Description of Indian Philosophy
1. The term ‘description’ is used here in order to avoid speaking of ‘history’, an idea which has been objected to. Though we do not consider the objection sound, we prefer to avoid a futile controversy here.
2. The aim we wish to propose, then, is to ‘describe’ or report, to those outside the Indian tradition, or untrained in the disciplines of the Indian classics and sciences, what has been said by Indian philosophers. The aim not here proposed would be to develop Indian philosophy further,
or to compare and eventually to combine it with other philosophical traditions, especially the ‘Western’. These latter aims are perfectly legitimate, but in great part premature and impossible until the preliminary description of what has already been done has been realised.
3. Nevertheless, since we are here writing outside the Indian tradition - if only because we are writing in a non-Indian language - our preliminary aim cannot be realised free from any contamination with such ulterior aims. For example, ‘philosophy’ is not an Indian term and its nearest Indian equivalent is a matter of doubt, controversy and opinion. We are thus attempting to identify something in the Indian tradition which would correspond to what we, or some of us, call ‘philosophy’ in the Western tradition. How are we to make the identification?
Since there are wide differences of opinion over the definition or description of ‘philosophy’ in the West, those of us who venture to cross over from the West to India in search of philosophy are continually finding our conceptual vessels dissolving away under us. Constructing new ones after each wreck, we experience a strong temptation to employ solid, well defined Indian materials for the last part of the voyage, abandoning the flimsy and indefinite tissues of Western metaphysics,
ethics and even epistemology with which we set out.
Now that we face the return voyage with our treasures of anviksiki (supposing that to be our preference in the matter of identification of our object - see below), what are we to do? Will our stout Indian ship survive the analytical hurricanes of the Western Ocean? Or shall we end our expedition as we began it-in purely Western terms and with no more to our credit than the atmosphere of mystery which accrues to returned explorers, commercially exploitable but philosophically bogus?
4. Let us imagine that we are about to set out on our return voyage and that we wish to take with us authentic samples of Indian philosophy, together with an account of what there is of philosophy in India. Our samples are in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit and our terms of reference for
our account are purely Indian. As we stand within the Indian tradition and attempt to prepare our account and make our selection of samples what do we find? How shall we identify ‘philosophy’?
The Indian intellectual scene has already been described by various Indian thinkers: obviously we must begin by following the outline of the various branches of science, and other intellectual pursuits, as those who were at home among them saw them. A convenient starting point for us, providing a reasonably comprehensive and typical view, is Rajasekhara’s account of the divisions of ‘speech’ vac, or literature, in his KavyaMimamsa- (I, adhyaya 2). We can supplement or criticise his account from within the tradition by looking at other Indian writers covering the same topic, or parts of it, but with varying approaches, for example Buddhist (e.g. Santaraksita), Jaina (e.g. Haribhadra) or Lokayata (e.g. JayaraSi) writers, Kautalya and Mallanaga Vatsyayana.
5. Rajasekhara first divides ‘speech’ into (1) sastra and (2) kavya, which we may interpret as (1) ‘learning’, i.e. all the branches of science in its broadest sense, and (2) ‘art literature’, i.e. poetry, fiction, drama and some kinds of history. We may provisionally set aside artistic literature as not immediately philosophical, ignoring epic poems rich in philosophical (in some sense) content, and the like, as presumably secondary.
6. RajaSekhara then proceeds to divide ‘learning’ into (1) ‘non-human’ apauresya and (2) ‘human’ pauresya. The first of these - works not due to human authorship, such as the Veda - was of course controversial:
Buddhist and other critics regarded all these works as ‘human’, whilst the Vaidika or Brahmanical writers themselves disagreed over which of these two categories some works belonged to, as Rajasekhara himself points out. Under ‘non-human’ he includes, besides the religious revelation of the Vedic mantra, mystic incantations, and brahmana, directions for the rites, the subsidiary upavedas, evidently as arts originally revealed to men from non-human sources. These subsidiary vedas are archery, music, medicine and, according to some, history itihasa and song geya.
