Sunday, June 29, 2014

TWO NEW WORLDS.*
[* Longmans Green, London, 1907, price 3.6]
            “They that know the Day of Brahman to endure for a thousand ages, and the Night thereof to endure  for a thousand ages are the knowers of night and day” (Bhagavad-gita).
            The author of this small but interesting and important volume endeavors to show that the visible universe as known to us, is but one in a chain of similar universe contained one within the other, and differing only in the size of their elementary constituent particles. The atoms of one universe are the suns of the next fine universe; the electrons are its planets; the next universe below ours in the scale of sizes may be called the infra-world; the next above, the supra-world; these are the two new worlds referred to in the title, but they may of course be an infinite series in both directions. The units of time and length in these several universes are changed in the same proportions; thus the units of length and time in the infra-world are reduced 10 times, leaving velocity unaltered, for one infra-centimeter per infra-second exactly equals one centimeter per second. The relativity of time and space, even from the point of view of physical science is clearly brought out. These conceptions are indeed not things outside of ourselves, but part of our mental machinery only, by which we perceive things apart, and without which no conception of plurality would be possible.
            The author proceeds in a series of clearly presented arguments to sketch the conditions prevailing in the infra-universe, where each of our atoms is a sun, and each of our electrons a planet. The infra-universe is so small that its ‘starry heavens’ appear to us as a minute microscopic speck; yet there is no reason to suppose that life, not unlike our own may not exist upon its planets, for size is a purely relative affair! An infra-year is what we call a thousand billionth of a second. The life of our sun, estimated at 50 or 100 of million of our years, would amount to about a ten-millionth of a second on the supra-world scale. And so the relation of universe to universe is sketched out, presenting to the mind an infinity, not only of the physical universe as known to us, but of orders of universes larger and smaller, and as the scheme is elaborated in detail.
            The chief interest of this work to us seems to be in the psychological deductions which can be drawn, and at which the author hints not obscurely. Just as Indian thinkers, by pure thinking, intuitively perceived the fundamental postulate of true philosophy, viz., the entire subjectivity of time, space and causality, and Western science in the person of Kant reached the same result by the other way, of abstract reasoning and scientific proof, so here we have a physical illustration in exact scientific terms, of the Hindu conceptions of enormous distances and times obtaining in other spheres than ours. For example, a kalpa is a period of 4320 millions of our years, at the end of which the world is resolved into its constituent elements: - an approximation of at least the same order as that taken by the author of our book (p. 32) viz., 2000 million years as the life of the solar system.* [* I do not, of course, lay any stress upon the actual numbers, only upon the identity of idea, arrived at independently and by quite different processes.] The kalpa is spoken of as a day of Brahma, of which thirty form a month, and of these months 12 a year, and 100 of these years the period of his life (as a conditioned Iswara or personal God): -words that our author almost echoes, when he says that “there must be a supra-world – a world of a higher scale inhabited by beings for whom a trillion years are as a day, and the sun’s life-period the shortest measurable interval of time”!
            The author does not hesitate to consider the relation of ‘soul’ to the infinite series of physical universes: certainly the possibilities are strange enough. For example, our visible universe, represents to supra-man an object some ⅛ supra-inch in diameter.” It contains about 1000 million stars, or about as many stars as the lowliest organism known to us contains atoms. For aught we know it may be an organism”. Is there a cosmic soul forming the sum total of the individual consciousness manifesting in the universe, and concerning which supra-man may speculate concerning the soul of an amoeba? There can be no doubt that spiritual evolution consists in the expansion of consciousness (release from the bonds of personality); have we then to attain consciousness on a, to us, cosmic scale, only to be ‘born’ as an ‘amoeba’ in a supra-world? Here is suggested a physical parallel to the idea of “progressive emancipation” by the devayana, the “path of the gods’; it is probably interesting only as such a parallel. For after all we have so far been dealing only with physical universe, of which ours is the pattern. From a Vedantic point of view, of course, all these worlds are part of the samsara, and we as Atman, are incarnate in them all though conscious only of our individual atman in each. And we do not really know, speaking in the terms so far used, into what world we are born at death. “We may be landed in some other link of the chain of worlds, or in an entirely different kind of world.” For observe and this our author, who is no crude materialist, expressly indicates the existence of this infinite series of physical universe does not preclude the existence of other kinds of universe – ‘other worlds’ or ‘lokas’, with the conditions of which we have at present little in common. Of these also more knowledge may be possible in the future; for, “In taking control of nature, man has lost many spiritual gifts once possessed by his ancestors. Clairvoyance and telepathy were once almost universal. They have been deliberately atrophied in order to fit man for the conquest of nature. The human mind not only requires delicate senses and perception; it also requires certain blindness’s and insensibilities. Some sensibilities have been crusted over. Man has become a crustacean as regards some of his faculties. These have become ‘occult.’ When they are once more required, they will again come forth. They are beginning to come forth even now.”
            The author anticipates an enormous increase in man’s control of nature; and then what follows? A greater and greater control of the means of existence, with no more consideration for its meaning and goal than the present world be a growing nightmare, from which the evidence of the re-acquisition of lost spiritual faculties is the promise of deliverance. When the bulk of knowledge increases to ten and fifty fold the present, “when activities have to be spread over geological periods instead of lifetimes, man will, in order to cope with them, either have to prolong his life, or find a new way of permanently recording his experiences. Both ends may possibly be accomplished by a thinning of the veil which divides embodied man from the accumulated intelligence of his ancestors, who poured forth by the million every year into that unknown realm of existence with which the human race, for good reasons of its own, has severed almost all conscious connection.” This may be taken to refer not only to communication with spirits of departed human beings; but of intuition, the method of genius. One cannot but believe that all knowledge is really an absolute thing, and that man in his progress, rather discovers than creates it. What are we to think of the mathematical genius, who gives without a moment’s reflection the (correct) answer to questions involving enormously difficult mathematical calculations, say the cube root of some very large number? and of the similar phenomena of genius in other branches of knowledge? It is more than possible that intuition of this sort, belonging to the imaginative or real side of man which is not fettered by conditions of time, space, etc., is a higher and more enduring, and ultimately mere certain faculty than reason; though now requiring to be checked and controlled by that very person itself, which is bound up with, and alone can be said to understand, this phenomenal world.\
            To return to the main thesis of the volume, it may appear that the conception of an infinity of material universes lacks a unifying principle and presses upon the mind with all the weight of an incubus. Where is that unifying principle upon which we may rely to deliver us from the intolerable complexity of phenomena? The true answer has been given in India long ago. It may be summarized in the compound word, brahma-atma-aikyam, “unity of the Brahman and the atman.” All consciousness is really one; and it is upon that consciousness that phenomena in all their complexity depend. The same answer was given by Plato when he perceived the world as idea, and by Kant, when he perceived the world as Will. Our author’s position is the same. “I prefer,” he says “to look upon material phenomena, as symbols of mental phenomena.” That it should be necessary to ask at all where there can be found an unifying principle such as we have spoken of, “shows how a mechanical view of natural phenomena has obscured our appreciation of the realities underlying all human understanding. Atoms, electrons, material objects generally are not realities. They are our conceptions of realities which affect or sensorium, constructed in our minds from materials supplied by pur past experiences. Our experiences are the only realities of which we have definite evidence, and these are finally resolvable into sensations and memories of sensations. By an act of faith we extend our own sphere of sensations to include spheres which we perceive to be similar, and we thus are enabled to see with other person’s eyes and remember with other person’s memories. By another act of faith we postulate an ‘object’ behind a bundle of permanent or recurring sensations. These sensations are the symbol of that object, the sings by which it reveals its presence to us. No doubt the object contains some ultimate reality but what that ultimate reality may be, what the rest of its properties are, we can only faintly guess. We have only one key. In ourselves we can observe both the inner reality of a thing and its external and visible symbol.” 
            Thus our author speaks almost in the terms of Indian philosophy. An extract from Professor Deussen’s Philosophy of the Upanishads” will emphasize the identity of the point of view: - “If ever a general solution is reached of the great riddle, which presents itself to the philosopher in the nature of things all the more clearly the further our knowledge extends, the key can only be found where alone the secret of nature from lies open to us from within, that is to say, in our innermost self. It was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the Upanishads ‘to their immortal honor, found it when they recognized our atman, our inmost individual being, as the Brahman’ the inmost being of universal nature and all her phenomena.”
            Materialism in Western science has been a passing phase; it belongs already to the last generation. For the accumulation of facts does but give the opportunity for wider and wider generalizations of which the last and most fundamental consists in the reduction of all variety to that one unifying principle by which, when known all is known. Thus Western thought is progressing extraordinarily fast in the direction of Indian idealism. At the same time there is in the West a growing appreciation of the ideals of Indian civilization. I do not doubt that within a hundred years the culture of India will be valued in the west as that of Greece is to day; her achievements in philosophy, literature, science and art cannot ultimately be ignored, but must take their right place in the scheme of human culture and civilization.
            Meanwhile, very much the reverse is true of English educational ideals and methods in India. The subject is too wide to enter upon here, but in relation to science, it may be said that it is absurd to think that teaching the facts of science, in a superstitions and realistic manner, is offering intellectual emancipation to a country that evolved a truly scientific theory of the universe so long ago, and in whose daily life the philosophical point of view is taken a matter of course. Scientific facts are of extraordinary are from an utilitarian point of view; they may also, properly treated, be a means of culture and the very means of salvation from the ‘intolerable complexity’ of the phenomena which at first it seems to intensify. I say ‘may,’ because although science may speak of inert atoms and electrons as realities, without troubling about the ultimate reality behind them, yet that is going only halfway on the road which leads to intellectual emancipation. “Our next step in the exploration of the universe must be to get at its inner soul and meaning.” No hint of these in the teaching of science in India! But the idea is an integral element in Indian culture; and only those can truly serve India who come to fulfil, not to destroy her culture. Science will not serve her, if she is to give up philosophy in exchange for it.
