be said) underlies all appearance. By contrast, according to Mahāyāna, a personal salvation without regard for others is eschewed. No one has reached the truest supreme good until every sentient being is freed from suffering and spiritual ignorance. This core Mahāyāna doctrine is reflected in a well-known vow repeated each day by the devout. The Buddha, Mahāyānins say, could have lost himself in a total Nirvana, but refused and turned back out of compassion to help the world.
Early Buddhist writings also indicate disputes about how to understand the aggregate of “elements” or “qualities” that, according to the teachings of the Buddha, make up an apparent person and are to be transcended to achieve the supreme good. A doctrine of no real self (Skt: anātman) appears in the sermon portion of the Southern Canon, and some Buddhist thinkers believed that the components of the false appearance of self could be identified and analyzed, as we noted in the section on Early Buddhism. Thus, they attempted to provide comprehensive lists of these components, that is, of qualities and their groupings. They also engaged in an analysis of phenomena—somewhat in the fashion of Sāṃkhya but with more sophistication and often with great effort to refrain from viewing things as elements existing apart from consciousness.
But it was pretty widely recognized, if not always explicitly acknowledged, that the Buddha himself had considered similar intellectual activity counterproductive. In famous fables, he asks, “When your house is on fire, is it wise to discourse on the nature of fire? No, it is wise to put the fire out. When shot with an arrow, would you discourse on the nature of arrows, or pull the arrow out?” The implication is that we are ablaze with suffering, and we need not discourse on its nature; rather, we should do something about it, principally meditate and act with compassion, to put the suffering out.
Nāgārjuna, the founder of Buddhist Mystic Skepticism, or Mādhyamika (the school of the “Middle Way” or “in balance”), was a reformer. He found the intellectualizing tendencies of his contemporaries—with their lists of qualities and aggregates that make up the apparent person—to stray from the practical end that he saw as the true message of the Buddha. Nāgārjuna identifies paradoxes, contradictions, and impossibilities in the positions of the quarreling schools of Buddhist interpretation and, indeed, in non-Buddhist positions. He was apparently motivated in this by a sense of the goal of the Buddhist path as a practical end to which thought and mind have no direct access.
Nāgārjuna’s fame as a philosopher rests with the difficult questions he raised, and not only for Buddhist theorists but for many others as well. As I noted in reviewing the philosophic history of the subcontinent, Nāgārjuna seems to have sparked an intellectual revolution by being such a brilliant anti-intellectual, drawing attention to subtle problems of conception.
For example, against those of the (Hindu) “Logic” school—who proposed that in debate one should argue on the basis of justification, viewed by the Logicians as sense experience, inferential reasoning, analogical identification, and the testimony of experts—Nāgārjuna asks, “What justifies the justifiers?” He examines several answers, but finds none satisfactory. He suggests that none could be satisfactory because each answer raises the question of what justifies it. The Logician upholder of justifiers is thus faced with an infinite regress, with a task of justifying justifiers that cannot be accomplished. Nāgārjuna concludes here—and with other insoluble problems he purports to reveal—that one should give up such futile intellectualizing and aim at a mystic transformation instead.
Some moderns try to see in Nāgārjuna’s attacks on others’ views a champion of “relativism” as understood in our “postmodern” times. But despite the fervor of his anti-intellectualist streak, Nāgārjuna remains first and foremost a Buddhist, intent on a mystic self-transformation. What is paramount to Nāgārjuna is to develop the six virtues or “perfections” (Skt: paramitā), of the living enlightened, the Bodhisattva.
In India at Nāgārjuna’s time, the two principal branches of later Buddhism were not, apparently, so well defined. Nevertheless, Nagarjuna does espouse the doctrine of the Bodhisattva, and this doctrine marks the chief point of difference between the tradition of the North and that of the South. As noted, in Early Buddhism and Southern Buddhism generally, the goal is to achieve a personal salvation in Nirvana. But for Nagarjuna, it was problematic whether an individual could achieve a complete extinction of personality, for everything is interconnected. One can read Nagarjuna as trying to say this without saying it directly: The interdependence of everything has to be experientially realized. All things arise in interdependence, and no one is entirely enlightened until everyone is.
Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamika school was prominent for many centuries from the beginning of the classical period. His followers continued to provoke responses within the philosophies of other camps by penetrating questioning.
Despite Nāgārjuna’s efforts and the efforts of his disciples, Buddhist speculation does not cease. Within Mahāyāna, the most noteworthy example of renewed theorizing is the school of Buddhist Idealism, called Yogācāra. The motivation of this development seems to be at least in part the following (religious) response to Nāgārjuna. Not every element of our ordinary life should be considered illusory or intellectually problematic, because then there would be no possibility of a living Nirvana experience. But the Buddha’s testimony that there is such a possibility is reliable. If this possibility is to be real for everyone, as the Buddha teaches, then some element of our ordinary existence may serve as transition to Nirvana experience. The Buddhist Idealists claim that this element is pure, immediate awareness (Skt: vijñapti ). The Buddhist Idealists accepted the dialectic of Nāgārjuna only to an extent: An imputation of reality and externality to objects apart from experience is considered problematic, but not immediate awareness itself.
The Buddhist Idealists also try to show how our ordinary experience can be explained. Thus, they take up the project of Buddhist “theodicy” to explain why we do not ordinarily experience Nirvana. They apparently feel that we should so experience—Nirvāṇa is seen as the “natural state”—and propound a doctrine of “Mind alone.” This doctrine is taken to mean that immediate awareness is by nature nothing but the luminous Nirvāṇic meditation, with an affective or emotional side blissful, free of desire, and full of compassion all as exemplified in the life of the Buddha. The problem is then to explain not this original and healthy state but the deviation from it. To this end, the Buddhist Idealists posit a beginningless “storehouse consciousness” (Skt: ālayavijñāna) consisting of numberless subliminal urges and memory impressions. The arising of these urges deforms awareness yet accounts for our ordinary experience.
The Buddhist Idealists face a difficulty in the apparent intersubjectivity of the world. We seem to see the same trees, flowers, and furniture of external objects. Now accounting for this by a common “storehouse” may work, but it seems a cumbersome conception. Would it not be better, simpler, that is—the rival Hindu school of Logic asks—to admit that there are objects independent of consciousness, external to us, causing our perceptions of them, and real even when no one is perceiving them? Such a realist conception seems closed to the Buddhists because of their religious commitments as Mahāyānins: Everyone and everything is interconnected, and someday we shall all pass together into the final Bliss.
Some later Buddhist Idealists put the storehouse conception on a back burner to focus on questions of logic and theory of knowledge and justification. These Buddhist Idealists are sometimes called Buddhist Logicians. The most eminent among them were Dharmakīrti (ca. 600) and his predecessor, Dignaga (ca. 450).
Dignāga in his late work turns his attention almost exclusively to questions about how we know anything; the means whereby we know what we know (we might say) are justified in our beliefs. He argues that there are only two “means to true belief,” or “justifiers” (Skt: pramāṇa), namely sensation and inference. He then defines and elaborates at length their nature.
Dignāga’s most lasting fame is due to his formalization of rules of inference. He is a key figure in the development overall of Indian logic. On sensation, Dignaga remains more closely allied to the Buddhist Idealist camp than does his successor, Dharmakīrti. Although Dignāga claims that his epistemological theory holds up whether one regards the objects known as “external” or “internal,” he takes a phenomenalist view of illusion: false perceptual beliefs (such as, “This is a snake,” when in reality the object is a rope) do not result from error in sensation but from error in intellectual judgment. Illusions are not perceptual errors but rather misinterpretations of data infallibly presented. This view has a clear affinity with other Buddhist Idealist tenets: All immediate awareness is in its true nature the Supreme Reality such as was discovered by the Buddha in Nirvana experience. It is then the perversions of thought (misinterpretation) and desire that prevent us from realizing this. Dignāga defines sensation as “free from conceptualization” and views it as always in itself reliable.