Rajasekhara continues that his teacher adds under ‘non-human’ the six arigas, ‘factors’ or branches of Vedic research, and would himself add poetics alamkara as seventh. All these then would be originally revealed arts. The traditional six branches are phonetics siksa, ritual kalpa, linguistics vyakarana, lexicography nirukta, metrics chandoviciti and astronomy jyotisa. We are not now concerned with the ‘non-human’ aspects of learning, nor with the controversies between the atheists and the theists as to whether the text of the Veda is itself the ultimate and eternal reality, which can be perceived by suitably qualified seers, or whether there is a more ultimate ‘God’, who created it.
7. Under ‘human’ learning RajaSekhara first distinguishes ‘antiquity’ puraa (history, etc.), analytical philosophy anviksiki, metaphysics mimamsa (Vedic ‘investigations’) and tradition smrti (law, etc.). He adds aesthetics or literary criticism sahityavidya, of which the 64 arts kalas (music, dancing, painting, etc.) are subsidiary studies, and also, as recognised by ‘some’, economics varttha pleasure kamasutra , technology silpisastra- and politics dandaniti. He also quotes a verse to the effect that the divisions of science are practically endless. Though our English equivalents here are open to discussion, it would seem that whatever corresponds to ‘philosophy’ is to be sought primarily among these headings and especially under anviksiki. Since this last is a technical term, whose
meaning we will take from our sources in a moment, it is presumably futile to ask for its ‘literal’ or etymological ‘meaning’, nevertheless we may note here that the latter would be something like ‘examining into’ or ‘inquiry’.
8. RajaSekhara defines anviksiki by dividing it into six tarkas or methods of reasoning. These are in fact the methodologies of six major schools:
Jainism (arhant), Buddhism (bhadanta), Lokayata, Samkhya, Nyaya and Vaisesika. He adds that they use three kinds of discussion katha, namely logical argument vtsda, debate jalpa and eristic vita&. This is just a general indication of the direction of their studies, as in fact we find that the manuals of the schools in question propose these and other categories in preparing the ground for their discussions. Their logic and epistemology determine the various directions of their investigations. In the light of this sketch, which can be developed as desired from many other sources, it would seem correct to identify anviksiki as philosophy and more accurately as what is sometimes called analytical philosophy. No doubt we shall find metaphysical construction and discussion of the good life among these schools, but their first principles, their approach to their inquiries, are those of epistemology and logic. It is this secular and critical approach, either rejecting revelation such as the Veda or leaving it aside, which distinguishes these six schools from the Mimamsa metaphysics of
Vedic investigation, of which the Vedanta is one branch (the brahmani- darsani), which takes the Vedic revelation as its basis.
9. Indian philosophy, however, and even analytical philosophy, is not exhausted by the six major schools just mentioned. Some Indian writers bracket the Mimamsa with these schools, though without using the term anviksiki and instead taking a broad view. It too in due course elaborated
theories of epistemology and logic, if only in opposition to its critics, and could therefore be studied in connection with the six more properly philosophical schools. Taking the broader view, the Buddhist and Jaina writers commonly include the ‘Vedic’ vaidika or Mimamsa among the
doctrines to be criticised philosophically. This broader view is concerned with the quest for ‘truth’, where many schools and teachers claimed to have discovered ‘truth’ and thus to be able to offer a practical way of life or happiness as well as a theory of knowledge. We may briefly illustrate it by glancing at the Tamil epic Manimekhalai by the Buddhist writer Sattanar-, which is a kind of historical novel. The heroine goes to the city of Vanji in Kerala in order to study the various doctrines which claim to offer the ‘truth’. There (chapter XXVII of the epic) she studies under ten teachers of as many doctrines or vadas, before coming to Buddhism. The ten are also grouped as five, making six with Buddhism.