            Meanwhile India must take her place again amongst the scientific peoples, not as a follower, but again as a leader, India is a congeries of little and great peoples, united by one historical tradition and national sentiment; may not all these contribute to the scientific picture of the world which mankind is making for its behoof? The value and vitality of the culture of many so called lesser peoples has been surprisingly demonstrated of late in Europe, and the volume under notice is an illustration of the vitality of their intellectual life; and of their essentialness in the scheme of civilization; for imagination as necessary in science as in art, is in smoke strong amongst the Kelts and it is accordingly not surprising to find that its author is an Irishman, and this year President of the Pan-Keltic Congress held in Edinburgh.

             Dr. A. K. COOMARASWAMY, D. Sc.,

Sunday, June 22, 2014

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY.*
[* The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. By The Right Hon. F. Max Muller, K.M. Longmans Green and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London. 1899. Syo. Pp. xxxii. And 618. Price 18 Shillings.]
            The Student of Sanskrit or of Philosophy had till not to look for any information concerning Indian Philosophy either in the original Sanskrit Texts themselves, in the stray or disconnected essays scattered through the works of Wilson, Colebrooke, or Goldstucker, or in Duesson’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie1 [1 As an introduction to this book is affixed a translation of Madhusuddhana Saraswati’s Prasthana Bheda, a very valuable resume of Indian systems of Philosophy] which appeals perhaps to a different public and in which the evolution and historical character of Indian Philosophy cannot in the nature of things occupy more than a subsidiary place. Between the voluminous though excellent essays of a few Sanskritists on one or two departments of Indian Philosophic Thought on the one hand, and the extremely sketchy and sometimes positively mischievous accounts of the whole range of Indian Philosophy in such books as Monier Williams’ “Brahminism and Hinduism” and “Indian Wisdom,” and Weber’s “History of Indian Literature,” on the other, it has always been an insuperable trouble to the Student of Indian Philosophy that he could not refer with ease for any information on branches of Indian Philosophy to an authoritative book that would be at once concise and exhaustive, adequate in treatment, clear and sympathetic in exposition. Such an ideal book was being felt as a sorry want ever since the impulse given to the study of Sanskrit Philosophy by the publication of Duesson’s “Elements of Metaphysics,” and Max Muller’s “Three lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy.” This want we might boldly say has in a way been remedied by the publication of Prof. Max Muller’s “Indian Philosophy” of which this article is a review. Prof. Max Muller, that Nestor among Sanskritists now living, has set himself, in the present book, to the work of showing the evolution of the main lines of Indian Philosophic thought as presented to us in the six systems of Indian Philosophy, and the historical growth and collateral developments of some schools of thought side by side with one another as in the case of the Vedanta and Sankhya. We will see therefore that to the author who is able to impose upon himself such a weighty task a sound linguistic training is as much essential as a deep acquaintance with the Schools of modern and ancient European Thought. If we may judge from his previous works, as a scholar that could breathe with perfect ease and calmness in an atmosphere that is so rarified as that of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kant2 [2 See Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason translated by Max Muller with an introduction by Ludwig Noire. Macmillan and Co.] and Descartes, as a student that has studied with abiding attention all the intricate problems connected with the growth and development of every important religion under the Sun, as a navigator that can steer with a composure that comes only of an infallible skill in the art, all the boisterous seas of early Indian Philosophy, and more than all as an expounder that is in good sympathy with whatever he gives an account of, that would speak as a strong adherent would do, and never distort, caricature, color, or twist any system he is speaking about, Max Muller’s competency for this truly responsible work should raise him above others in the English-knowing world. It is therefore not surprising that this book of Max Muller’s should have been looked forward to with expectation for some time. It should be in the hands of all students of Indian Philosophy who would be sure to welcome the book now that it appears. There is a good index at the end of the volume though here and there are flagrant omissions, and the whole book is attractively got up. The printing is clear and the price is not very moderate. In the body of the book there are many mistakes which indeed should be a surprising feature to students accustomed to Max Muller’s previous works. That Max Muller, whose immense use as a Vedic scholar and a student of the World’s philosophies and religions to the world of letters can be best measured by the turn that Sanskrit studies have taken in European Universities,2 [2 See Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason translated by Max Muller with an introduction by Ludwig Noire. Macmillan and Co.] and who would be the last man to spare any troubles on behalf of a book which should mark an era in the study of Indian Philosophy just as his “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” in Vedic studies3 [3 Vide H.G. Buhler’s speech in the Ninth international Congress of Orientalists held in 1892.] and on the correctness of, and sound presentation in which so much depends, should complain of the weakness of his old age, and ask forgiveness at the hands of his readers for mistakes that might have escaped his notice, really overcomes us with a feeling of sadness and regret as we open the book and remember that Mr. A.E. Gough, despite his kindness in reading a revise of Max Muller, alone and unassisted, in his vigorous days, was doing as perfectly as any proficient in proof examining. It has always been a matter of very rare curiosity for one to be able to find even slight topographical misprints, much less mistakes of fact in the professor’s books. Unfortunately our book has a little too much of errors of both descriptions, as compared with his previous works. The only reparation we have for all this, and it is more than a reparation, is his own touching words in the preface (p. XXI) “a man of seventy-six has neither the eyes nor the memory which he had at twenty-six, and he may be allowed to appeal to younger men for such help as he himself in his younger days has often and gladly lent to his Guru and fellow labourers.”4 [4 for the same strain of moving complaint, see also Max Muller’s Psychological Religion. New issue 1898. Preface p. XVI.] We will advert to all such mistakes in the course of our review. Prof. Max Muller after sketching in the preface the backbone of the Indian Philosophies, so to speak, namely the Advaitism of Sankara, and Kapila’s creed, and justly vindicating the right view each maintains from its own standpoint, speaks about the importance of the study of Indian philosophy:- “And if hitherto no one would have called himself a philosopher who had not read and studied the works of Plato and Aristotle, of Descartes and Spinoza, of Locke, Hume, and Kant in the original, I hope that the time will come when no one will claim that name who is not acquired at least with the two prominent systems of ancient Indian Philosophy, the Vedanta and the Sankhya” (p. XVII). Regarding the six main systems he has dwelt on, and their prominent apostles, he has been very careful to give a complete view and to represent them as a follower himself would. And thus he says “If we want our friends to love our friends, we do not give a full account of their qualities but we dwell on one or two o the strong points of their character. This is what I have tried to do for my old friends, Badarayana, Kapila and the rest” (p. XVIII) and elsewhere says again “It is in the Walhalla of real philosophers that I claim a place of honor for the representatives of the Vedanta and the Sankhya.” (p. XVII). Whatever seemed in the exposition of a system not likely to appeal to European tastes or sympathies, that, he says, he has sedulously avoided, though we do not know if in a book of such magnitude, claiming to traverse the ground of the whole philosophic literature existing in India, this would be a proceeding not prejudicial to the interests of Sanskrit Scholarship. And there are other blemishes also especially in the treatment of the later developments of each cardinal system, to which we will direct the attention of the reader when we take chapter after chapter for review. Professor Max Muller gives as his opinion, and in this he echoes the views of that out and out, radical, Sankhyan expositor5 [5 His commentary on the Vedanta Sutras is now being translated by Ganganath Jha. M.A.] of the Vedanta of the sixteenth century, Vignanabhikshu, whom the most keen-witted of pundits of the present day will not approach without tremor and a sense of diffidence, that there is no doubt there has been ever from the beginning of philosophical thought in India extending to the remotest past, a common amount of floating parcels of plastid philosophic matter which every ingenious thinker was ready to shape as he will and add them as bricks to the edifice he reared. This idea is what one should have expected from Max Muller after his extensive study ranging over the whole realm of Indian Philosophy, and he expresses it in a markedly fine style, “The longer I have studied the various systems, the more have I become impressed with the view taken by Vignana Bhikshu and others, that there is behind the variety of the six systems, a common fund of what may be called national or popular philosophy, a large Manasa lake of Philosophical thought and language, far away in the distant North, and in the distant Past, from which each thinker was allowed to draw for his own purposes.” (p. XVIII) The truth of this can well be brought home to the mind of any one who wishes to think seriously, by taking into consideration the four primordial elements or rather the basic pillars of primary philosophic efforts in India, as shadowed forth by the principal and undoubtedly archaic Upanishads, in the pregnant terms Atman and Brahman, Prakriti and Purusha, how out of these four main lines of ideas, two important schools evolved, the Sankhya and the Vedanta as represented in Badarayana6 [6 How much alloy of Kapila he meant to possess is yet open to question. Sankara his expounder is a consistent adherent to the Upanishad doctrines. He heads the latest recession of a school represented by Gaudapada and others. Which of the two, Ramanuja or Sankara, portrays Badarayana correctly cannot be settled satisfactorily in the absence of any other work of Badarayana venting his views. If consistent logic, sharp intellection and a faithful, sensible and unswerving interpretation of the Upanishads are taken into consideration, Sankara indeed is Ramanuja’s superior. No doubt the Upanishads are older than the Brahma Sutras and represent as such an earlier view. Vide Thibaut’s introduction to the Sariraka Bhashya of Sankara. Sacred Books of the East.] and Kapila, and how by squaring, cubing and halving each respectively or by combining and permuting both in various proportions, with some existing terms deleted and new ones added, was brought into existence the various other schools of philosophic activity adorning the Sutra and Purana, nay even still later periods, such as Sankara’s unflinching Monism, Ramanuja’s Visishtadwaitism,7 [7 As regards the Chit, Achit, and Icwara (Padarthatritayam) and the Sankhyan complexion of his cult, see Vedantatattvasara of Ramanuja.] Vidyaranya’s and Vachaspathi Vignana Bhikshu’s clever amalgam of Sankya and Vedanta which borders upon that of Ramanuja, the Pacupatha system which is little else but Ramanuja inoculated with a goodly dose of Sankhya, not to speak of Yoga, as given to us in Patanjali’s theism, Vaiseshika, Nyaya and a mixture of the two latter, Nyaya-Vaiseshika and the latter modern developments therefrom. But it is all the same for a scientific students of philosophy to say, that all the existing systems have emanated or developed from a beginning of complex fancies in the minds of the ancient Hindus regarding the aetiology and eschatology of things, sometimes by slow growths in independent directions, and often by an interblending and intertwining of branches with new suckers shooting forth from the resultant tangle, as to think as Vignana Bhikshu8 [8 Vide Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya, and for an almost similar view see Annie Besant. ‘Four Great Religions of the World.’] suggests in a spirit of Orthodox piety or enlightened liberation, whichever it may be, that all the various philosophies have behind them a common fund of truth, and the Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Yoga, Sankhya, and Vedanta are but steps in the ladder of spiritual progress both in a cosmic and psyche sense [viz. the various stages reached in the objective world of intellectual efforts by philosophers who formulated independent systems corresponded with stages or milestones in the subjective growth of the Soul in each human individual], Nyaya indicating the lowest rung while Vedanta the highest. Vignana Bhikshu’s view may be tersely epigrammatized, if we parody Prof. Haeckel’s well-known biogenetic law, and understand by his phylogeny, the summary of the different distinct mental steps arrived at by various philosophies in the Indian philosophic world, as a Monad’s spiritual ontogeny is recapitulated by World’s phylogeny or Phylogeny reflects Ontogeny. In any case after looking into the unique structure of every Indian philosophic dogma, and the relations that link it with every other system living near it, we must conclude that there has been a persisting course of evolution of thought through centuries, much the same as the parinama9 [9 See Madhava’s Sarvadarsana Sangraha.]  