Dharmakīrti takes a different view: sensation is not always reliable. In some circumstances—such as having hepatitis and seeing white objects as yellow, or when traveling on a ship and seeing stationary objects as moving—sense presentations are not to be trusted, and the judgments that would express them (e.g. “That is yellow”) are false. Thus, some illusions occur not because of misinterpretation but because of something wrong in the causal nexus that results in sensation (having hepatitis, for instance). Dharmakīrti is, like Dignaga, concerned chiefly with issues of epistemology and logic, but he incorporates these areas of theory all within an understanding of what a real object is to which causal notions are central.
Anything real has “causal efficacy,” while something unreal, say the horn of a hare, has none. The purpose of philosophy, says Dharmakīrti, is to investigate human cognition because successful action is invariably preceded by right cognition. If we successfully milk Bessie and make butter, we have rightly cognized that Bessie is a milkcow and that milk churned turns into butter, and so on. Right cognition, or “knowledge,” arises within a causal nexus that includes both an object’s effect on us (for example, our sight of Bessie) and our action in the world (for example, milking her).
Dharmakīrti views certain types of inference as having causal underpinnings. When, for example, we reason from the sight of smoke rising from a hill that there must be a fire there, the inference we make is based on the causal relation of smoke and fire. Similarly, when we do not see an elephant in the room and infer that none is present, we are reasoning based on a causal relation: Were an elephant nearby, we would necessarily perceive it (so long as we were not blind). There are also inferences based on natural classifications, such as “Bessie is a cow and therefore an animal.” But much meaningful inferential knowledge—“meaningful” because it helps us get what we want—is based on relations of effect and cause.
There are many additional positions taken by Dharmakīrti and several arguments that hold great interest to philosophers of all places and times: his “proof” that all things are momentary, for example. This Buddhist Idealist is one of the great minds of Indian civilization and of all civilization, for that matter. But let us close our introductory study by asking how is it that Dharmakīrti is to be counted a Buddhist philosopher and not simply as a philosopher tout court. What is it about his epistemology and causal understanding of objects that ties in with Buddhist doctrines? Is his religious faith separate from his philosophic reflection?
The answer lies in Dharmakīrti’s understanding of the Four Noble Truths. Dharmakīrti views a human being as an active creature, one who acts to attain objects of desire. The Second Noble Truth is that suffering has its origin in desire, and the third is that the uprooting of desire is the end of suffering and the attainment of Nirvana. When Dharmakīrti analyzes right cognition and talks about effects and causes within the world, he is presupposing a worldly perspective conditioned by desire and suffering. Thus, his position is mediated by his further contention that it is possible to transform desire back into a pristine state of compassion, as we follow the Buddhist Way. That transformation would eliminate the essential precondition of worldly activity, namely desire for certain results of action. Thus, Dharmakīrti’s upholding of a possible suspension of desire-provoked activity gives his philosophy “two tiers,” one world oriented and one not. Then in a brilliant twist of unification, his final defense of both is their reputed usefulness for attaining what should be a person’s number one desire, namely, the experience of Nirvana, the supreme good.
Vedānta is a school of philosophy with distinct branches. Followers of one brand of Vedānta quarrel with followers of another. But from a distance, the branches fall into two principal groups: Advaita monism; and Upanishadic theism, or Vedāntic theism, as we shall say here. Recall from the earlier discussion that the term vedānta is originally an epithet for the Upanishads, and it comes later to be the name of the schools that expressly embrace Upanishadic views.
The most significant difference of interpretation among Vedāntins is whether the “Absolute” (brahman) declared in the Upanishads should be understood as “God” or not. The theists see a Creator loosing forth a real world and sustaining it by an act of will at every moment. Advaita Vedāntins, in contrast, see Brahman as transcendent to worldly form and individuation: the world—with regard to Brahman—is a “cosmic illusion” (Skt: māyā).
Several other issues relate to this difference in conception of Brahman, preeminently how the supreme personal good is to be understood. For Vedantins in general, this is brahma-vidyā, knowledge or realization of Brahman, but the term does not have the same meaning for Advaitins and theists. Advaitins, or “Non-Dualists” (Skt: advaita, nondualism), hold that the “self” (Skt: ātman) of everyone is in reality nothing other than Brahman and that in the mystical “knowledge of Brahman,” there is known only the One, the Sole True Existent, whose nature is perfect Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. Vedāntic theists, by contrast, hold that the individual and God are in many ways distinct. In the “supreme knowledge,” the Absolute cannot be known in precisely the fashion that God knows God, for an individual knower is not entirely identical with his or her Creator and Ground.
Advaita philosophers try to make hay out of the occurrence of perceptual illusion, such as the appearance of a rope as a snake and mother-of-pearl as silver. They argue that in the mystical realization of Brahman, ordinary perceptions of the world are sublated, that is, revealed as illusory. There is nothing real but Brahman, and insofar as one perceives things as distinct or separate from Brahman, one perceives illusorily. One follows a “path”—according to some, a “yoga”—to transcend ordinary perceptions and to live in the true consciousness that reveals Brahman. The Upanishadic declarations that Brahman is the Real, the “One without a second,” inspire a person to follow a path to make this an immediate experience (Skt: brahmasākṣātkāra, to be immediately Brahman-aware).
In other words, Advaitins argue that illusions and corrections of illusions show the possibility that knowledge of Brahman could sublate the world and reveal it to be illusory, as the correcting perception of a rope shows the snake to be illusory. The Upanishads teach us that this is not merely a possibility but a fact.
In trying to assess the Advaita claims, one must observe the depth of the sublation argument. The Western philosopher Descartes shows this when he asks, “Is there any presentation of experience that could not possibly be deceptive?” He decides that a powerful demon could be deceiving him with each and every one, The Advaitins argue similarly that all the presentations of experience can be sublated, that is, revealed to be illusory like a false presentation of a snake in the correcting experience of a rope. And like Descartes, they hold that only “self-consciousness” is unsublatable. But unlike Descartes, they believe that I-consciousness is really nothing but Brahman-consciousness and that when the full splendor of this dawns, one is liberated, saved, having achieved the supreme personal good.
It is not made clear, however, that Brahman-awareness could not itself be sublated, at least as the Advaitins understand “sublation” (Skt: bādha). Central to the Advaita polemic seems to be an understanding of the cognition that corrects a perceptual illusion as simply a cognition that follows the illusory presentation with a different content (e.g., of a rope instead of a snake). So why could not Brahman-cognition be followed by a fuller experience of the world? (Variations on this objection date all the way back to the Sermons of the Buddha.) Why could not a mystic “come back” to the world after a trance of self-absorption? Would not this show the world to be real?
The history of Advaita Vedānta is not confined, however, to only the sublation argument. Advaita Vedānta presents in fact a surprisingly rich and resilient tradition, making a variety of contributions to the march of Indian philosophy, including three or four important subschools and in the later classical period, the emergence of a dialectical Advaita. Advaitin skeptics rehearse Nāgārjuna-like arguments against the realist school of Logic. We shall review the Advaita dialectic in the subsequent section devoted to the Logic world view.
Vedāntins who interpret the Upanishads theistically—as teaching that Brahman is “God,” the Creator and Supreme Knower of a real world—share several positions with Advaitins. (The terms brahman, the “Absolute,” and īśvara, “God,” are used by the theists interchangeably.) One important commonality that distinguishes Vedāntic theism from Western varieties is a doctrine of Brahman as the world’s material cause. Not positively every theistic Vedāntin holds this, but most do. “From nothing, comes nothing,” they reason (following Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 6.2.1–2). Therefore in creating the world, Brahman creates out of Brahman’s own substance: The world is a “self-manifestation” of God. From the perspective of “stuff,” the Advaitins are right, the Vedāntic theists say: There is nothing other than Brahman. But Brahman has two natures: first, God as God is in God’s self, which is God’s necessary and essential nature; and second, God as God self-manifests in the world, “names and forms” (Skt: nāma-rūpa) that are real but contingent and inessential. Brahman is the “Inner Controller,” who indwells everything finite and sustains and directs the world from within, but who in a supreme unmanifest “self-existence” is infinite and transcendent of all names and forms.