The ten are: Mimamsa, Saiva, Brahmavada (Vedanta), Vaisnava, the Vedangas, Ajivaka, Nirgrantha (Jaina), Samkhya, VaiSesika and Bhuta-vada (Lokayata). They reduce to five by grouping the first five schools together as ‘Vedic’ and by grouping the Ajivakas with the Jainas as ‘Sramanas’. Apart from a certain amount of syncretism among the first five doctrines (but not much between Saiva and the others), it may be pointed out that they all have in common that they are based on reve-
lations, of the Veda or from God (the Saiva revelation claims to supersede the Veda). The Mimamsa, however, is already presented as very largely a study of epistemology, which itself describes six schools as founded on as many theories of the sources of knowledge, namely the Lokayata, Bauddha, Samkhya, Nyaya, VaiSesika and Mimamsa. On the other hand we have seen that Sattanar has six schools more comprehensive in scope, namely Vedic, Sramana (including Jaina), Samkhya, VaiSesika, Lokayata and Buddhism. The number six seems to be popular, whilst there is a general consensus of opinion as to which the six primary schools are, if not exact agreement. The Jaina philosopher Haribhadra also has six primary schools or ‘views’ darsanas, reviewed in his Saddarsanasamuccaya, ‘Compendium of the Six Views’, though he discusses sub-schools within them as well. His six are the Mimamsa, Samkhya, Nyayavaisesika (here regarded as one, alternatively as two, and of course they are closely related), Buddhist, Lokayata and Jaina.
10. We could easily extend this list of schools or ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ matas from other Indian writers. There are a number of critiques of an encyclopaedic character, like Haribhadra’s already mentioned, but sometimes arranged according to the problems rather than the schools, especially the epistemological problems. Thus the Madhyamaka Buddhists Santaraksita and Kamalasila, who like him lived in the 8th century, in the course of their Tattvasamgraha offer critiques of doctrines of at least 25 schools or individual philosophers, the critiques being arranged ac- cording to the problems. In the similar but shorter Tattvopaplavasimha of the Lokayata writer Jayarasi, who probably also lived in this period, it is difficult to count the full number of schools because we have no old commentary. The main schools he examines in this review of epistemological principles are the same as in Haribhadra. Later on, the anonymous Sarvamatasaygraha (13th century? - representing the outlook of the Pauraniikas or historians) reviews 15 schools and the Sarvadarsanasamgraha of the Vedantin Madhava (Advaita, 14th century) . Most of the additional ‘schools’ discussed may be regarded as sub-schools of the half dozen main ones, however radical their internal disagreements. Thus there were at least 30 schools of the Buddhists alone, whose polemics we can read in their own works though only about ten of them are discussed in the encyclopaedic writings noted above. The only more or less distinct schools discussed in these writings, besides those we have named already, are the speculative linguistic school of Bhartrhari, which really grew out of the Mimamsa and is Vedic, though highly original, and the medical
school represented by Caraka.
11. Regardless of the number of schools, the main point is that there was a plurality of independent schools which criticised each other by striking at the epistemological foundations of one another’s doctrines.
At the same time we have found that there is a fairly well defined area of inquiry, adjacent to religion, history, law, economics, aesthetics and other studies, which can be identified as essentially ‘philosophy’. We have, moreover, gone further and characterised it as ‘analytical philosophy’. Though it overlaps with some of the other studies mentioned by Rajasekhara and may even be related to all of them, it is in this area that we expect to find the work which will be of greatest interest to most Western ‘philosophers’.
12. If we try to characterise this area of anviksiki, after reading typical works from it as well as in the light of the preceding discussion, our leading impression will probably be that it is an area of controversy.
Though the writers have their points of view, with perhaps exceptions like Nagarjuna and JayaraSi who claim to hold no view at all, most of their work consists of critical pariksa analysing hypotheses made by others. This is not the area of agreed doctrine, but the place where claims
to possess knowledge, or to know how to acquire knowledge, are subjected to criticism. For Kautalya and RajaSekhara, anviksiki was evidently not a sectarian advocacy of the conclusions of one or more of the three or six schools they include under it, but the study of their methods, the
clarification of the nature of knowledge and the conditions for acquiring it. Kautalya wrote as a political scientist and used the methods of anviksiki as a guide in scientific inquiry. RajaSekhara appears as an orthodox Vedist, fully exploiting the eclecticism inherent in that tradition, relying on the Mimamsa and Itihasa for his view of the universe. The study of anviksiki is thus for him not an establishment of conclusions but a clarification of one’s thinking, a discipline and education - in the
theory of knowledge. If he afterwards accepts the Veda as a source of knowledge, an authority, he knows precisely what this involves, its strength and its weakness. This study would seem to cover what in the West is known as epistemology or the theory of knowledge.
