A History of Indian Philosophy Vol. 2

PREFACE

NINE years have passed away since the first volume of this work was published, and the present volume has been in the press for more than two years. During the last seven years bad health has been responsible for many interruptions. In the first volume manu scripts were sparingly used, but in the present work numerous unpublished and almost unknown manuscripts have been referred to. These could not be collected easily, and it took time to read them; many of them were old and moth-eaten and it was not often easy to decipher the handwriting. It has not always been possible, how ever, to give an elaborate account of the content of all these manu scripts, for in many cases they contained no new matter and had therefore only been mentioned by name, a fact which could be ascer tained only after long and patient study, since records of them were previously unknown. A considerable delay was also caused in the writing of this volume by the fact that large portions of what will appear in the third volume had to be compiled before the manuscripts had left the author's hands. In any event, the author offers his sincere apologies for the delay.

The manuscript of the third volume has made good progress and, barring illness and other accidents, will soon be sent to press. This volume will contain a fairly elaborate account of the principal dualistic and pluralistic systems, such as the philosophy of the Panca-ratra, Bhaskara, Yamuna, Ramanuja and his followers, Madhva and his followers, the Bhagavata-purana and the Gaudlya school of Vaisnavism. The fourth and the fifth volumes will deal with the philosophy of Vallabha and some other lesser known schools of Vaisnavism, the philosophy of the Puranas, Tantras, the different schools of Saivas, Saktas, Indian Aesthetics, the philo sophy of right and law and the religious systems that have found their expression in some of the leading vernaculars of India.

A new impression of the first volume is now in the press. The present volume contains four chapters on Sankara Vedanta, the Medical Speculations of the Ancient Hindus, and the Philosophy of the Yoga-vasistha and the Bhagavad-gltd. A good deal of the Sankara Vedanta, especially in regard to its controversy with



Bhaskara, Ramanuja, Madhva and their followers, still remains to be treated in the third volume.

A word of explanation may be needed with regard to the inclusion in a work on Indian philosophy of the speculations of the Indian medical schools. Biology has recently played a great part in liberating philosophy from its old-world ideas. In ancient India, Biology had not grown into a separate science; whatever biological ideas were current in India were mixed up with medical, osteological and physiological speculations, the only branches of study in ancient India which may be regarded as constituting an experimental science. It was therefore thought that a comprehensive work on the history of Indian philosophy would be sadly defective without a chapter on these speculations, which introduce also some dis tinctly new ethical and eschatological concepts and a view of life which is wholly original. The biological notions of growth, de* velopment and heredity of these schools are no less interesting, and their relations to the logical categories of Nyaya are very instructive.

No attempt has been made to draw any comparisons or contrasts with Western philosophy, since in a work of this type it would most likely have been misleading and would have obscured the real philosophical issues. The study here presented is strictly faithful to the original Sanskrit texts within the limits of the present writer's capacities. Often the ground covered has been wholly new and the materials have been obtained by a direct and first-hand study of all available texts and manuscripts. Nevertheless some sources, containing, possibly, valuable materials, inevitably remain unconsulted, for many new manuscripts will be discovered in future, and our ...