These views are taken to be revealed in the Upanishads, and other theistic texts are often said simply to reiterate the vision. The history of theistic Vedānta is not only long and complex, but a variety of texts come to be as important as the Upanishads. For a prime example, a portion of the Great Epic known as the Bhagavad-Gītā comes to be, within some theistic sects, as important as or more important than the Upanishads.
One crisis that is depicted in the Gītā is principally ethical, but the solution that is proposed by Krishna, an “incarnation of God” (Skt: avatāra), is a “spiritual discipline,” or yoga. This is consummated as a marriage between highest self-interest and ethical duty that is typical of almost all Indian mysticism (a similar point could be made with regard to Buddhists or Jains, and Advaitins as well): One has to behave ethically to advance along a path to the summum bonum; it is claimed that, by advancing along the path, one’s behavior naturally becomes more ethical. The Buddhists say that by exercising compassion, one advances toward enlightenment, and by advancing toward enlightenment, one cannot help but act out of compassion. Krishna teaches Arjuna, his interlocutor in the Gītā, that by striving to be aware of God he will be led to do the right thing in battle, and by doing the right thing, he will progress toward “God-awareness.”
Also in the Gītā, the Indian theist theory of the avatāra is put forth, which is the idea of a special “Divine Descent” into finite form to uphold a moral order and to direct the world in the right ways. The Avatar is an embodied individual conscious of being a manifestation of God and sharing in God’s awareness, power, and native delight. In a sense, all individuals can be Avatars; maintaining a living awareness of God, sharing in God’s bliss, and so forth are the goals of the person or the supreme personal good as conceived by Vedāntic theists. But the difference between the proper Avatars and you and me is that Krishna, Rama, Jesus (according to some modern eclectics), and others never lose the awareness of their essential divinity, whereas we have to do yoga or follow a guru to overcome our “spiritual ignorance” (Skt: avidyā).
Later theists teach that the way to mystical realization is not meditation or the more ascetic practices associated with the Yoga-sūtra and Buddhist disciplines, but rather par excellence something much simpler, namely bhakti, “love” and “devotion” to God. The bhakti teaching goes back to the Gītā, but it becomes the rage in much later centuries, flowering in the late classical age. The whole world is God’s play (Skt: līlā), say the theistic Vedāntins; and through love of God and worship and devotion, we are eventually to realize this and find in every experience the embrace of a Divine Lover. Vedāntic theists from the classical age into the modern conceive of the supreme personal good as a spiritual act of lovemaking. The twentieth-century “neo-Vedāntin” Aurobindo, writing in English, says, “To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created” (Sri Aurobindo, “Thoughts and Aphorisms,” Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 17 [Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1973], p. 129).
Vedāntic theists of course face many difficult conceptual problems, some of which are similar to those faced by theists in the West—for example, the problem of evil. It is reported that the Buddha himself rejected the notion of God precisely because of clear examples of evil—pain, suffering, and death. Could God have prevented evil? Then God is not worthy of bhakti. Does God wish to prevent evil but is incapable of doing so? Then God does not seem to be “God” as conceived in the Upanishads. There would be a greater power.
Within Vedāntic camps, one finds a classical response that is elaborated in different fashions. Even the Absolutist view known as Advaita, introduced earlier, accepts a core answer probably because Advaitins take seriously, or pretty seriously, the theistic teachings of certain Hindu scriptures. Scripture says that Brahman is the source of the world, and so since Brahman is unsullied value and bliss, whence evil? How could evil have its source in what is inherently its opposite? The Advaita explanation distinguishes between Brahman as “without” and “with qualities” (or “attributes”). Brahman-without-qualities is supremely real; Brahman-with-qualities is talked about in scripture as an aid to meditation. Scripture is like a patient teacher (guru), and it is difficult to appreciate that Brahman as supremely real has no qualities. Scripture talks about God, that is, Brahman-with-qualities, as a preparatory to the austere truth: Nothing but Brahman-without-qualities is real. God, too, is part of a cosmic illusion, due to spiritual ignorance (avidyā). Nevertheless, for the purpose of understanding scripture, we may offer the following explanation of evil.
Brahman-with-qualities is God, the Lord and Creator. How then could the Lord, who is perfect—much as in the Western conception—allow evil in the world? The answer is that God creates justly, according to karma. This word, which means “action,” comes to be shorthand for a psychological theory, meaning something like “habit.” Every action that one performs creates a psychological disposition (including a feeling or desire), that is to say, a habit, to do that type of action again. Many such dispositions of the transmigrating soul are so ingrained that they carry over into and determine the course of a soul’s next incarnation. To an extent, virtue and vice are their own reward (one’s personality is formed by habits, a thief becomes a thief; a saint, a saint; and so on), but also God’s universe is just. There is moral payback for bad karma, for bad habits, that is to say, for bad patterns of behavior. Much of what we see as natural evil is this payback, for which, then, the Lord cannot be blamed.
But at the beginning of the universe, there was no good or bad karma. At the time of creation, the Lord could not have acted with respect to the merit of souls. The Advaitin answers that there is no beginning with respect to “spiritual ignorance,” or māyā. The deep question is, then, why is there avidyā, spiritual ignorance? If Brahman is the supreme reality, our own true self, why is it that we are unenlightened? The Advaitin does not explain this.
Vedāntic theists adapt the karma strategy to their own outlooks. For example, some say that without evil we would not be motivated to find and know God in a supreme mystical experience. Second, it is said that at bottom it is just God who suffers evil since we are all “manifestations” of God and since God is the one ultimate “Self’ of all experience. Brahman permits suffering and pain just for the kick of it, so to say, as part of the “play” that is Brahman’s dawdling in the finite. In other words, evil adds increased diversity to God’s “inessential” experience, that is, to God’s experience as the likes of you and me. Third, it is argued that without evil or at least its possibility, this world would not be possible. Finitude (or some other intrinsic feature of the ways things are with us here) entails evil, it is claimed, and this world is valuable so Brahman creates it anyway. Buddhists, in particular, find these responses inadequate, and their attacks are carried on by Advaita Vedāntins in the late classical age.
Counterbalancing the difficulties of explaining God and God’s relation to the world satisfactorily, Vedāntic theists urge that there are the plain facts of mystical experience revealing God. But of course, Buddhists claim to found their teachings on the revelations of a mystical experience, and Advaitins (and Jains and others) do too. So can an “argument from mystical experience” show the theists to be correct? —or the Buddhists? or the Advaitins? and so on? This is a complex question about which there is much disagreement. But it is noteworthy how prominent such an argument is in the Indian context—with variations according to what is believed revealed.
Dominant in many regions and periods of civilization in the Indian subcontinent and along many dimensions of culture were conservative Brahmins, the priests and intellectuals of Hinduism, or, more precisely, of Brahminism, the high-brow religion of Vedic interpretation and defense of caste. What we call today Hinduism had and still has little unity; worship of popular gods and goddesses was socially at a great remove from the exegetical enterprises of high-caste priests. These did not view the lower classes as fit to read their sacred texts. As noted, Jains and Buddhists rejected caste as well as the Brahmins’ Veda, although many Jain and Buddhist philosophers were converts from the Brahminical caste.
Proponents of the classical school Mīmāṃsā, “Exegesis,” were conservatives among the conservative. The Exegetes were most concerned with the proper interpretation of the texts they viewed as revealed, the Veda and its appendages. They were particularly concerned with questions of dharma, “right practice,” which they understood chiefly as the performance of certain rituals. Exegetes were also interested in the philosophical topics debated in rival schools, and they worked out theories of their own on many issues. This expansion occurs over several centuries, paralleling the development of Buddhist and Jain philosophy and of other less conservative Hindu schools.