13. Secondly, RajaSekhara refers to his six classical schools as tarkas, ‘(methods of) reasoning’, and characterises them as engaging in various kinds of discussion. The first kind is the argument vada which is logical and intended to be constructive in the sense of furthering some inquiry.
The other two kinds appear as practical requirements of a philosopher, which might forward the genuine philosophical inquiry only indirectly, e.g. by bringing to light equivocations in reasoning. The debate jalpa is thus basically rhetorical in that the aim of the debater is to defeat his opponent rather than to discover the truth. If both sides are skilled in logic, as was usually the case in ancient and medieval India, deliberate tricks of equivocation and the like are not likely to succeed and the better logician may win, but the principle that one could win with faulty logic
if the opponent failed to point it out remains basic, Eristic vitanda is something one accuses one’s opponent of when he refuses to accept some basic principle of argument which one considers axiomatic and inviolable.
It was thus a derogatory term used in defence as a substitute for logic and intended to mean thoroughly unscrupulous behaviour on the part of the opponent. Naturally no one admitted to such behaviour. The Madhyamakas and Lokayatikas, who were most often abused with the term, in fact argue logically enough against the assumptions of other schools. If this is to be called vita&i, the term may be taken by us as an honourable one for the most penetrating kinds of analysis. The Madhyamaka school of Buddhists claimed to maintain no philosophical ‘position’ drsti, or opinion, whatsoever, but instead to offer critiques of all attempts to establish such positions. Other schools considered they were being unfair and tried to exclude them from debates on the ground of their vitanda, but from the standpoint (if we may allow ourselves one) of furthering the philosophical inquiry their analyses of concepts are extremely useful. The Lokayata school, equally critical and unwelcome as an opponent in debate, is equally useful now in the discipline of analysis. Thus anviksiki also covers logic and more generally philosophical analysis, or analytic.
14. We may enlarge on the preceding paragraph and Rajasekhara’s brief characterisation, by adding that the classical schools analysed the problems of what may be called private argument or inquiry, induction and the like, as well as of public debate. Thus no gap was left between logic and epistemology. It was precisely here that the Lokayata critique was principally aimed, since it was here that the metaphysicians prepared the concepts and methods which would generate their systems.
15. On the periphery of our area of ‘philosophy’ or ‘analytical philosophy’ we can identify regions of ‘metaphysics’ overlapping it. The classic school of Indian metaphysics is the Mimamsa, which Rajasekhara names after anviksiki. The Mimamsa school, or schools, from their home terrain of Vedic commentary invaded the area of epistemology and sought to annex it to their revealed system, entering the debates against the classic schools of anviksiki. Their purely metaphysical position is that the Veda constitutes a source of transcendental knowledge, inaccessible by defini-
tion to any empirical inquiry (Jaimini, 1.1.4).
There were of course other systems of metaphysics, some of them based on some of the anviksiki schools themselves. Thus a Vaisesika or Samkhya philosopher, having established to his own satisfaction a method of inference and induction, might proceed to construct a system by ap-
plying it, moreover transcending the limits of empirical inquiry (perception) by means of it.
16. There are those, both in the West and in India and especially in modern India, who regard metaphysics or speculation as the main or even the exclusive business of ‘philosophy’. In the Indian field they will continue as before to explore and enjoy the Mimamsa, especially the Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta, and the schools of theology. But let them not continue to delude others into believing that their kind of ‘philosophy’ was the whole, or the essential part, of ‘Indian philosophy’. To us, India is the classic land of intellectual freedom and of rational and precise thinking. Where else have philosophers been able to sustain philosophical analysis, free inquiry into epistemology, and empiricist traditions, so long and to carry them so far? It is only in our own time that philosophers perhaps have the opportunity to develop analysis further. Surely it is towards this kind of philosophy that India has the greatest contributions to make.