of Icwara postulated by Ramanuja. Prof. Max Muller deplores towards the end of the preface the neglect into which the study of some philosophies such as Yoga have fallen and hence adds most feelingly10 [10 Compare also his pupil Kielhorn’s remarks in the introduction to Nagoji Bhatta’s Paribhashendusekhara.] “It is feared, however, that even this small remnant of philosophical learning will vanish in one or two generations, as the youths of the present day, even if belonging to orthodox Brahminic families, do not take to these studies as there is no encouragement” (p. XX) and yet he rejoices that there are modern Hindus now rising who “after studying the history of European Philosophy, have devoted themselves to the honorable task of making their own national philosophy better known to the world at large.” In this connection after pointing out that “a mixing up of philosophical with religious and theosophical propaganda, inevitable as it is said to be in India, is always dangerous,” he enumerates a number of Journals as being instrumental in guiding people aright and in deterring them from mixing up philosophical creed with sectarian religious littleness, and among which “The Light of Truth” is brought in as one. I shall quote the sentence itself, “But such Journals as the Pundit, the Brahmavadin, the Light of Truth, and lately the Journal of the Buddhist Tax Society, have been doing most valuable service “and further on he continues referring to Texts and Translations and to the necessity of bringing to light the non-Sanskrit philosophical literature that exists in the South of India, in such rapturous terms, “What we want are Texts and Translations and any information that can throw light on the chronology of Indian Philosophy. Nor should their labor be restricted to Sanskrit Texts. In the South of India there exists a philosophical literature which, though it may show clear traces of Sanskrit influence, contains also original indigenous elements11 [11 See inter alia my communication, “The University and the Vernaculars.” The Madras Mail. March 12th 1897.] of great beauty and of great importance for historical purposes. Unfortunately few scholars only have taken up, as yet, the study of the Dravidian languages and literature, but young students who complain that there is nothing left to do in Sanskrit Literature, would I believe, find their labors amply rewarded in that field” (pp. XX.XXI). These are the words in which he is referring to the study of indigenous Tamil works on Philosophy, Literature and what not, and no need that we should emphasis too strongly if South India and its native literary activity have even been absent from his thoughts when thinking of an historical evolution of Indian Philosophies, extant and extinct. The only other reference he makes to the Siddhanta Deepika is in the chapter on the Mimamsa, where, in the course of our review we will direct appropriately the reader’s attention to it.
            The books is divided into nine chapters. The first or the introductory chapter deals with the physical and other material environments in which the Hindus found themselves placed that helped a good deal for such a rich harvest of philosophic speculations in India, and with the natural facilities afforded by physical features and the want of keen competition for the necessaries of life among the Hindus, tending to stimulate them to think seriously about Soul and God, the subjectivation of the Human Individual and the objectivity of the puzzling Kosmos. The second chapter gives an account of the Vedas and the Vedic gods, and seeks to fathom in their inmost depths for the latent springs of the future philosophical fermentation of India and to explain how the potential germs imbedded in them blossomed up into the vague philosophic surmises of the Upanishads epoch and into the systematized philosophical systems of the Sutra period. This brings us to the third chapter entitled “The systems of Philosophy” where in the main he endeavors to find out the common ground work of the six main systems of Philosophy and to point to the necessity of a mnemonic literature being present in the absence of writing, when pupils originally learnt the respective systems in retired Asramas in forests by getting by rote a collection of well-arranged aphorisms constructed with due reference to minimize the labor of memory, supplemented by oral running commentaries from their preceptors, Chapter IV gives an excellent summary of the Uttaramimamsa of Badarayana as conceived and explained  by Sankara, with a few remarks on Ramanuja’s system. Chapter V deals with the Purvamimamsa whose old name is Nyaya, since in it was originally developed those elements of Indian Logic, which migrated in succession to Gotama’s Nyaya system, Badarayana’s creed in the hands of its later adherents, and up to the Nadiya recension of the Nyaya school disfiguring it to such a length that it lost sight of the original philosophic aim it set before itself and covered itself with a thick mist of verbal acrobatism or word-jugglery. Or perhaps as Max Muller thinks, the particular materials which, to the exclusion of others, the Purvamimamsa drew from the common fund of philosophical store were also drawn upon by various other schools as necessity arose. In Chapter VI he gives an account of the Sankhya, prefacing it with a short summary of the later Vedantic developments with which the Sankhya was freely mixed. Chapter VII has for its subject “Yoga and Sankhya,” discusses the relation between these two, and ends with an analysis of the Yoga, and the bearing of the Sankhya on it. In Chapter VIII Nyaya and Vaiseshika are touched upon, with a fairly good account of the Nyaya in its later stages, and an excellent resume of the Indian Logic. The indissolubleties between the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika are very well sketched. In Chapter IX which is the last chapter, the Vaiseshika as an independent system is taken into consideration, and the Indian atomic philosophy and the so called “qualities” postulated by Kanada are examined. The closing section gives a thoughtful comparative view of all the six systems, with the points of contrast between them and showing the underlying unity of conception running through them through sometimes imbedded far below the surface. Whatever we may to have to say as regards the completeness or anything like exhaustiveness in the treatment of the various systems adopted in the present work, one cannot but admire the almost Indian fashion in which the philosophies are presented to the readers without any perversion, distortion, or coloring and the broad-minded sympathy and extreme reverence for productions of the Past evidenced in his exposition of the Indian systems. More than all, not content with explaining the philosophy with the skill and clearness of a true philosophy, the Professor on every occasion is anxious to trace the primary thoughts, difficulties, and aspirations that surged within the breasts of Kapila, Badarayana and the rest, which might have ended in the six grand systems of philosophy as the final solutions of problems presenting themselves to those thinkers in this inexplicable dreams of life. Prof. Max Muller wants to find beneath the apparently cold philosophies of Kapila and Badarayana which were evidently the culminating upshot of a whole period or a series of periods of philosophic incubation, the living motives, the way out of human troubles, losses or despondency and the incipient thoughts, conceived by those thinking people in a purely resigned spirit hankering after the Truth. He creates sympathies in us to like our old philosophers, since the same problems which assail us in thinking moments, confronted them, and the possible solutions that struck them as ways out of the difficulty they have handed down to posterity. And therefore they were all human from top to toe and meant these as a method of consoling reflection when we open our eyes to the Gordian knot of this world presented to our senses.
            There is nothing striking in the Introductory chapter for people that have been already used to Max Muller’s other works12 [12 Vide also Max Muller’s History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature Chapter IV and his “India, what can it teach us?”], especially his four courses of Gifford lectures on Natural, Physical, Anthropological and Psychological Religion, and hi Hibbert lectures on the Religions of India, for, in it we get only a connected presentation of his early views appertaining to the growth of philosophical thoughts in India almost necessitated by its ancient geographic and economic conditions. The peace and plenty which people in India enjoyed in olden times coupled with a prodigal supply of food which Nature lavished without much labor on the part of the inhabitants, gave them little care to mind the problems of everyday wants and left them nothing whatever of the modern heat of politics, and thus surrounded as they were by a luxuriant vegetation, tropical groves and pleasant streams, Nature quickened their minds to a multitude of speculations about the mystery, variety and unity of the visible Kosmos, which culminated after numberless generations in the solid systems of philosophy, the glory of the Indian peoples. That this was so, is evident when we look into the internal historical evidences supplied by the antecedent conditions that gave birth to Buddhism, the intellectual life in ancient India as reflected in the Swetaswatara, Kaushitaki and other Upanishads, and the post-Buddhistic history given us in the Tripitaka, Brahmajalasutta and the like. The assistance of the Mahabharata also may be called in here, as affording us a splendid glimpse of the domestic life lead by the Hindus in those hoary days. More than all, the accounts of Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at the court of Chandragupta, and of Hiouen-thsang, the Chinese pilgrim who visited India at what may be called the Renaissance period of Sanskrit Literature, give us their own share of evidence as to the philosophic and almost unpolitical atmosphere in which the people of ancient India breathed. Thus Prof. Max Muller after summing up all the evidence has to say, “As far back as we can trace the history of thought in India, from the time of king Harsha and the Buddhist pilgrims back to the descriptions found in the Mahabharata, the testimonies of the Greek invaders, the minute accounts of the Buddhists in their Tripitaka, and in the end the Upanishads, themselves, and the hymns of the Veda, we are met everywhere by the same picture, a society in which spiritual interests predominate and throw all material interests into the shade, a world of thinkers, a nation of philosophers” (p. 42).