The Exegetes’ root text is the Mīmāṃsā-sūtra (ca. 100 C.E.). There the broad lines of an approach to the Vedic revelation are laid down. This text itself does not contain much philosophy other than theorizing about linguistic meaning. But in some commentaries on it, there are discourses on the self and self-awareness, the reality of the external world, justification and canons of debate and argument, rebirth, and the possibility of liberation and enlightenment—the issues and concerns of philosophers.
The Exegetes are realists: The objects of consciousness exist independently of our perceptions. Thus, they are motivated to direct arguments against Buddhist positions in particular. On several issues, they are allied with the Logic school.
But the philosophic activity notwithstanding, even the greatest theorists—such as Kumārila (ca. 650) and his student Prabhākara (ca. 700)—were preoccupied with interpretations of the right way to perform certain rituals. Apparently, there were hot disputes about some of these issues. One legend suggests that Prabhākara was asked to declare on the occasion of his teacher’s death whether the cremation rites should be performed according to his teacher’s views or his own. When he replied his teacher’s, Kumārila, who had been feigning death out of frustration in not convincing his prime pupil, rose up to declare victory. Prabhakara replied that he was not defeated so long as the two of them were still alive.
Ceremonies at a cremation or burial were performed by Brahmins for which they were paid in cash or barter. The Brahmins enjoyed other social privileges as well and were beneficiaries (along with two other “twice born” or high castes) of the caste system. Caste is perpetrated by marriage, and strict regulations exist on who can marry whom. Caste is fixed at birth, and it cannot be altered. In rebirth, one is likely to change station according to the merit and demerit accumulated in this and past lifetimes. This picture is propagated by the Exegetes in the classical period. Much of it is challenged in sects of modern Hinduism, but there remain conservative circles where caste distinctions are still observed as sacred law.
As we have seen, many of the classical philosophers of the subcontinent declare a “supreme personal good” to be the central conception of their world views; however, few authors explicitly say that their philosophy is nonteleological in this sense. But with the Cārvāka school—the “Materialist Skeptics”—opposition to all the teleological views is most vividly expressed. This school is also known as Lokāyata, literally “those attached to the ways of the world.”
Cārvāka philosophers were materialists in the sense that they believed that physical matter is the only reality. They maintained that we can know only what we perceive through our senses, which is limited to physical things. Thus, they were motivated to attack the religious positions prominent in their time. However, the concepts of nonphysical things like the soul were not their primary target, but rather the validity of inference. The Materialists rejected inference, and for this reason they were commonly referred to as skeptics.
To elaborate, the Cārvākas attack ideas of an immortal soul, rebirth, God, a mystical enlightenment or liberation, other notions, by first arguing that inferential reasoning cannot establish anything. That is to say, by showing that inference is unreliable whatever the topic, these skeptics would strip away all excesses of belief beyond the simple facts of pleasure and pain and the body. The body exists in an inexplicable material world.
Opponents retort that the Cārvāka attack is self-defeating, for it utilizes the very processes of thinking that it aims to show invalid. The Cārvāka response is that the burden of proof is on the other side.
Cārvāka philosophers provoke innovations in the theories of their rivals; they assume a historical position like that of Nāgārjuna and his Mādhyamika followers, although the Cārvākas hold no truck with the discipline of the Middle Way. The Cārvākas are also good at poking fun at the pious and the religiously pretentious. Ridicule is in their hands as effective a tool as argument. For example, Cārvākas are reported asking why if, as the Brahmins and Exegetes asserted, the soul of the beast slain in a religious sacrifice goes to heaven, does the sacrificer not offer up his own father?
Only one complete text belongs to this school, but certain quotations are attributed to Cārvākas within the works of philosophers opposed to the skeptics’ views. In fact, Cārvākas are so often mentioned that it seems right to suppose that there were many more of their persuasion than the fact of the survival of a single text would suggest by itself. In ancient and classical times, manuscripts were written on dried palm leaves, and they had to be recopied about every century or so. That Cārvāka texts have been lost may be due to the nature of Cārvāka positions: With skeptical arguments and antireligious views, copying texts perhaps did not seem so imperative as with a great guru’s proclaiming a “supreme personal good!”
Our introductory survey of classical Indian philosophies closes with the views of Atomism (Vaiśeṣika) and Logic (Nyāya). The two schools were unified by Udayana (c. 1000) as “Nyāya,” though Naiyāyikas (“Logicians”) before him accepted, at least implicitly, key Vaiśeṣika positions. Here I shall consider the unified school and follow the practice, post-Udayana, of referring to it simply as Logic (Nyaya).
Nyaya is in effect a “non-teleological” world view, in the sense explained earlier, although at least lip service is usually paid to the importance of various summum bonum conceptions—with particular ideas of “enlightenment” and “liberation” explicitly embraced. One should not think that even the late Logicians are opposed to the various traditional views of enlightenment or liberation; rather, they are not anxious to dispute them, being absorbed in other concerns. However, in some instances, a firm commitment to a realism about the objects of perception (including “qualities” and “class concepts,” as will be explained) does set the Logicians in evident opposition to and controversy with philosophers of mystic camps. Debate between Logicians and dialectical Advaita Vedāntins becomes heated in the late classical age.
According to scholars with a sympathy for current analytic philosophy, the Nyaya system is the outstanding achievement of Indian classical reflection. It clearly has much coalescence with the logic, epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of language that dominated the Anglo-American tradition for almost the entire twentieth century. Some scholars see these coalescences as a refutation of the relativism and antirationalism of those who see Western traditions as incurably ethnocentric. Such judgments are likely premature. Nevertheless, with its amazing breadth of doctrine, its longevity (more than eighteen centuries), and its increasing refinement over the years—including innovations in logic, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of language, rational theology, rhetoric and informal logic—Logic—Atomism (Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika) is indeed a multidimensional world view, a system unparalleled, I confess I agree, for its completeness in its native context (only Dharmakīrti’s Buddhist Logic and late Mīmāṃsā show nearly the same breadth and refinement). But it is also the school that (except among professional scholars of Indian systems) is probably the least well-known.
The Vaiśeṣika-sūtra is the earliest text (ca. 100 C.E.) though the Nyāya-sūtra is also quite old (ca. 150). On both these “root texts,” extensive commentaries were written until late in the classical age. The commentaries reflect the movements and concerns of a wide range of philosophic efforts of their individual times: Dignāga’s innovations in logic, Dharmakīrti’s criterion for the real, Mimāṃsaka views, and so on. Though, as indicated, we shall look at the Logicians’ positions as they had evolved by the middle and late periods, from Udayana (c. 1000) and later, let me stress some of these have not changed much from the original articulations of the Nyāya-sūtra or Vaiśeṣikasūtra. Other positions are greatly refined or are simply absent from those early texts.
Let us begin with the more distinctively Vaiśeṣika side of the combined school, namely, the theory of “categories” or “types of things to which words refer” (Skt: padārtha). When we talk about things, refer to them, point them out, describe them, and say what they are like, two questions come to mind: what in general are we talking about? and what are the ways available to us to say anything about them at all? The answer—which becomes greatly elaborated—is that most generally there seem to be three basic types of existent (although later, I visit four more for a total of seven): first, substances, of which there are two types—noncomposite substances, such as the atoms of fire, earth, water, and so on, and composite substances, such as rocks, trees, houses, and individuals we know like Devadatta; second, qualities, such as color, size, weight, shape, and so on, which although they always appear in qualifying particular substances, they do seem to be a radically different kind of thing (the Buddhists vehemently dispute this position); and, third, motions, such as moving straight ahead, upward, and so on. Though motions are like qualities in that they appear in individual substances, they have causal effects that qualities by themselves do not have, bringing about conjunctions and disjunctions, for example.