2. The aim we wish to propose, then, is to ‘describe’ or report, to those outside the Indian tradition, or untrained in the disciplines of the Indian classics and sciences, what has been said by Indian philosophers. The aim not here proposed would be to develop Indian philosophy further,
or to compare and eventually to combine it with other philosophical traditions, especially the ‘Western’. These latter aims are perfectly legitimate, but in great part premature and impossible until the preliminary description of what has already been done has been realised.
3. Nevertheless, since we are here writing outside the Indian tradition - if only because we are writing in a non-Indian language - our preliminary aim cannot be realised free from any contamination with such ulterior aims. For example, ‘philosophy’ is not an Indian term and its nearest Indian equivalent is a matter of doubt, controversy and opinion. We are thus attempting to identify something in the Indian tradition which would correspond to what we, or some of us, call ‘philosophy’ in the Western tradition. How are we to make the identification?
Since there are wide differences of opinion over the definition or description of ‘philosophy’ in the West, those of us who venture to cross over from the West to India in search of philosophy are continually finding our conceptual vessels dissolving away under us. Constructing new ones after each wreck, we experience a strong temptation to employ solid, well defined Indian materials for the last part of the voyage, abandoning the flimsy and indefinite tissues of Western metaphysics,
ethics and even epistemology with which we set out.
Now that we face the return voyage with our treasures of anviksiki (supposing that to be our preference in the matter of identification of our object - see below), what are we to do? Will our stout Indian ship survive the analytical hurricanes of the Western Ocean? Or shall we end our expedition as we began it-in purely Western terms and with no more to our credit than the atmosphere of mystery which accrues to returned explorers, commercially exploitable but philosophically bogus?
4. Let us imagine that we are about to set out on our return voyage and that we wish to take with us authentic samples of Indian philosophy, together with an account of what there is of philosophy in India. Our samples are in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit and our terms of reference for
our account are purely Indian. As we stand within the Indian tradition and attempt to prepare our account and make our selection of samples what do we find? How shall we identify ‘philosophy’?
The Indian intellectual scene has already been described by various Indian thinkers: obviously we must begin by following the outline of the various branches of science, and other intellectual pursuits, as those who were at home among them saw them. A convenient starting point for us, providing a reasonably comprehensive and typical view, is Rajasekhara’s account of the divisions of ‘speech’ vac, or literature, in his KavyaMimamsa- (I, adhyaya 2). We can supplement or criticise his account from within the tradition by looking at other Indian writers covering the same topic, or parts of it, but with varying approaches, for example Buddhist (e.g. Santaraksita), Jaina (e.g. Haribhadra) or Lokayata (e.g. JayaraSi) writers, Kautalya and Mallanaga Vatsyayana.
5. Rajasekhara first divides ‘speech’ into (1) sastra and (2) kavya, which we may interpret as (1) ‘learning’, i.e. all the branches of science in its broadest sense, and (2) ‘art literature’, i.e. poetry, fiction, drama and some kinds of history. We may provisionally set aside artistic literature as not immediately philosophical, ignoring epic poems rich in philosophical (in some sense) content, and the like, as presumably secondary.
6. RajaSekhara then proceeds to divide ‘learning’ into (1) ‘non-human’ apauresya and (2) ‘human’ pauresya. The first of these - works not due to human authorship, such as the Veda - was of course controversial:
Buddhist and other critics regarded all these works as ‘human’, whilst the Vaidika or Brahmanical writers themselves disagreed over which of these two categories some works belonged to, as Rajasekhara himself points out. Under ‘non-human’ he includes, besides the religious revelation of the Vedic mantra, mystic incantations, and brahmana, directions for the rites, the subsidiary upavedas, evidently as arts originally revealed to men from non-human sources. These subsidiary vedas are archery, music, medicine and, according to some, history itihasa and song geya.