            In the second chapter an account of the Vedas is given as the literary document in which philosophy had not as yet been differentiated from religion, or at least, in the Samhita portion of which even a forecast is hardly possible of the apparent distinction between religion and philosophy inaugurated imperceptibly in the Upanishads and reaching its noonday vigor in the Sutra period. The various steps by which the chaos of Vedic philosophy was reduced to the cosmos of the Sutra-period Schools are lucidly sketched, with philological notes on various words found in the Vedas that became in aftertimes, the key-stones of various philosophic systems. The syncretism and the henotheism of the Samhitas and the Brahmanas, as well as the polytheistic tendencies found in the earlier portions of some of the Rig-Vedic hymns, are succeeded by the pantheism and monotheism of the Upanishads, nay, in some instances, by utterances pointing to a positive belief in monism. When speaking about the three classes of Vedic gods, of the sky, of the mid-air and of the earth , he alludes to the curious fact of the absence of anything like Star-worship in India to any prominent extent, and then goes on “A few of the stars only, such as were connected with human affairs, determining certain seasons, and marking the time of rain (Hyades), the return of calmer weather (Pleiades), or the time for mowing (Krittikas), were noticed and named, but they never rose to the rank of the high gods.” (p. 49) Professor Max Muller is evidently making here an erroneous distinction between the Pleiades and the Krittikas which both, on the other hand, refer to the same widely extended groups.13 [13 See Newcomb’s Popular Astronomy p. 456, Also B.G. Tilak, Orion or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas.] The distinction between syncretism and henotheism which puzzled and confounded Prof. Weber is well worth noting. Several gods in the Vedas owing to their position in Nature were seen to perform the same acts, and hence a Vedic poet might well take upon himself to say that Agni acted not only with Indra or Savitri but that in certain of his duties Agni was Indra and was Savitri. The number of dual and triple gods that were thus addressed as working in unison for the time will be brought within the phase of worship known as syncretism and it is to be carefully distinguished from henotheism which addresses for the moment either Indra or Agni or Varuna as the only God in existence with an entire forgetfulness of all other gods. And this distinction is very interesting to us since it was a pons asinorum to Prof. Weber in the study of comparative mythology, and he actually mistook the syncretism of Prof. Max Muller for his henotheism, and began blaming him on that account. In a way therefore we could see how the syncretism of the Vedic poets should lead to the later monotheistic theology, and the henotheistic phase to monistic philosophy which in the hands of Sankara rose to be a wonderful engine of influence. He points to two suktas from the Rig Veda, 14 [14 I shall quote them at length here: -]
and finds in the first of them the germs of monotheism and in the second of Advaitism. He also translates for us “The Hymn to the Unknown God” from the Rig Veda, which though other scholars believe was intended for the individualised god, Prajapati, Max Muller maintains to be the expression of a yearning after one supreme Deity, who had made Heaven and Earth, the Sea, and all that in them is. This is one of the very few hymns in the Rig Veda pointing in a decided manner to the third of the Indian mind after a monotheistic conception to start with. And from the monotheistic Prajapati sprang conceptions of Brahman (neut), unmanifested and absolute, and Brahma (masc) manifested and phenomenal, and an emanation from Nirgunam Brahman, useful from a Vyavaharic point of view for the popular worship of minds full of overflowing devotion towards a “Father in Heaven.” The Nasadiya hymn of the Rig Veda gives us a clue to the mind of the Vedic poet who constantly oscillated between a personal and impersonal or rather a super personal cause form whence the Universe emanated. The term  That One, was applied to the Deity as abolishing ideas connected with the male or female sex, with a personal and proper name, limited ipso facto and therefore not fit to fill the place which was to be filled by an unlimited and absolute power, as the primary cause of all created things. The various meanings of Brahman, Atman, Tadekam, and the etymology of Brahman from Brib are elaborately discussed. Max Muller dissents from the opinion of Prof. Weber that “the logos-idea had no antecedents in Greece to account for it” but was influenced by the Vedic Vach. He says “To say nothing else, Vach is a feminine, Logos15 [15 For the historical antecedents of the Logos, see Max Muller Theosophy pp 384, et Seq.] a masculine, and that involves more than a difference of grammatical gender” (p. 74) and a little further on adds “it is quite true that Prof. Weber was careful to add the clause ‘that he did not intend to give any opinion on this question,’ but, after such a confession it is hardly becoming to him that those who have given an opinion on this questions, had derived their information from him. Though Prof. Max Muller, in duty bound, deplores the conduct of Prof. Weber, it is all of a piece with what I previously described of him.16 [16 See my article on “Modern Oriental Scholarship.” Siddhanta Deepika, Vol II.] In connection with this question of Logos, Prof. Max Muller thrushes out the subject of intellectual intercourse between the Hindus and the Greeks in olden days and the limits of possibilities of an exchange of philosophical thought between the two countries, and then reverts to the derivation of Brahman in the following words, “I prefer to begin with Brahman as a synonym of Brih in Brihaspati, meaning word or speech, and to admit by the side of it another Brahman, meaning that which utters or drives forth (Prachya vayati) or manifests or creates, that which is the universal support (Skambha) or force (Daksha), in fact Brahman such as we find it afterwards, whether as a neuter, Brahman or for more popular purposes, as a masculine, Brahma” (p. 92). In this he differs from Duesson who proposes for the word a ritualistic origin and from many an another scholar giving or suggesting ever so many possible conjectures. He also believes a remote connection may be scented in point of significance between the Greek Logos and the Indian Brahman considering the relations17 [17 Vide Sankara’s Scholia on The Vedanta Sutras 1,3,28.] mind and speech bore to one another in the eyes of the Hindu. And he concludes the chapter, after looking to the meaning and occurrence in the Vedas of the words Atman and the rest, with the lines. “a belief in that Prajapati, as a personal od, was the beginning o monotheistic religion in India, while the recognition of Brahman and Atman as one constituted the foundation of all the monistic philosophy of that country” (p. 96).
            “The systems of philosophy” is the subject of the 3rd chapter. The aim of this chapter is to present the common philosophical ideas shared by all the schools. Such ideas were to be found in the most pronounced form in the classical Upanishads, and having them as the foundations the superstructure of many systems was raised. These germinal notions may be enumerated in the following order, 1. Metempsychosis (Samsara) 2. Immortality 3. The so-called ‘pessimism’ 4. Karman. 5. Infallibility of Veda 6. The three gunas, Satva, Rajas and Tamas. A resume of the main philosophical systems and their important tenets is given from Madhusudhana Sarasvati’s Prasthanabhedha, a comparatively modern treatise. After a preliminary account of the various systems, Madhusudhana discovers behind the multiple of thought comprising, 1. The Arumbha Vada, 18 [18 under this we might bring Nyaya, Vaiseshika and Mimamsa.] 2. Parinama Vada19 [19 under this we may mention the Sankhya, Yoga, Pasupata, and Pancharatra Systems, and the Visishtadvaita of Ramanuja.] and 3. Vivarta Vada20 [20 We have under this heading the purely Monistic School of the Advaitin Sree Sankaracharya and his later followers Vidyaranya, Madhusudhana, Vachaspathi Miera, Sureshwaracharya and the rest. The still later schools of Vignanabhikshu and others who were of the “Monistic Sankhya” cult may also be brought under this head.] Commenting on the description of Nyaya in Prasthana Bheda, Max Muller says, “No one could understand why such things as doubt, example, wrangling &c., could possibly be called categories or Praedicabalia, and it is no wonder that Ritter and others should have spoken of the Nyaya with open contempt, as they have done, if such things were represented to them as the categories of Indian Logic” (p. 160). This remark fairly indicates the pitfalls that lie in the path of a Sanskritist who undertakes translations of Sanskrit philosophical works without previous general philosophic culture. We cannot resist remembering in this connection the remarks of Prof. Garbe21 [21 Sankhya Sutra Vritti or Aniruddha’s commentary and the original parts of Vedanta Mahadeva’s commentary to the Sankhya Sutras edited by R. Garbe Biblioth, Indic. Series. Preface p.VI.] against Drs. Ballantyne and Hall as translators of the Sankhya aphorisms of Kapila, and those elsewhere of Max Muller pointing to Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra’s version of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with Bhoja Raja’s commentary. He says the six Padarthas22 [22 They are 1. Dravya 2. Guna 3. Karman 4. Samanya (the highest is Satta) 5. Visesha 6. Samavaya, and to which may be added 7. Abhava.] of Kanada cannot all be translated by the term categories, because the word Padartha is not rightly translated by category when we apply it to Samavaya. But even if we doubtfully render the sixth and the seventh as categories, the term would of course be quite mischievous when applied to the Padarthas of Gotama. The latter find their place mostly under Prameya.23 [23 Meaning not so much what has to be proved or established, as what forms the object of our knowledge.] And Madhusudhana winds up, after cataloguing in some detail all the systems, as “This, the Vedanta, is indeed the principal of all doctrines, any other doctrine is but a compliment of it, and therefore it alone is to be reverenced by all who wish for liberation, and this according to the interpretation of the venerable Sankara – this is the secret!” “Here” as Max Muller rightly says “we see clearly that Madhusudhana considered the Vedanta philosophy as interpreted by Sankara, if not as the only true one, still as the best of all philosophies.” After giving an account of the Prasthana Bheda and its contents, a list of books of reference is suggested for students who might not