Now these three may be the most general types of things that we talk about. But there must be other categories as well, things that do not “exist” in the way substances (etc.) do, but which certainly do work for us when we say anything. For example, when we say “This pot is blue,” the pot is a substance, and blue is a quality. But what does “is” mean? Another way of asking the same question is to say, “What relates the blue to the pot?” The answer the realist Logicians give is that it is (fourth) “inherence” (samavāya), a special ontic glue that binds qualities to substances, likewise motions, and we may even say that substances inhere in other substances. A piece of cloth inheres in its threads, and the threads in what make them up, all the way down to the atoms. So substances also inhere in substances. The pile of rice inheres in the individual grains.
But that’s not all we talk about or implicitly assume when we say certain things. We can also discuss (fifth) universals, otherwise we would not be able to identify the categories identified so far (more precisely, the first three), since we are dealing in generalities. When we talk about substances as a padārtha (category) we are talking about substances in general, not just a collection of pots, pieces of cloth, and so on. Also, when we say “Bessie is a cow,” “Flossie is a cow,” and so on, we have a recurrent experience of cowness, the factor common to Bessie and Flossie. Indeed, “Bessie is a cow” is equivalent in meaning to “Bessie has cowness.” (The abstraction generators in Sanskrit, chiefly the suffixes ‘-tva’ and ‘-tā’, have the same meaning as ‘-ness’ and ‘-hood’ in English. They are used in analysis to identify the generality of an expression.) Universals inhere in substances, qualities, and motions, but not in inherence or in universals; otherwise, there would be an “infinite regress” (Skt: anavasthā). The topic of universals, or class concepts, is much debated, particularly with Buddhists. The Logicians are not platonists—there are no uninstanced universals dwelling apart from the individuals that are their instances—but universals are a separate category and thus, in a sense, a separate real. They are directly given in perception insofar as their instances are perceived—according to Logicians of all periods. Indeed, we come to know individuals only through the general repeatable characteristics they present. Substances, qualities, and motions are in contrast individuals. So is inherence, according to most; some very late Logicians see inherence as infinitely particular, different with every two relata related.
Another basic category is (sixth) the “individualizer” (Skt: viśeṣa). No scholar has given a convincing justification for the inclusion of this category, and not even the classical defenders of the system pay much attention to it. In the earliest texts, individualizers seem to be considered simply as correlate to universals: thus together a species-genus relation. Later, the reason for positing individualizers as a separate type of thing appears to be that otherwise individual atoms all of the same type (water, for example) would be identical; maybe a better translation of ‘viśeṣa’ would be “numeralizer” (the difficult problem of how atoms were thought of in relation to time and space is involved in this question of interpretation).
Finally, we need the (seventh) category of “absence,” or “negative facts,” for how else would it be possible to deny anything? When we say that there is not an elephant in the room, what do we mean except that there is an absence of an elephant here? We do cognize a thing’s not being somewhere (my glasses’ not being on the table, for instance), and this category explains how it is possible that we do, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika claims.
With this “ontology” as background, many Logicians concern themselves principally with issues in theory of knowledge. They identify and elaborate four “justifiers,” or “sources of true belief” (Skt: pramāṇa): perception, inference, analogical acquisition of vocabulary, and expert testimony. Knowledge is generated, and it is exclusively by these processes that we know anything.
Perception as a knowledge source is the broad rubric under which Naiyāyikas group a wide range of cognitive processes, all involving current sensory connection. There are different types of connection depending on the nature of the object perceived, but in all cases a perceptual process has to be working normally, with no defects, to deserve pramāṇa status. Defects are multifarious, including environmental features (poor lighting) and sensory functioning (defective eyes). Perception as a causal process includes, we should note, the object cognized as standing appropriately in the causal chain or complex of causal factors that results in its being perceived.
Perceptual awarenesses are causally continuous with physical realities, excepting perceptions of psychological properties such as pleasures and pains that are mediated by a posited “internal (sensory) organ” (Skt: manas). External objects are perceived through a sense-organ/object connection that varies according to what is perceived and sensory modality (sight, hearing, and so on).
No position is more central in the late period than the nature and scope of inference. But since the issues and discussion are quite technical, we must be content with only a broad outline. According to Nyāya, any good inference must have premises that are themselves justified. The Logicians do not distinguish between a formally “valid” deductive argument (which may or may not contain premises known to be false) and deductive arguments that are “cogent” (with no unjustified premises and no errors in the logic). Though the theory abstracts from all actual employment, it is held that any good inference has to have a conclusion about the real world—a conclusion, that is, that should be believed because the premises should be believed (for whatever different reasons) and because a rule of inference is correctly used. Here is an example of inference:
It is a mistake to say, as some modern scholars have said, that this logic is only “inductive.” No, it is deductive, in the sense that the premises guarantee the conclusion—albeit the premises are arrived at inductively. Indeed, the crucial premise in an inference is that expressing a “pervasion” (Skt: vyāpti) between two things x and y—in the example, premise two, which is known through wide experience. Pervasions or concomitances are of different sorts, but they obtain in nature, such as that between the smokey and the fiery. Regarding precisely how these relations that underpin inferences are known, the Logicians develop a “logic of discovery” concerning causal relations and thus defend views about universals being directly perceived.
The stock example of analogical acquisition of vocabulary is a person P being told that a gavaya (a kind of water buffalo) is like a cow except in certain specified respects. When P encounters the creature, he is able to identify it and use its conventional name through the analogical understanding he acquired. Some dispute exists over whether this “source of knowledge” is reducible to the other three, but let us move on to other topics central to the Realist tribe.
Expert testimony is defended as irreducible to perception and inference (unlike, for example, personal memory). An example would be that when I tell you something you did not before know (e.g., that I have a dog named Malone), you know it through my testimony insofar as I am an āpta, an “authority” on the subject. The question is then what in general makes a person an expert. The answer usually given is that it is first knowing and second having no reason to lie or mislead.
The Advaitin Śrīharṣa (c. 1150)—and other Advaitins later on—abuse the Logician understanding of a “cognition,” a theory crucial to much of the entire Nyāya philosophy. One line of his criticism goes like this:
You Logicians say that each and every cognition, even the simplest, has a so-called logical structure, which can be analyzed. So when I point to the pot and say “pot,” this is, according to you, just shorthand for “This thing presented in perception has potness.” And you would go on to argue that the particular is given in perception, and the “potness” as well. But what about the “has”? You say it reflects inherence—potness inheres in the pot—but what a peculiar notion! What is its source? Not perception: no person not already confused by your theories ever says he perceives an inherence. If you say ‘inference,’ that won’t do, because . . . [and Śrīharṣa gives seven or eight refutations matching what he takes to be all the available avenues of response]. And there are other problems as well. What are you going to say when I inquire about the meaning of your reply, “This potness-exhibiting-thing has inherence as the exhibitor,” what could the “has” mean here? And if you tell me, I’ll have another question about the “has” of your reply (or about whatever the connector you’ll try to use). I am sorry, but there is no way I (or anyone else!) can understand what you insist on trying to say. Probably it would be best that you not try to say it; keep quiet with your convoluted cogitations and contemplate Brahman instead.
The “New Logicians”—that is, as explained in the history section, those advocates of the combined Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika school beginning with Gaṅgeśa (c. 1300) who rethink all the old theories under the force of Śrīharṣa’s onslaught—make here an ingenious response. They admit that with any cognition, something is necessarily unsaid and implicit only. What is cognized is able to be verbalized except in this part. And even this can by reflection be made explicit and can be expressed in a corresponding statement one level up. But the cognition and statement whereby it would be expressed would have another element that would necessarily be only implicit. “We Logicians will play this game as long as you like. There may be a regress that in principle cannot have an end. But so what? By reflection, we can identify all that in any particular case we need to explain what we mean.” (Gadādhara in the seventeenth century is especially good in elaborating this answer.) Of course, it is dubious that Śrīharṣa would be convinced. Surely several Advaitin followers of his are unswayed.