Rajasekhara continues that his teacher adds under ‘non-human’ the six arigas, ‘factors’ or branches of Vedic research, and would himself add poetics alamkara as seventh. All these then would be originally revealed arts. The traditional six branches are phonetics siksa, ritual kalpa, linguistics vyakarana, lexicography nirukta, metrics chandoviciti and astronomy jyotisa. We are not now concerned with the ‘non-human’ aspects of learning, nor with the controversies between the atheists and the theists as to whether the text of the Veda is itself the ultimate and eternal reality, which can be perceived by suitably qualified seers, or whether there is a more ultimate ‘God’, who created it.
7. Under ‘human’ learning RajaSekhara first distinguishes ‘antiquity’ puraa (history, etc.), analytical philosophy anviksiki, metaphysics mimamsa (Vedic ‘investigations’) and tradition smrti (law, etc.). He adds aesthetics or literary criticism sahityavidya, of which the 64 arts kalas (music, dancing, painting, etc.) are subsidiary studies, and also, as recognised by ‘some’, economics varttha pleasure kamasutra , technology silpisastra- and politics dandaniti. He also quotes a verse to the effect that the divisions of science are practically endless. Though our English equivalents here are open to discussion, it would seem that whatever corresponds to ‘philosophy’ is to be sought primarily among these headings and especially under anviksiki. Since this last is a technical term, whose
meaning we will take from our sources in a moment, it is presumably futile to ask for its ‘literal’ or etymological ‘meaning’, nevertheless we may note here that the latter would be something like ‘examining into’ or ‘inquiry’.
8. RajaSekhara defines anviksiki by dividing it into six tarkas or methods of reasoning. These are in fact the methodologies of six major schools:
Jainism (arhant), Buddhism (bhadanta), Lokayata, Samkhya, Nyaya and Vaisesika. He adds that they use three kinds of discussion katha, namely logical argument vtsda, debate jalpa and eristic vita&. This is just a general indication of the direction of their studies, as in fact we find that the manuals of the schools in question propose these and other categories in preparing the ground for their discussions. Their logic and epistemology determine the various directions of their investigations. In the light of this sketch, which can be developed as desired from many other sources, it would seem correct to identify anviksiki as philosophy and more accurately as what is sometimes called analytical philosophy. No doubt we shall find metaphysical construction and discussion of the good life among these schools, but their first principles, their approach to their inquiries, are those of epistemology and logic. It is this secular and critical approach, either rejecting revelation such as the Veda or leaving it aside, which distinguishes these six schools from the Mimamsa metaphysics of
Vedic investigation, of which the Vedanta is one branch (the brahmani- darsani), which takes the Vedic revelation as its basis.
9. Indian philosophy, however, and even analytical philosophy, is not exhausted by the six major schools just mentioned. Some Indian writers bracket the Mimamsa with these schools, though without using the term anviksiki and instead taking a broad view. It too in due course elaborated
theories of epistemology and logic, if only in opposition to its critics, and could therefore be studied in connection with the six more properly philosophical schools. Taking the broader view, the Buddhist and Jaina writers commonly include the ‘Vedic’ vaidika or Mimamsa among the
doctrines to be criticised philosophically. This broader view is concerned with the quest for ‘truth’, where many schools and teachers claimed to have discovered ‘truth’ and thus to be able to offer a practical way of life or happiness as well as a theory of knowledge. We may briefly illustrate it by glancing at the Tamil epic Manimekhalai by the Buddhist writer Sattanar-, which is a kind of historical novel. The heroine goes to the city of Vanji in Kerala in order to study the various doctrines which claim to offer the ‘truth’. There (chapter XXVII of the epic) she studies under ten teachers of as many doctrines or vadas, before coming to Buddhism. The ten are also grouped as five, making six with Buddhism.