know Sanskrit. We should think the list is not rich and allows no choice on the part of the student to select from, in addition to some of the books being not very good of their kind. But of course the bibliography he gives in some of the later chapters when dealing with the systems individually and separately is ample, Max Muller after giving, or rather reproducing an account from Madhusudhana’s book, introduces us to the Brihaspati Sutras, a book that is now lost to us and the existence of which we are now led to infer, both from the account given in the Maitrayaniya Upanishad, of Brihaspati teachings the Asuras pernicious doctrines calculated to do spiritual harm to them and the short estimate given of that philosophy in the chapter on the Charvaka system in the Sarvadarsana Sangraha24 [24 Cowell and Gough. Sarvadarsana Sangraha pp. 2-12. Charvaka System.] of Madhava. The Brihaspati Sutras informs us of the cult of the Laukayatikas and the Charvakas, materialists and atheists. About the Vaikhanasa Sutras we find an allusion made by Bhaskaracharya25 [25 Scholia on Brahma Sutras III, 3, 5, 3.] and they were possibly intended for Vanaprasthas. Max Muller is almost silent about them. The Bhikshu Sutras, quoted by Panini26 [26 Panini. Ashtadhyayi IV.3.110.] is referred to, intended it would seem according to Max Muller for Brahmanic mendicants, though identified by Taranatha Tarkavachaspati27 [27 Siddhanta Kaumudi edited with a commentary named Sarala by T. Tarkavachaspati Vol. I, p. 592.] with the Vedanta Sutras. These Sutras are now entirely lost for us. The dates of the whole literature of the Sutras are in great uncertainty. We cannot be sure always when the Sutras attained their literary written down form after undergoing through generations of years countless changes at the hands of every devoted student and receiving accretions in all ways. The latest of them namely the Sankhya Sutras can be set down at the 14th century A.D. Not that the Sankhya philosophy is modern is the inference we are warranted in making from such a recent date, but that a body of Sankhyan doctrines were in the air from a very ancient time, perhaps as ancient as the Brahmana period, because their existence is testified to by Icvarakrishna’s28 [28 Popularly, Sankhya Karikas with a commentary by Gaudapada and also with another gloss by Vachaspathi Micra.] Karikas, and the Tattva Samasa, though some contend that the latter is a modern work, and others29 [29 This is Max Muller’s view.] urge that in it are contained the original Sankhya aphorisms themselves though receiving some additions from a later generation or the commentator, and that the doctrines so existing in the mouths of the Sankhyan votaries received their final literary form in the 14th century A.D. The most ancient Sutras existed as accepted doctrines long before the time of Buddha and began to take their literary form and be fixed as such in the memory of men belonging to particular schools, from the sixth century B.C. up till the second century B.C. We cannot be sure of setting more definite limits in the matter of dates and so can merely say that the dogma and cult of each school must have been reduced from their amorphous state to the formulated condition in which we find it in the Sutras presented to us at the time indicated above. It goes without saying that even after the literary shackles of the Sutra-form were put upon them, they were never invaded by that petrification, which cripples thoughts and allows no more reformation, addition or amplification, till comparatively very recent times. All the time after the 2nd century B.C., they have been receiving ever so many changes as each Asrama of disciples handled them, thought about them and began to work upon them. This would explain why sometimes, as in the Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali, apparently incongruous statements appear from the hand of the same fictitious author, and why the tenets expounded in one chapter do not tally with what are taught in the next. The name of the author is tackled on to the Sutras as a sort of respect shown to the original thinker or compiler, and they go on growing from generation to generation. We know in the Brahma Sutras, there are places in which it is said explicitly that Badarayana says so and so. No author would speak of himself in the third person and the explanation we have given would throw light upon such apparent anomalies which ever appear in the Sutra literature of India. So to speak, if we may compare the period of metaphysical activity which characterised India in the sixth century B.C. and in which for the first time the various codes of systems got to the first stage of literary crystallization, to a fermenting vat, Buddha we may term as one of the very proliferous yeast-cells. The gymnosophist Nirgrantha or Gnathipura was once of the older cells in this vat and many an other cell was active when the vat was fermenting, and with the subsidy of fermentation some of them died, a few among which leaving a trace of their life-history, while a large number have survived with their progeny thriving and very healthy. About the common philosophical fund underlying all philosophies, we may with pleasure note that Prof. Max Muller appears quite just in his observations and completely defensive in guarding the Indian cause. Because when speaking about the so-called element of “Pessimism” with which foreigners have charged the Indian Philosophy, be in right in retorting that the Indian Philosophers are by no means dwelling for ever on the miseries of life, and they are not always whining and protesting that life is not worth living. They simply state that they received the first impulse to philosophical reflection on viewing the suffering in the world. And in Max Muller’s words “considering that the aim of all Indian Philosophy was the removal of suffering, which was caused by nescience, and the attainment of the highest happiness, which was produced by knowledge, we should have more right to call it Eudemonistic than Pessimistic” (p. 140). When the cause of the apparent suffering which necessitates the Indian Philosopher to look to the true springs of happiness, considering that sorrow, weariness, disappointment and pan appertain to the flesh, is inquired into, all the philosophic cults have but one answer to give, though in different ways or forms. The Vedanta gives Avidya, 30 [30 Nescience.] the Sankhya Aviveka, 31 [31 Nondiscrimation.] the Nyaya, Mithyagmana 32 [32 False Knowledge.] and so on, and to break this Bandha of ignorance by genuine Gnana is the consoling work of philosophy. About the Gunas as a common factor in all philosophies in India, we have only to say they are made up of three constituents which correspond33 [33 In this manner: - Hegel’s Thesis to the Indian Sattva, his Antithesis to the Indian Tamas, and Synthesis to Rajas.] in a near way with Hegel’s Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. In the most general sense they represent no more than a series comprising three terms, the two extremes standing for Raja and Tamas, and the middle term for Sattva. Tension between these qualities, according to Indian Philosophy, produces activity and struggle. Equilibrium leads to temporary or final rest. This principle is applied over and over again in systems that recognise a Cosmic Parinama or Evolution, such as the Sankhya, where every step in the building of the Cosmos is explained by an application of the principle of the preponderance or equality of the Gunas. Prof. Max Muller’s vindication of the ultimate Duhkha-Nivarana of every one of the Indian Philosophies, be it the Purva Mimamsa’s service in lessening the ordinary afflictions of man by means of sacrifices, the Uttara-Mimamsa’s removal of Nescience through Vidya, the Sankhya’s promise of a complete cessation of all pain by the liberation of the Purusha, the Yoga’s reaching Kaivalya by Samadhi, the Vaiseshika’s final cessation of all pain by the promise of a knowledge of Truth and Gotama’s holding out Apavarga from the complete destruction of all pain by means of logic, against the charge of Pessimism brought against it by undiscerning critics who have no brains to feel that philosophy is not after all suicide, is very just and sympathetic, and it shows in the author a true insight into the very core and tenor of the Indian Philosophy. What strikes us always as par excellence about the Professor is the almost Hindu devotional spirit that lights up his weighty words and the genuine feeling of a real Vedantin or rather an Indian philosopher that inspires his words and giver a reverent charm to his earnest expositions.
               We now pass to the 4th Chapter which treats of the Vedanta or Uttara Mimamsa. All through the chapter he takes as the type of the Vedanta School, Sankara, since he is an Ultra-Monist and represents the ancient tradition and spirit of the Upanishads, though there may be two opinions if he is portraying Badarayana rightly, and is a consistent logician carrying with unflinching precision the results to their final and legitimate conclusion when once the premises are granted. The account which Max Muller gives of the Vedanta is very clear and takes up all its recondite and obscure points one by one and clears them up in a way that will appeal in European readers. The moot point of the origin of Nescience is well touched upon. Speaking about Badarayana, Max Muller says, “He is to us a name, and an intellectual power, but nothing else. We know the date of his Commentator Samkara34 [34 Vide, however, System des Vedanta of Duessen, p. 37; Also Fleet. Indian Antiquary, Jan. 1897, p. 41; Again Mr. Pathaka in the Indian Ant. XI, 174. Mr. Telang fixes Sankara’s date as early as 590 A.D.] in the 8th Century A.D. or 7th Century A.D. and we know that another commentator was even earlier. We also know that Bodhayana’s commentary was followed by Ramanuja. It is quite possible that Bodhayana, 35 [35 Thibaut Vedanta-Sutras with Sankara’s Commentary S.B.E. p. XXII. We must note however here that Dramidabhashya, a commentary on Bodhayana is supported by Sankara sometimes. Vide. Sankara on Chandogya Upanishad-V.V.R.] like Ramanuja, represented a more ancient and faithful interpretation of Badarayana’s Sutras, and that Sankara’s philosophy in its unflinching Monism is his own rather than Badarayana’s. But no manuscript of Bodhayana has yet been discovered.” We do not know what Max Muller means by the possibility of Ramanuja’s representing a more ancient and faithful interpretation of Badarayana, on the reason of his having Bodhayana, another interpreter, before him. If on this argument there is a possibility for Ramanuja’s to reflect an ancient interpretation of Badarayana, the possibility is twice in the case of Sankara, because he has going before him Gandapada, 36 [36 The stemma of Sankara is found in the verse.]