Finally, the Logicians at times devote themselves to trying to prove the existence of God. For the most part, or at least in most periods, these philosophers are theists, with much in common with the Vedāntic theists already discussed. But “mystical experience” and the revelations of the Upanishads are not so much the Logicians’ avowed reasons for their theistic views, unlike what the theistic Vedāntins claim; rather, the Logicians say that it is “rational” considerations that ground their belief in God—such as, “How do you explain otherwise the fact that the world appears designed?” Moreover, the Logician theists seem more “inclusivist” than their Vedāntic counterparts. For example, the great Udayana opens a long work devoted exclusively to the case for God with the claim that what each and every individual sect sees as the Supreme (Brahman with the Advaitins; the unattached “pure conscious being” with the Yogins; the Buddha in his Bliss with the Bauddhas; and so on) is nothing other than the One God whose existence he, on other grounds, is about to prove. Many of the arguments advanced are similar to arguments found in Western rational theology, but some are peculiar to the Indian context.
Another rich area of Nyāya reflection is rhetoric, including informal logic (with lists of commonly committed fallacies and analyses of why they are erroneous) along with the presuppositions of conversation and debate. Here the Logicians pre-curse much recent work in pragmatics and philosophy of language. But with this, as with several other areas as well that are addressed by proponents of the system, I must refer readers to the guide to further reading at the end of this chapter.
A leading twentieth-century Anglo-American philosopher writes, “The history of philosophy is the lingua franca which makes communication between philosophers, at least of different points of view, possible” (Wilfred Sellars, Science and Metaphysics [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968], p. 1). He most likely has in mind the traditions of philosophy preserved in Greek, Latin, German, French, and English and perhaps two or three other languages, all Western. But of course, the history of philosophy is much broader, as this volume amply attests. Still the point is a good one. Contemporary philosophy uses the ideas wrought in the past as the currency of present business, as the tools of ongoing discussion and debate. Even someone’s advancing an entirely original position on an issue that is itself new perforce draws on her understanding of the history of philosophy to express it and to argue in its defense. A much more diverse tool kit containing implements forged in a world history will be carried by philosophy professionals of the future. Philosophy has a world history, and it is inevitable that it will become better known. At present, the prime relevance of the ancient and classical philosophies of the South Asian subcontinent is probably just their part in the broad history of philosophy worldwide. Many academics in the United States and Europe and around the globe simply have not been exposed to traditions of critical thought, argument, and speculation, except those preserved in the languages of the West. In the future, I expect that the Indian schools will be studied the world over and that the issues and positions that exercised the great minds of the Indian past will be valued resources for continuing research and debate.
So standing as we are at the doorway of a much larger mansion and storehouse of treasures of philosophic effort than anyone anywhere imagined a century ago, I hesitate now to specify areas and achievements within the long and complex history of views and arguments first expressed in Sanskrit that hold out special relevance for current issues and contemporary philosophic inquiry. The deep channels of the history of philosophy are formed by the responses of new generations of philosophers to earlier work, that is to say, by the value, the insights and errors, the relevance and irrelevance that fresh thought finds in the philosophy it inherits. It is not for me to dictate what in the Indian traditions is really valuable and what not for current philosophy of language, for example, but rather for the experts in that field once they become apprised of the achievements in the area that are preserved in Sanskrit. The same holds for other individual specializations of contemporary philosophy where others may speak with far more authority than I do. My hope is that the experts can be impressed to look at the available translations of Sanskrit works that seem relevant. Of course, this process does not move quickly. And it is probably necessary that Sanskrit and other non-Western traditions of philosophy become part of the standard graduate and undergraduate curriculum so that future experts will by their basic training know where there are veins to mine. Also, further efforts must be made of translation and exposition of the great works of the past. Efforts not just of scholarship but of defense and championing some of these views are probably necessary before the classical philosophies of the Indian subcontinent can take their rightful place in the global arena. Aristotle would not be widely read except for those who, agreeing with much that he held, championed his views in languages other than Greek in extremely different circumstances and times.
With the religious and mystical philosophies of ancient and classical India, there are additional factors to consider and other forces at work. Practices of yoga and spiritual disciplines pioneered in India have proliferated at amazing rates in the last few decades throughout the world. It is said that more than ten million Americans practise yoga (Time, April 2001). And within the subcontinent, traditional religion—with its mix of myth, superstition, and profound philosophy—continues to flourish. But perhaps the leaders of what has been called a “Hindu Renaissance” are right: The Hindu emphasis on an “inner life” can bear the brunt of the ax of modernity’s pruning away superstitions of the past. The extraordinary personal powers and psychological discoveries apparently made possible through yoga and meditation wear on their face great allure, and they could conceivably appear more attractive as there becomes less and less to discover about the laws and makeup of the physical world.
This does not mean that the classical philosophies that champion and defend mysticism have to be accepted in their classical forms. No, like all views, their motivations have to be rethought, their claims revised, and their concerns widened and supplemented by other areas of philosophy and science. But revamped and redressed for a new age with wider horizons, the philosophies of a “supreme personal good”—or the new philosophies that draw upon them without flying any of the old flags—may well have a important place in the future philosophical world. Hopefully, the day of dogmatic advocacy is passing. But not everything in traditional religion and spirituality need depend on an unthinking allegiance to survive. For example, in modern Japan, Kitaro Nishida, Keiji Nishitani, Masao Abe and others of the “Kyoto School” have brought to new life in a world of global ideas and the triumph of science, Zen and views, perspectives, and practices forged in traditions of Zen. In India, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) and Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) are two “folk Vedantins,” who have no strict allegiance to a school of classical philosophy, though they draw on the Upanishads and other works influenced by yogic mysticism and India’s spiritual heritage. Neither was a professional academic, but especially with Aurobindo there is great depth of integration of modern ideas within a philosophy that is oriented by a perceived value of mystic pursuits. Then there are also a host of modern academics who present variations on and sophisticated defenses of Advaita. So long as yoga and meditative practices flourish, philosophies will flourish that connect them intellectually with other areas of life and human concern. Yoga and concrete “self-transformative” practices give these views resilience, and they motivate fresh efforts to keep them current at least in broad outline. No one has been able to explain consciousness and all that is on the “inner” side of life on strictly materialist suppositions. Thus, there is room for continuing efforts to achieve an adequate “spiritual” world view. Surely the ideas hammered out in the ancient and classical Indian traditions would be important resources here.
This guide is written for native speakers of English within North America. Closely similar sounds are suggested. A more precise pronunciation guide may be found in any of the many Sanskrit readers and grammars—for example, William Dwight Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar (Cambridge, Mass: 1889), pp. 10–26.