The ten are: Mimamsa, Saiva, Brahmavada (Vedanta), Vaisnava, the Vedangas, Ajivaka, Nirgrantha (Jaina), Samkhya, VaiSesika and Bhuta-vada (Lokayata). They reduce to five by grouping the first five schools together as ‘Vedic’ and by grouping the Ajivakas with the Jainas as ‘Sramanas’. Apart from a certain amount of syncretism among the first five doctrines (but not much between Saiva and the others), it may be pointed out that they all have in common that they are based on reve-
lations, of the Veda or from God (the Saiva revelation claims to supersede the Veda). The Mimamsa, however, is already presented as very largely a study of epistemology, which itself describes six schools as founded on as many theories of the sources of knowledge, namely the Lokayata, Bauddha, Samkhya, Nyaya, VaiSesika and Mimamsa. On the other hand we have seen that Sattanar has six schools more comprehensive in scope, namely Vedic, Sramana (including Jaina), Samkhya, VaiSesika, Lokayata and Buddhism. The number six seems to be popular, whilst there is a general consensus of opinion as to which the six primary schools are, if not exact agreement. The Jaina philosopher Haribhadra also has six primary schools or ‘views’ darsanas, reviewed in his Saddarsanasamuccaya, ‘Compendium of the Six Views’, though he discusses sub-schools within them as well. His six are the Mimamsa, Samkhya, Nyayavaisesika (here regarded as one, alternatively as two, and of course they are closely related), Buddhist, Lokayata and Jaina.
10. We could easily extend this list of schools or ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ matas from other Indian writers. There are a number of critiques of an encyclopaedic character, like Haribhadra’s already mentioned, but sometimes arranged according to the problems rather than the schools, especially the epistemological problems. Thus the Madhyamaka Buddhists Santaraksita and Kamalasila, who like him lived in the 8th century, in the course of their Tattvasamgraha offer critiques of doctrines of at least 25 schools or individual philosophers, the critiques being arranged ac- cording to the problems. In the similar but shorter Tattvopaplavasimha of the Lokayata writer Jayarasi, who probably also lived in this period, it is difficult to count the full number of schools because we have no old commentary. The main schools he examines in this review of epistemological principles are the same as in Haribhadra. Later on, the anonymous Sarvamatasaygraha (13th century? - representing the outlook of the Pauraniikas or historians) reviews 15 schools and the Sarvadarsanasamgraha of the Vedantin Madhava (Advaita, 14th century) . Most of the additional ‘schools’ discussed may be regarded as sub-schools of the half dozen main ones, however radical their internal disagreements. Thus there were at least 30 schools of the Buddhists alone, whose polemics we can read in their own works though only about ten of them are discussed in the encyclopaedic writings noted above. The only more or less distinct schools discussed in these writings, besides those we have named already, are the speculative linguistic school of Bhartrhari, which really grew out of the Mimamsa and is Vedic, though highly original, and the medical
school represented by Caraka.
11. Regardless of the number of schools, the main point is that there was a plurality of independent schools which criticised each other by striking at the epistemological foundations of one another’s doctrines.
At the same time we have found that there is a fairly well defined area of inquiry, adjacent to religion, history, law, economics, aesthetics and other studies, which can be identified as essentially ‘philosophy’. We have, moreover, gone further and characterised it as ‘analytical philosophy’. Though it overlaps with some of the other studies mentioned by Rajasekhara and may even be related to all of them, it is in this area that we expect to find the work which will be of greatest interest to most Western ‘philosophers’.
12. If we try to characterise this area of anviksiki, after reading typical works from it as well as in the light of the preceding discussion, our leading impression will probably be that it is an area of controversy.
Though the writers have their points of view, with perhaps exceptions like Nagarjuna and JayaraSi who claim to hold no view at all, most of their work consists of critical pariksa analysing hypotheses made by others. This is not the area of agreed doctrine, but the place where claims
to possess knowledge, or to know how to acquire knowledge, are subjected to criticism. For Kautalya and RajaSekhara, anviksiki was evidently not a sectarian advocacy of the conclusions of one or more of the three or six schools they include under it, but the study of their methods, the
clarification of the nature of knowledge and the conditions for acquiring it. Kautalya wrote as a political scientist and used the methods of anviksiki as a guide in scientific inquiry. RajaSekhara appears as an orthodox Vedist, fully exploiting the eclecticism inherent in that tradition, relying on the Mimamsa and Itihasa for his view of the universe. The study of anviksiki is thus for him not an establishment of conclusions but a clarification of one’s thinking, a discipline and education - in the
theory of knowledge. If he afterwards accepts the Veda as a source of knowledge, an authority, he knows precisely what this involves, its strength and its weakness. This study would seem to cover what in the West is known as epistemology or the theory of knowledge.