Upavarsha and others, Gaudapada is the author of a Bhashya37 [37 An edition of the book is extant, translated and annotated by Wilson and Colebrooke.] on the Sankhya-Karika of Icvarakrishna, and the grand Guru of Sankara. Possibly he is older than Bodhayana who is little else but a figment of fancy to us in the absence of any works ascribed to him or contemporary evidence. And Upanishads is the one mentioned in Kathasaritasagara38 [38 Vive Tawney’s Translation of Somadeva’s Kathasarithsagara Biblioth. Ind. Series.] as the teacher of Panini though about the identity Max Muller entertains some doubt. As such when once the identity is granted the commentator Upanishads must be shifted to the Sutra period itself, which means considerably prior in times to Bodhayana. We see therefore that Sankara was a prominent teacher of the Monistic School which had its paramparas as much before as afterwards. In fact we find in Gaudapada’s Karikas39 [39 Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada-Karika and Sankara-Bhashya. Anandashrama Series. The following are some of the Slokas from the Karikas of Gaudapada in which we find the most emphatic utterances of Monism and the theory of Maya:-
on the Mandukya Upanishad distinct ideas about Maya, about  and about Advaitism in Sankara’s sense. So that Sankara does not deserve any credit as the exclusive of the Monistic Theory. He was essentially an excellent expounder, but buckled also with the strong armor of aggressive controversy, and therefore, represented a recension only of the Monistic School that had its beginnings in the dateless past. About Upavarsha we know that he was Panini’s preceptor and one of Sankara’s Acharya Varga. In this way we see that on the score of antiquity Sankara has more historical persons to support his cult.46 [46 What has often been quoted as the shortest summary of the Vedanta in a couple of lines represents the Vedanta of Sankara, not of Ramanuja:-
             
And if for one or two Sutras of Badarayana, Ramanuja’s explanation would fit in better, three times the number of it could be shown in the same book where Sankara’s would do so best. Our concluding evidence of fidelity to the original meaning and the rest, must rest only on our knowing the real view of Badarayana, which must be a sphinx defying solution till we get at another book of Badarayana’s giving us a clearer insight into his views. As it is, it is indiscreet to venture on guesses. Thibaut, on whose introduction to his Translation of the Brahma Sutras so much devolves, had, as his Pundit-friends to assist him at translating Sankara’s Scholia, two Visishtadwaitins,41 [41 Their names are, I believe, Rama Misra Sastrin and Yagneswara Sastrin. Thibaut. Vedanta Sutras with Sankara Bhashya. Introduction.] both Professors in the Benares Sanskrit College. The case, one can imagine, will be entirely different, if a scholar like Duessen, Max Muller or the late M. N. Dvivedi, who will combine with previous philosophic training splendid independent capacities for translation, would go to the work as a monist. As a matter of fact, Duessen’s interpretation of the Sutras is at entire variance with Thibaut’s. After all, whether ancient or modern as in science so in philosophy, there ought to be progress in thought and the evidence of it is to be sought in the works of men standing the test of every logical proof, every right inquiry, every zealous argument. If Ramanuja  who lived as late as the 13th century A.D. could quote the name of a phantom-commentator Bodhayana, to testify to whose existence there is not a vestige of historical evidence left, and if thereby he could claim priority of teaching and faithfulness of interpretation of the Vedanta Sutras, how much more should Sankara, a thinker who lived as old as the 8th century A.D., who could claim among his Guru-Parampara, a grand-preceptor in Gaudapada and a hoary commentator in Bhagavad Upavarsha, do so for his views? Sankara’s philosophy cannot be said therefore to be his own in as much as Ramanuja’s cannot be. Both represented independent streams of tradition and the streams must have taken their rise in ancient days. Both must have had their own Paramparas. Both were Huxley’s suddenly necessitated for the support of Darwin’s growing effete. Sankara’s philosophy, even if said to be at variance with Badarayana’s, can claim a still greater antiquity, nay the greatest antiquity, because it reflects the Upanishads in the most correct and consistent manner.42 [42 Max Muller. Theosophy, p. 113. “If we take the Upanishads, as a whole, I should say that Sankara is the more thorough and faithful exponent of their Teaching.] About the strength of his views and the unapproachable power of his arguments I need not speak here, because Max Muller himself speaks about them very elaborately in the book under review and elsewhere with overflowing admiration.
            Prof. Max Muller in discussing the identity or otherwise of the Vyasa of the Mahabharat and the Vyasa of the Brahma Sutras, wants to make a case out of the different styles of the two works, and so he says “Vyasa or Krishna Dvaipayana is the name given to the author of the Mahabharata, and no two styles can well be more different than that of the Vyasa of the Mahabharata, and that of Vyasa, the supposed author of the so-called Vyasa-Sutras” (p.153.) If other things pointed to the identity between the two, this cannot be taken as any argument to disprove it, since we know there are various things to determine the diction of an author, such as the nature of the subject, the form in which he chooses to write, the literary style he has perfected at a particular stage in his life. We have seen how S.P. Pandit43 [43 Vide Malavikagnimitra of Kalidasa by S.P.Pandit, Bombay Sanskrit Series, Introduction.]  in his edition of Malavikagnimitra has exploded Prof. Wilson’s wrong views and shown that the Kalidasa of Malavikagnimitra and that of Raguvamsa and Sakuntala though apparently various, yet, judging from the sameness of imagery between the two, and noting that the surface differences of style in their books are explained by stages in the growth of the perfection of literary manner, were really one. And we have another living example in the variant styles of Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi. Any good Sanskrit student must perceive the difference of style in his Asubodha-Vyakaranam, a work written in Sutra-form which cannot boast of literary grace by any means, from his ordinary mode in the Encyclopedic Lexicon, Vachaspatya, marked by ease, flow, elegance and nervousness. The same may be said of the disparity of diction patent between Vidyaranya’s Panchadasi and his Jivanmukti Viveka. The difference of style is no complete test, whatever may be said of evidences otherwise adduced. Prof. Max Muller’s linguistic explanations to why the name Vyasa should become connected with the Mahabharata and with the Brahma Sutras by pointing to its meaning as a noun viz, ‘compilation’ or ‘arrangement,’ is we believe given in playful humor. It is a curious thing in the Indian world of letters, we would urge to the attention of Max Muller, that the name of every great person connected with any classical movement or work, is often such as can bear a meaning enlightening as about the labors of the owner of the appellation, so that the meaning of an author’s name suiting his work, should not lead us to vague surmises about his non-existence, and about the presence of a modus operandi alone regarding  the writing of a book, or the way in which it was handed down. Any way we must rest content with the reflection that these were the names suggested by adherents, or contemporary men, to the author in consonance with his acts, in place of his true name. This amphiboly of names is not a rare thing in Sanskrit Literature. Other things being equal therefore we may leave the disparity of style etc. between the Mahabharata and the Vyasa Sutras quite out of account, as it makes a hair of difference either in supporting or weakening a view. On P. 154, occurs the statement “Vachaspati Misra declares that the Bhikshu Sutras are the same as the Vedanta Sutras and that the followers of Parasara were in consequence called Parasarins.” Evidently Max Muller is making a mistake here, it is Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi”44, [44 of course Taranatha bases his note on the works of Bhattoji Dikshita, Nagoji Bhatta and Gnanendra Sarasvati. Vide his edition of Siddhanta Kaumudi, Vol 1. P. 592.] and not Vachaspathi Micra that declares the identity of Bhikshu and the Vedanta Sutras. The occurrence of Vachaspathi in both the names has been the cause of the mistake in Max Muller’s book, because he himself rightly gives the reference on P. 113, note 2. When discussing the relative age of the Vedanta Sutras and the Bhagavat Gita, Max Muller quotes a passage from the latter in which occurs the expression Brahma Sutras and to which a wrong reference is given. It is the 4th sloka45 [45 The Passage is this:-
 of Chapter XIII and not the 3rd one as pointed out by Max Muller. Max Muller takes this Brahma Sutras to refer to the Vyasa Sutras and he has forgotten that Sankara who was the most ancient commentator46 [46 It has latterly been urged sometimes by Dravidian students that Sreekantha was anterior to Sankara, but we must keep this view, at the most, in abeyance till better contemporary evidence is brought to light. I will take up this question in a future number. See however Siddhanta Deepika, vol. 2, p. 250. et seq.]  whose works have reached us of both Bhagavat Gita and Brahma Sutras and who therefore was in a better position to judge of reference and like, explains  by though Anandagiri who is a later scholiast on Sankara suggests as an alternative explanation, also a reference to  
He suggests as the greatest concession made to the antiquity of the Gita that it may be contemporaneous with the Brahma-Sutras. We should think with Sankara that the expression ‘Brahma Sutras’ does not refer to the Vedanta Sutras but to a different subject altogether. Professor Max Muller does not give us any cogent proof to substantiate his statement, rather the very theory he propounds goes against him48. [48 For Max Muller advances that under the same name, different bodies of religious tenets may appear in successive generations when mnemonic literature was the only resource. So even granting as Max Muller urges, that the Gita referred to the Brahma Sutras, it may be to a code of doctrines which were essentially different from the later Vyasa Sutras, since a body of doctrines undergoes ever so many changes before they reach their final literary form. As such the Professor’s suggestion does not hold water in either way. Assuming a reference to “Brahma Sutras” which is quite unlikely, it ought to have been to a body of doctrines of that name analogous to or different from the later Vyasa Sutras, but which might possibly have been the original germs that developed into the mature Vyasa Sutras.] The hazy conjectures he makes even defying the view of native commentators are not supported by the evidence of any literary document. We have not the requisite space to travel over the question even fairly adequately to support Sankara’s interpretation.49 [49 cf. Weber’s Indian Lit. p. 242. Also Lassen’s Preface to his edition of Schlegel’s Gita, p. XXXV.] For one aspect of the same question which leads us to Sankara’s view, we will refer the reader to Telang’s able treatment of it in his edition of the Bhagavad Gita50 [50 ibid Introduction pp. 31 et seq. and ante.] in the Sacred Books of the East. After a careful examination of the internal and external evidences, he comes to the conclusion that the Gita belongs to a period very anterior to that of the Sutras, that in the one we have the chaotic and plastid germs of an amorphous conglomerate of the various philosophical schools, while in the other we find systems distinctly marked out and ready made, and that in fact one belongs to the Upanishad and Brahmana period and the other to the later Sutra period, when not only definite philosophical systems, but also law books were formed. Max Muller is, beyond doubt, echoing Sankara and truly representing the Vedanta when he says, “But we must remember that it is the highest object of the Vedanta to prove that there is only one true reality namely Brahman, and that the manifoldness of the visible world is but the result of that Nescience which the Vedanta is meant to destroy” (p. 192). He repeats the same Advaitic, or Brahmavadin’s view when he says “It is the very object of the Vedanta philosophy to expel, and annihilate this Avidya and replace it by Vidya.”51 [51 op. cit. p. 199; cf. also Max Muller. Three Lectures on the Vedanta, p. 62.] On p. 203, the Professor informs us, “As long as creation is conceived as a making or fashioning of matter, it does not exist for Badarayana. Creation with Badarayana would be nothing but the result of Nescience.” ‘Is this Ramanuja’s view’, we would ask, who believes that God is the real Karta of a Noumenal Cosmic Evolution, and if it were not, it is a serious puzzle if he is representing Badarayana correctly. What to Sankara, and of course to Badarayana is Vyavaharartham, is Satyam to Ramanuja. Later on, in p. 220, Max Muller states,” It sometimes seems as if Sankara and Badarayana had actually admitted not only two kinds of knowledge, but two Brahmas also, Sagunam and Nirgunam, with or without qualities, but this would again apply to a state of Nescience or Avidya only.” Surely this militates against the supposition that Ramanuja is a faithful interpreter of Badarayana. Speaking about the highest point reached by Indian philosophers, Max