Common Vowels (omitting two that rarely occur):
| a | like ‘o’ in ‘mother’ |
| ā | like ‘a’ in ‘father’ |
| i | like ‘ey’ in ‘pulley’ |
| ī | exactly like Sanskrit ‘i’ except voiced longer: like ‘ee’ in ‘treed’ |
| u | like ‘oo’ in ‘moon’ |
| u | same ‘oo’ sound voiced longer |
| r | like ‘rea’ in ‘really’, while turning the tip of the tongue up to touch the palate (You may not be able to pronounce this correctly.) |
| e | like ‘a’ in ‘crazy’ |
| ai | like ‘i’ in ‘mine’ |
| o | like ‘o’ in ‘go’ |
| au | like ‘ow’ in ‘cow’ |
Semivowels*
| y | like ‘y’ in ‘yummy’ |
| r | like ‘r’ in ‘rum’ |
| l | like ‘l’ in ‘love’ |
| v | like ‘v’ in ‘rover’ |
Guttural Class
| k | like ‘c’ in ‘cup’ |
| kh | exactly like ‘k’ in ‘Sanskrit’ except aspirated, that is, breath out, as with ‘Kate’ |
| g | like ‘g’ in ‘gun’ |
| gh | another aspirate, same principle as with ‘kh’, ‘g’ while breathing out |
| ṅ | like ‘n’ in ‘trunk’ except more guttural |
Palatal Class
| c | like ‘ch’ in ‘chump’ |
| ch | another aspirate, same principle |
| j | like ‘j’ in ‘jump’ |
| jh | aspirated ‘j’, like ‘jay’ |
| ñ | like ‘n’ in ‘canyon’ |
Lingual Class
| t | There is no English equivalent: a ‘t’ sound (as in ‘tough’) but with the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth |
| ṭh | aspirated ‘ṭ’ |
*Best understood as a particular class of consonants. By convention, the names of the consonants add an ‘a’ (Sanskrit ‘a’) in pronunciation. Thus ‘y’ is pronounced ‘ya’ (like ‘yu’ in ‘yummy’). Vowels, in contrast are pronounced exactly as written. Note also each vowel corresponds to only one sound, unlike in English. (With a few exceptions, this is true of consonants as well.)
| ḍ | like ‘d’ in ‘dump’ but “lingualized” as with ‘ṭ’ |
| ḍh | aspirated ‘ḍ’ |
| ṇ | lingualized ‘n’ sound |
Dental Class
| t | like ‘t’ in ‘tough’ |
| th | aspirated ‘t’ (not like ‘th’ in ‘thumb’) |
| d | like ‘d’ in ‘done’ |
| dh | aspirated ‘d’ |
| n | like ‘n’ in ‘nut’ |
Labial Class
| p | like ‘p’ in ‘pun’ |
| ph | aspirated ‘p’ (not like ‘ph’ in ‘philosophy’), like ‘pin’ |
| b | like ‘b’ in ‘bus’ |
| bh | aspirated ‘b’ |
| m | like ‘m’ in ‘mumps’ |
Sibilants
| ś | like ‘sh’ in ‘shove’ |
| ṣ | lingualized ‘sh’ sound |
| s | like ‘s’ in ‘sun’ |
In a Class Alone
| h | like ‘h’ in ‘hundred’ |
| h | “Visarga”: calls for breath following a vowel. For example, ‘duḥkha’ (“pain”) is pronounced, ‘du’ and then breath (very short) and then ‘kha’ |
| ṃ | This is shorthand for all nasals, the particular type determined by the class of the following consonant. For example, the ‘ṃ’ in ‘sāṃkhya’ (“analysis”) is equivalent to ‘ṅ’, since ‘kh’ belongs to the guttural class. (Do not try to remember this rule; just nasalize.) |
This glossary is limited to Sanskrit terms—including names of schools or movements—mentioned in this introductory survey (where, please note, I have tried to avoid using them). For a much more complete glossary, consult John Grimes, A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy (Albany: SUNY, 1989). For a chronology of persons and texts mentioned, see appendix C.
Advaita Vedānta One of the most prominent schools of classical philosophy, an Upanishadic Monism (“all is brahman,” including—and especially—the seemingly individual consciousness or self); sometimes called Illusionism because of its claim that all appearance of fundamental diversity is illusory.
Brāhminism A prominent Indian religion that centers on rituals and liturgies performed by priests called Brahmins, who are the highest of four principal Hindu castes.
Buddhism A world religion founded by Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha, or the “Awakened One”), who taught that a supreme felicity and end to suffering occur in a special experience termed nirvārṇa, along with the “way” to attain it.
Cārvāka A materialist and skeptical school also known as Lokayata, “those who follow the way of the world.”
Jainism An ancient Indian religion founded by Mahāvīra, ca. 500 B.C.E., who (like the Buddha) taught a philosophy of a “supreme personal good” and championed an ethics of ahiṃsā, “noninjury.”
Mādhyamika The school of philosophic Buddhism founded by Nāgārjuna that takes a minimalist or skeptical position on issues of philosophy; sometimes called Buddhist Mysticism or Buddhist Absolutism.
Mīmāṃsā “Exegesis,” the classical school most closely tied to Brāhminism.
Mahāyāna Northern Buddhism; the “Great Vehicle.”
Nyāya “Logic”; the Realist school prominent throughout the classical period, combined with Vaiśeṣika in the later centuries; focused on issues in epistemology but took positions on a wide range of philosophic topics (proponents are called Naiyāyikas).
Navya-Nyāya “New Logic”; the revolutionary Realism of Gaṅgeśa (ca. 1300) and his followers.
Sāṃkhya “Analysis”; an early school of Indian philosophy concerned with achieving a “supreme personal good” through psychological disidentification.
Theistic Vedānta Any of several schools of classical Vedānta espousing a concept of God (īśvara), and usually grounding their outlook in teachings of the Bhagavad-Gītā as well as various Upanishads.
Theravāda “The Doctrine of the (Buddhist) Elders”; an early school of philosophic Buddhism, appearing in the Southern Canon.
Vaiśeṣika “Atomism”; a classical philosophy focusing on ontological issues (“What kinds of things are there?”) and defending a realist view of material things as composed of atoms; later combined with Nyāya.
Vedānta Originally an epithet for the Upanishads; in the classical period, any of several schools defending Upanishadic views, (e.g., Advaita and Theistic Vedānta).
Yogācāra “Buddhist Idealism” conveniently divided into Early and Late; or Buddhist Logic: Buddhist Logicians (Dignaga, Dharmakirti, and their followers) propose a much more advanced epistemology concerning worldly knowledge—and are less concerned with the concept of a “storehouse consciousness” —than are their Early Yogācāra predecessors.
Yoga A classical philosophy of a “supreme personal good” much like Sāṃkhya but proposing various exercises of “self-discipline” (i.e., yoga) as the means thereto.
abiṃsā noninjury.
ālayavijñāna “storehouse consciousness”; a principal concept in early Yogācāra.
anātman “no self or “no soul”; an important Buddhist doctrine.
anavasthā “infinite regress”; a mark of conceptual inadequacy according to some classical philosophers.
āpta an expert; a person whose testimony is reliable.
arhat the “saint” who, according to Theravāda Buddhism, has realized Nirvana.
ārya noble, high-minded; a term used by Sanskrit-speaking tribes invading the subcontinent in the second millennium B.C.E. to refer to themselves.
āsana various postures and stretching exercises taught as part of some disciplines of yoga.
ātman Self or soul; the Upanishadic term for an individual’s true or most basic consciousness.
avatāra Divine Incarnation.
avidyā spiritual ignorance; in much Vedānta, lack of direct awareness of brahman or God.
bādha experiential “sublation,” as a veridical perception of a rope can be taken for an illusory perception of a snake.
bodhisattva the enlightened being who turns back from an utter extinction of personality in the bliss of a final Nirvana out of compassion for every sentient being; a key concept of Mahāyāna.
brahman the “Absolute”; the key concept of the Upanishads according to a prominent group of commentators.
brahma-sākṣātkāra immediate awareness of the Absolute; a synonym for ‘brah-mavidyā, according to some.
brahma-vidyā knowledge of the Absolute (or, of God).
buddha the awakened; an epithet of Siddhārtha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, after his enlightenment.
citta-vrtti-nirodha cessation of the fluctuations of mentality; the definition of yoga given by the Yoga-sūtra
dharma right living, right religious practice; or, quality or state of consciousness.
guṇa strand of nature; there are three of these according to Sāṃkhya: light and intelligence; activity and passion; and inertia and darkness.
karma “action”; psychological dispositions to act in a certain manner accrued through previous actions; habit.