13. Secondly, RajaSekhara refers to his six classical schools as tarkas, ‘(methods of) reasoning’, and characterises them as engaging in various kinds of discussion. The first kind is the argument vada which is logical and intended to be constructive in the sense of furthering some inquiry.
The other two kinds appear as practical requirements of a philosopher, which might forward the genuine philosophical inquiry only indirectly, e.g. by bringing to light equivocations in reasoning. The debate jalpa is thus basically rhetorical in that the aim of the debater is to defeat his opponent rather than to discover the truth. If both sides are skilled in logic, as was usually the case in ancient and medieval India, deliberate tricks of equivocation and the like are not likely to succeed and the better logician may win, but the principle that one could win with faulty logic
if the opponent failed to point it out remains basic, Eristic vitanda is something one accuses one’s opponent of when he refuses to accept some basic principle of argument which one considers axiomatic and inviolable.
It was thus a derogatory term used in defence as a substitute for logic and intended to mean thoroughly unscrupulous behaviour on the part of the opponent. Naturally no one admitted to such behaviour. The Madhyamakas and Lokayatikas, who were most often abused with the term, in fact argue logically enough against the assumptions of other schools. If this is to be called vita&i, the term may be taken by us as an honourable one for the most penetrating kinds of analysis. The Madhyamaka school of Buddhists claimed to maintain no philosophical ‘position’ drsti, or opinion, whatsoever, but instead to offer critiques of all attempts to establish such positions. Other schools considered they were being unfair and tried to exclude them from debates on the ground of their vitanda, but from the standpoint (if we may allow ourselves one) of furthering the philosophical inquiry their analyses of concepts are extremely useful. The Lokayata school, equally critical and unwelcome as an opponent in debate, is equally useful now in the discipline of analysis. Thus anviksiki also covers logic and more generally philosophical analysis, or analytic.
14. We may enlarge on the preceding paragraph and Rajasekhara’s brief characterisation, by adding that the classical schools analysed the problems of what may be called private argument or inquiry, induction and the like, as well as of public debate. Thus no gap was left between logic and epistemology. It was precisely here that the Lokayata critique was principally aimed, since it was here that the metaphysicians prepared the concepts and methods which would generate their systems.
15. On the periphery of our area of ‘philosophy’ or ‘analytical philosophy’ we can identify regions of ‘metaphysics’ overlapping it. The classic school of Indian metaphysics is the Mimamsa, which Rajasekhara names after anviksiki. The Mimamsa school, or schools, from their home terrain of Vedic commentary invaded the area of epistemology and sought to annex it to their revealed system, entering the debates against the classic schools of anviksiki. Their purely metaphysical position is that the Veda constitutes a source of transcendental knowledge, inaccessible by defini-
tion to any empirical inquiry (Jaimini, 1.1.4).
There were of course other systems of metaphysics, some of them based on some of the anviksiki schools themselves. Thus a Vaisesika or Samkhya philosopher, having established to his own satisfaction a method of inference and induction, might proceed to construct a system by ap-
plying it, moreover transcending the limits of empirical inquiry (perception) by means of it.
16. There are those, both in the West and in India and especially in modern India, who regard metaphysics or speculation as the main or even the exclusive business of ‘philosophy’. In the Indian field they will continue as before to explore and enjoy the Mimamsa, especially the Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta, and the schools of theology. But let them not continue to delude others into believing that their kind of ‘philosophy’ was the whole, or the essential part, of ‘Indian philosophy’. To us, India is the classic land of intellectual freedom and of rational and precise thinking. Where else have philosophers been able to sustain philosophical analysis, free inquiry into epistemology, and empiricist traditions, so long and to carry them so far? It is only in our own time that philosophers perhaps have the opportunity to develop analysis further. Surely it is towards this kind of philosophy that India has the greatest contributions to make.
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