Muller exclaims “None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone in regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman **** We cannot but admire the boldness with which the Hindu Metaphysician52 [52 Evidently Max Muller has in mind Sankara.] impressed with the miseries and evanescence of the world, could bring himself to declare even the Logos to be but the result of Avidya or Nescience, so that in the destruction of that Avidya could be recognised the highest object, and the summum bonum (Purushartha) of man. We need not praise or try to imitate a Colosseum, but if we have any heart for the builders of former days, we cannot help feeling that it was a colossal and stupendous effort. And this is the feeling that I cannot resist in examining the ancient Vedanta.53 [53 For the same stain of admiring veneration vide also Max Muller. Psychological Religion pp. 281, 311, 313, 314, 319.] Other philosophers have denied the reality of the world as perceived, but no one has ventured to deny at the same time the reality of what we call the Ego, the senses and the mind and their inherent forms” (p. 240). As regards the mistake that has prevailed in construing Sankara wrongly, the Professor feelingly adds “The danger with Sankara’s Vedantism was that what to him was simply phenomenal, should be taken for purely fictitious. There is however as great a difference between the two as there is between Avidya and Mithyagnana. Maya is the cause of a phenomenal, not of a fictitious world; and if Sankara adopts the Vivarta instead of the Parinama doctrine, there is always something on which the Vivarta or Illusion is at work, 54 [54 I would advise the reader in support of Max Muller’s true interpretation, to look up Sankara’s gloss on the Vedanta Sutras III, 2, 3., where the Sutras distinctly speak of Maya.] and which can not be deprived of its reality” (p. 243). After giving an account of the historical character of Ramanuja’s doctrines and the claim his exposition has on our attention, and demonstrating also to us that Ramanuja was one of the legitimate orthodox interpreters of the Brahma Sutras, Max Muller continues, “We ought therefore to look on Ramanuja as a perfect equal of Sankara, so far as his right of interpreting Badarayana’s Sutras, according to his own opinion, is concerned * * *. The individual philosopher is but the mouth-piece of tradition, and that tradition goes back further and further, the more we try to fix it chronologically” (p. 245); again “In the absence of any definite historical materials it is quite impossible for us to say whether, in the historical development of the philosophy at the time of Badarayana and afterwards, it was the absolute Monism as represented by Sankara that took the lead, or whether the more temperate Monism as we see it in Ramanuja’s commentary that exercised an earlier sway.” (pp. 248 et seq). Alluding afterwards to the archaic nature of the doctrines held forth in Ramanuja’s system, our book states, “But it does not follow that this whether heretical or orthodox55 [55 The italics are my own.]  opinion was really first propounded by Ramanuja * * *”. The only possible view that can be maintained by an impartial critic who looks to the true cult of Badarayana, is advanced when the Professor remarks on page 250, “Dr. Thibaut therefore seems to me to be quite right when he says that both Sankara and Ramanuja pay often less regard to the literal sense of the words and to tradition than to their desire of forcing Badarayana to bear testimony to the truth of their own philosophical theories.” Max Muller is mistaken in believing that in India Ramanuja wields a very large amount of influence over the people, but as a mater of fact Sankara’s followers would exceed in point of number56 [56 Vide Duessen. Elements of Metaphysics, p. 324, “Of a hundred Vedantins (I have it from a well-informed person who is himself a zealous adversary of Sankara, and follower of Ramanuja [evidently Duessen means Mr. Rama Misra Sastry of the Benares Sanskrit College – V.V.R.]) fifteen perhaps adhere to Ramanuja, five to Madhva, five to Vallabha, and seventy-five to Sankaracharya.”] all men of other following put together. As regards his own individual opinion and conviction about the Vedanta, Max Muller says in great cheer, “At the same time I make no secret that all my life I have been very fond of the Vedanta, nay, I can fully agree with Schopenhauer and quite understand what he meant when he said, ‘* * * it (the study of the Upanishads) has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death. Schopenhauer was the last man to write a random and to allow himself to go into ecstasies over so-called mystic and inarticulate thought. And I am neither afraid nor ashamed, to say that I share his enthusiasm for the Vedanta, and feel indebted to it for much that has been helpful to me in my passage through life57”. [57 The italics are my own; of Max Muller Vedanta Philosophy, concluding part of the third lecture.] We do not know if we want, as the latest testimony to the consoling influence of Advaitism, any more explicit confession from such an aged scholar, given for scores of years to studying our philosophy. For more explicit statements, setting Sankara as the keenest and most consistent logician and the most pregnant philosopher of the world has ever seen, are would refer the reader to Max Muller’s Theosophy58 [58Whatever we may think of this philosophy, we cannot deny its metaphysical boldness and its logical consistency. If Brahman is all in all, the One without a second, nothing can be said to exist that is not Brahman. There is no room for anything outside the Infinite and the Universal, nor is there room for two Infinites, for the Infinite in nature and the Infinite in man. There is and there can be one Infinite and one Brahman only; this is the beginning and end of the Vedanta, and I doubt whether Natural Religion can reach or has ever reached a higher point than that reached by Sankara, as an interpreter of the Upanishads.” – Max Muller. Theosophy, p. 311 infra “From a purely logical point of view, Sankara’s position seems to me impregnable, and when so rigorous a logician as Schopenhauer declares his complete submission to Sankara’s arguments, there is no fear of their being upset by other logicians.” – ibid p. 281. supra; cf.  also pp. 319, 315 and 314. {Also inter alia his Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy.] In the opinion of Max Muller, Ramanuja is not a consistent philosopher59 [59 ibid. pp. 313, 319 and 191.] or unflinching logician, since he is obliged to act the part of an egg-dancer, by trying to weave the popular conceptions of divinities, gods and goddesses into Advaitism, and thereby making his system, hardly a well-knit logical or philosophical whole.
            With an account of the main points of Ramanuja’s teaching we are taken to Chapter V, which deals with the Purva Mimamsa philosophy, if philosophy it may be called. In instituting a sort of comparison between the life-history of the Vedanta-Sutras and the Purva Mimamsa, Max Muller observes, on P. 259, “It is clear that while Badarayana endeavoured to introduce order into the Upanishads, and to reduce their various guesses to something like a system, Jaimini undertook to do the same for the rest of the Veda, the so-called Karma-Kanda or work-portion, that in all that had regard to sacrifice as described chiefly in the Brahmana”; and again on P. 260, “And as philosophy existed independent of the Upanishads, and through Badarayana attempted to make peace with the Upanishads, we must consider that sacrifices also existed for a long time without the Brahmanas, such as we possess them, that they grew up without being restrained by generally binding authorities of any kind, and that at a later time only, after the Brahmanas had been composed, and had acquired some kind of authority, the necessity began to be felt of reconciling variant opinions and customs, as embodied in the Brahmanas and elsewhere, giving general as well as special rules for the performance of every kind of ceremony.” The latter observation really savours of the rule and compass work of a carpenter. It is exceedingly unjust for one to approach these ancient treatises with pre-conceived theories, and to try to make the origin, progress and the like of ceremonies and sacrifices treated of in the Brahmanas, and the method of their performance and its justification in the Purva-Mimamsa, fit in with the fancies of the orientalist. The inference we are warranted in making, from the observation of Max Muller’s, is that there was a time when the Brahmanas existed without any bearing on sacrifice, without any influence over ritualistic acts. This in the nature of things cannot have been when once we seriously inquire what the Brahmanas were meant for. But, no doubt, it is likely that in the domain of metaphysical speculations a different phenomenon might occur. Schools of thought independent of those the Upanishads take cognizance of, might have existed in the brains of some impulsive souls. We can conceive, as a possibility, and even as a probability, that colonies of thought remained, without receiving the sanction of any sacred canon, outside the pale of Asramas, where expositions of the Upanishads went on for countless generations at the hands of the Rishis; but metaphysical speculations which could go on untrammelled without shocking the theological susceptibilities of the Indians, as testified to by the history of philosophic thought in India, are something entirely different from ritualistic observances, sacrificial liturgies and periodic religious rites which had a particular spiritual end in view necessitating their performance, and to a scrupulous adherence to which, with unswerving attention, even to the minutest details, the Brahmins of all days have been remarkable. We must make a distinction between philosophical speculations which can go on unimpeded, and deeds of a religious nature which anticipated rewards and so on in the other world. Over such religious rites with the most momentous consequences, the Brahmanas wielded authority in appointing times for their celebration, in instructing the clergy for the proper conduct of the sacrificial services, in ordaining that particular series of hymns from the Samhitas should be chanted, chorally or antiphonally, in the sacrificial pavilion. In the matter of the sacrificial performances, through which the Hindus believed to conquer the sting of Death, and which was so dear to his pious nature, it is most unphilosophical to believe, that he would have gone on without any compelling sacred authority to regulate them, without an inviolable scriptural dictate ordaining injunctions to carry out with the utmost religiosity every minute detail of the sacrificial services, in the spiritual efficacy of which he so much believed. In fact, he did want a sacrificial almanac, so to say, to which he might appeal without difficulty as an authority, how and when the sacrifices were to be performed. Such a sacrificial code exactly was, what the Brahmanas meant to supply. It is ill-conceivable, therefore, how the Brahmanas can at anytime have existed as theoretical books, void of any authority and having no sway over the doings of sacrificers. We may on the whole conclude that, as far as India is concerned, it passes one’s reason, and even fancy, to reflect that sacrifices were in vogue at any time without the superintending and controlling authority of the Brahmanas, or that the Brahmanas existed at all without having an unassailable voice in most sacrificial doings, that Jaimini attempted to effect a reconciliation between the sanction less rites of happy-go-lucky Brahmins and the uncurbed theoretical rules finding an eccentric utterances in the Brahmanas; though we may sometimes grant with not a little reservation, that Badarayana’s efforts were towards effecting a reconciliation between some of the uncanonical doctrines propounded by men who were outside the influence of the Upanishads, and the Upanishads themselves. Here again it is questionable if the Upanishads ever remained without exercising the most imperative supremacy in the particular Asramas in which they were severally taught. What is most probable is, that the Brahmanas varied with the Asramas in which they were the ruling authority, and the Purva Mimamsa sought to find in them a common thought inspiring all acts, and to harmonise, codify, and justify any differences that existed between observances of two different parts. If the Brahmanas had been composed independently of the sacrifices which the Brahmins were performing, who composed them and what were their intention in doing so? And where were the real rules, which were used as liturgies for the Brahmin’s sacrificial services, if the Brahmans exercised no controlling authority of any kind in regulating them? We can hardly imagine there was a time when the Brahmanas and the sacrifices did not exist side by side for independent of any bearing on sacrifices, one cannot surmise what they existed for, and what good purpose can have been served by compiling treatises of rules for sacrifices which had no binding authority on the sacrifices of any people, nay, of any Asrama. If we assume Max Muller’s theory, it is hardly possible for us to puzzle out, what earthly interest the authors of the Brahmanas can have had, in compiling them at a time when not sacrifices existed to take heed of them, when, in fact, nobody cared to near what they had to say, and what non-human kind of gentlemen those compilers ought to have been, to theorise and dogmatise about things which had little to do either with mundane or celestial matters.