īśvara God.
jīvan-mukti “living liberation”; a person’s knowledge of the Absolute or God, and “liberation” from all entanglement in the world while alive, according to some schools of Vedanta.
līlā play, Divine play; a prominent concept in theistic Vedanta understood to capture God’s relation to the world.
marga a path or way deemed to lead to a person’s greatest good.
māyā illusion, cosmic illusion.
mukti liberation, salvation.
nāma-rūpa “name and form”; individuation.
nirvāṇa extinction (of suffering); enlightenment.
padārtha category, “type of thing to which words refer”; a central Vaiśeṣika concept.
parama-puruṣa-artha supreme personal good.
paramitā perfection; there are six moral and spiritual perfections exhibited by a bodhisattva, according to Mahāyāna Buddhism.
prāṇāyāma breath control.
prakṛti Nature; a principal Sāṃkhya concept.
pramāṇa justifier, generator of true belief.
puruṣa “individual conscious being” according to both Sāṃkhya and Yoga.
ṛta the cosmic “Law” or “Order”; a Vedic concept.
satyāgraha “holding fast to the truth”; the byword of Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement.
saccidānanda (Absolute) Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, a popular Vedāntic characterization of brahman.
samādhi mystic or yogic trance.
samavāya inherence; an important category for Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika.
śiṣya student.
soma a psychotropic plant used in shamanic practices during Vedic times.
sūtra literally “thread”; a philosophic aphorism.
tattva principle of being or reality; there are twenty-four of these according to Sāṃkhya.
vāsanā subliminal impulses, karma.
viśeṣa individualizer or numeralizer; the Vaiśeṣika concept of that which differentiates atoms of the same type (e.g., water).
vijñapti-mātra “consciousness only”; the central doctrine of Early Yogācāra Buddhism.
vyāpti pervasion, invariable concomitance; a factual relation that grounds inference according to Nyāya.
yoga self-discipline.
| Rg Veda (excluding the tenth book) | 1200–900 B.C.E. |
| Early Upanishads | 800–300 B.C.E. |
| Middle and late Upanishads | ca. 300 B.C.E.–1500 C.E. |
| The Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama) | ca. 500 B.C.E. |
| Mahāvīra (founder of Jainism) | ca. 500 B.C.E. |
| Southern Buddhist Canon | ca. 300–200 B.C.E. |
| Mabābhārata (the “Great Indian Epic”) earliest portion latest portion | |
| ca. 500 B.C.E. | |
| 400+ C.E. | |
| Bhagavad-Gītā earliest portion latest portion | |
| 200 B.C.E. | |
| 400 C.E. | |
| Prajñāpāramitā (Mahāyāna “scriptures”) | 100 B.C.E.–800 C.E. |
| Mīmāṃsāsūtra | 200 B.C.E.–200 C.E. |
| Brahmasūtra | 200 B.C.E.–200 C.E. |
| Vaiśeṣikasūtra | ca. 100 C.E. |
| Nāgārjuna (Mādhyamika) | 150 C.E. |
| Nyāyasūtra | ca. 200 |
| Yogasūtra | 300–00 (final redaction) |
| Asaṅga (early Yogācāra) | fl. 350 (?) |
| Vasubandhu (early Yogācāra) | fl. 360 |
| Sāṃkhyakārikā | ca. 375 |
| Vātsyāyana (Nyāya) | fl. 410 |
| Dignāga (Buddhist Logic) | ca. 550 |
| Dharmakīrti (Buddhist Logic) | fl. 625 |
| Kumārila (Mīmāṃsā) | fl. 660 |
| Prabhākara (Mīmāṃsā) | fl. 700 |
| Śaṅkara (Advaita) | ca. 700–750 |
| Jayarāśi (Cārvāka) | ca. 750 |
| Vācaspati Miśra (chiefly Advaita and Nyāya) | fl. 960 |
| Udayana (Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika) | 975–1050 |
| Śrīharṣa (Advaita) | ca. 1150 |
| Gaṅgeśa (Navya-Nyāya) | fl. 1325 |
| Vardhamāna (Navya-Nyāya) | fl. 1360 |
| Raghunātha Śiromaṇi (Navya-Nyāya) | ca. 1500 |
| Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (Advaita) | ca. 1600 |
| Gadādhara (Navya-Nyāya) | ca. 1650 |
| Vivekananda | 1863–1902 |
| Gandhi | 1869–1948 |
| Aurobindo | 1872–1950 |
Suredranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, 5 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922+; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975+. This remains one of the best surveys of classical Indian philosophies, though the later volumes are disproportionately concerned with late religious philosophies, with Navya-Nyāya given short shrift. Volume I is particularly useful as a general survey of the principal schools. (Dasgupta is a master not only of the classical philosophies but of fluid English prose.)
Deutsch, Eliot. Advaita Vedānta: A Philosophic Reconstruction. Honolulu, HI: East-West Center Press, 1969. An excellent introduction to the principal themes and arguments of Advaita, this book achieves a remarkable overview given its brevity (119 pages).
Eliade, Mircea. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. This is a sympathetic survey of Yoga philosophy as well as of the influence of yogic psychology and techniques on other schools. It may also be the best introduction overall to Indian mysticism.
Koller, John. The Indian Way. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1982. Koller focuses on the religious philosophies, providing context in social practices at some cost to doctrinal details. This text is almost as much an introduction to Indian religions as it is to the philosophies, though doctrines are Koller’s chief concern. The book could be used in a course on world religions for high school seniors.
Matilal, B. K. Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987. Matilal commands the traditions of Western philosophy as well as of Indian philosophy to an extraordinary degree. In this book, he mounts a sophisticated defense of key classical Naiyāyika positions in epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of language. Though not a book for a beginner, any serious student of the issues that Nyāya addresses should read it. It presupposes no Sanskrit or familiarity with Indian traditions.
Murti, T. V. R. The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. A highly influential study of Buddhist Mādhyamika, this book focuses on both the religious or mystical dimension of Nāgārjuna’s thought and his philosophic “dialectic.” In the final part (out of three), Murti makes comparisons with prominent Western philosophies and defends the Mādhyamika system against objections.
Phillips, Stephen. Classical Indian Metaphysics: Refutations of Realism and the Emergence of “new Logic.” Chicago: Open Court, 1995.
Potter, Karl, series ed. (as well as ed. for volumes 1, 2, and 3). Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. 8 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970+. Eight volumes of this watershed project have so far appeared. Vol. 1: Bibliography. This is the most indispensable work for research on Indian philosophies. Vol. 2: Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika up to Gahgeśa. Potter’s long introduction is written for students of philosophy in general and not for the specialist. But the summaries of classical works appearing in the second part (some written by Potter but most by other scholars) presuppose in many instances a thorough familiarity with the classical philosophic scene. Vol. 3: Advaita Vedānta. through Śaṅkara and His Pupils. Potter has himself written most of the summaries here, as well as another long and illuminating introduction. Vol. 4: Sāṃkhya, ed. Gerald Larson and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya. Larson’s introduction is both lucid and thorough. The summaries are in some cases extensive. Vol. 5: Philosophy of the Grammarians, ed. Harold Coward and K. Kunjunni Raja. Vol. 6: Indian Philosophical Analysis: Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika from Gangeśa to Raghunātha Śiromaṇi, ed. Karl H. Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya. Vol. 7: Abhidharma Buddhism to 150 A.D., ed. Karl H. Potter, Robert E. Buswell Jr., Padmanabh S. Jaini, and Noble Ross Reat.
Potter, Karl. Guide to Indian Philosophy. Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1988. This book comprises a much more complete and detailed guide to further reading than is provided here. Potter includes scholarly articles, translations, and books of criticism and interpretation in his purview. This book would prove particularly useful to instructors, but the characterizations that Potter provides are accessible to beginning readers as well.
Raju, P. T. Structural Depths of Indian Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1985. As a wide-ranging, readable, and reflective introduction to Indian philosophies, this book rivals Dasgupta’s volumes. Informed by recent scholarship, it is—despite its relative brevity—in several instances an advance.
Warder, A. K. Indian Buddhism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970. This text has become in effect the standard introductory work on Indian Buddhist philosophies as well as on the history of Buddhism within the subcontinent.