            On page 274, a curious mistake occurs in the sentence “For instance, we read that trees or serpents performed a sacrifice, or that an old fox sang foolish songs fit for the Madras.” What is mean here is not Madras but Mâdras. Adverting to the short-sightedness of those who charge others, that do not agree with their own views of God, worship and final absolution, with irreligion, Max Muller says “Modern Vedantists also are so enamoured of their own conception of Deity, that is of Brahman or Atman, that they do not hesitate, like Vivekananda, for instance, in his recent address on Practical Vedanta, 1896, to charge those who differ from himself with atheism.” If this virtue of tolerance, to which  Max Muller is asking the attention of those who differ from him, is understood and followed, there will not be at the present day half as much quarrel and useless controversy about religious tenets, that stock the pages of many a useless pamphlet now circulating in South India. A reference to Siddhanta Deepika, 1898 p. 94, is given on p. 267 infra of his book when the Professor, after giving, according to the principles of logic followed sometimes by commentators on early Mimamsa, the five members of an Adhikarana, 60 viz, Vishaya, 61 Samsaya, 62 Purvapaksha, 63 Siddhanta, 64 and Samgati, 65 [60=case, 61=subject to be explained, 62=doubt, 63=the first side or prime facie view, 64=the demonstrated conclusion, 65=the connection.] takes a practical example from the commentary on the first and second sutras of the Mimamsa, to illustrate their application and use and the reference is evidently to the translation of Srikanta Bhashya on the Vedanta sutras by Mr. A. Mahadeva Sastry, in which we get fertile examples of full adhikaranas. On the page 1 to which Max Muller refers, we get as Adhikarana 2 of IInd Adhayaya, the case of Sutra, II, I, 3. “Thereby has yoga been answered.” No doubt we get a very good idea of what a syllogism is like in Indian logic, from this Adhikarana, though there are other Adhikaranas to which we might profitably refer our readers for a better illustrating example of the Indian syllogism of five terms. Speaking about the question ‘Has the Veda a super-human origin?’ Professor Max Muller exhibits to us some of the leading principles by which the votaries of the Mimamsa were guided in arguing out the subject. He says that the Hindus show a decided advance in religious thought, nay, in philosophical musings, because they have begun to doubt even in those early days the infallibility and superhuman origin of the Veda and sought to establish it by a serious course of subtle arguments. The Mimamsa philosopher, according to him, would have argued that as no writer could relate his own death, therefore, Deuteronomy must be considered the work of a superhuman writer. “Inspiration in the ordinary sense of the word would not have satisfied these Indian orthodox philosophers, for, as they truly remark, this would not exclude the possibility of error, because however true the message might by when given, the human recipient would always be a possible source of error as being liable to misapprehend and misinterpret such a message” (p. 271). So that for everything, the Mimamsakas wanted to make sure of the limits of human knowledge; and the infallibility and super humans origin of the Veda was established on pure principles of reasoning and inference, in their own way, of course. Against the charge that, in no sense, the Purva-Mimamsa, in fact any phase of Indian thought, can be brought under a system of philosophy according to European canons, Prof. Max Muller’s defence is well worth reading. He says having in mind his European brethren, “Our idea of a system of philosophy is different from the Indian conception of a Darsana. In its original meaning philosophy as a love of wisdom, comes nearest to the Sanskrit Jignasa, a desire to know, if not a desire to be wise. If we take philosophy in the sense of an examination of our means of knowledge (Epistemology), or with Kant as an enquiry into the limits of human knowledge, there would be nothing corresponding to in in India * * * *. But we have only to waive the claim of infallibility put forward by Badarayana in favour of the utterances of the sages of the Upanishads, and treat them as simple human witnesses to the truth, and we should then find in the systematic arrangement of these utterances by Badarayana a real philosophy, a complete view of the Kosmos in which we live, like those that have been put forward by the great thinkers of the philosophical countries of the world, Greece, Italy, Germany, France and England.” Now coming to Jaimini’s ethics, the reward which the sacrificer received for performing sacrifices, did not accrue from any superintending Lord of the Cosmos or Brahman, but issued, as a result, or an invisible something, something Apurva or Miraculous, of the deed which represented the reward inherent in good works; or in other words, according to Jaimini, for the moral government of the world, no Lord in necessary. Here we see then that Jaimini differs from Badarayana. This was not atheism, as some accuse the Purvamimamsa cult as tending to, but was an attempt to clear the Lord from those charges of cruelty or undue partiality which have so often been brought against Him by the unthinking multitude. And in the Professor’s words, it “was another attempt at justifying the wisdom of God, an ancient Theodicea, that whatever we may think of it, certainly did not deserve the name of atheism.” The Mimamsakas merely tried to justify the ways of God in their own way. The account that is given of the Mimamsa philosophy in the book, is called from Madhava’s Nyaya-Mala-Vistara, 66 [66 Also cf. Cowell and Gough’s Sarvadarsana Sangraha, pp. 178-202. The portion relating to logic was predominant in Jaimini’s Sutras. Later on, this aspect was developed more in the Nadiya School of Nyaya. In fact, Jaimini’s system is sometimes known as Nyaya.] a sort of modern digest embodying in good form and lucid arrangement, what is said by Jaimini in his Mimamsa Sutras, and also the later developments in the hands of commentators, Kumarila Bhatta 67  [67 They were scholiasts on Jaimini and their views are diametrically opposed to each other. Kumarila Bhatta is sometimes associated with Sankara in extirpating Buddhism.] and Prabhakara. Though the ritualistic side of the system is not a welcome study for one who is of a philosophic bent of mind, we must remember that curiously enough larger space is devoted, to what we in modern phraseology might call Scientific Method, such as the subject of the Pramanas, or the authoritative sources of knowledge, the relation between word and thought, and similar things. It is true that most of these questions find a repetition in the Nyaya, Sankhya, Yoga, and even Vaiseshika. Just as the later Mimamsa of Kumarilla and Prabhakara exclusively devoted itself to the meaning and utility of sacrifices, leaving the logical portion comparatively in the shade, a reverse phenomenon assailed the Nyaya, depriving it, in its medieval form, of its philosophical character, and making of it a sort of hair-splitting logic, a limbo of sophistic casuistry. The Pramanas recognised by Jaiminiar (1) Pratyaksha 68 [68 Sense-perception when the organs are actually in contiguity with an object.]  (2) Anumana 69 [69 Inference or the apprehension of an unseen member of a known association (Vyapathi) by the perception of another seen member.] (3) Upamana 70 [70 Comparison, knowledge arising from resemblance.]  (4) Arthapatti 71 [71 Presumption, such knowledge as can be derived of a thing not itself perceived, but implied by another.]  (5) Sabda 72 [72 Verbal information derived from authoritative sources.] and (6) Abbava 73 [73 Not-being, when we infer dryness of the soil from the not-being or absence of clouds or rain.] The last, which is recognised only by the Mimamsakas of Kumarilla Bhatta’s following, is but a subdivision of Anumana.
            Now we come to a very important system of Indian Philosophy and that is the Sankya. It is treated of in an exemplary and elaborate manner in Chapter VI. The Chapter is prefaced with an account of the later Vedanta mixed with Sankhya. But the account is very meagre and has very much disappointed our expectations. We had hoped that it would receive the treatment it deserved at the hands of a scholar who is, perhaps, the best well-meaning student of Indian Philosophy at the present day, and the capacity be possesses as a comparative student of all the world’s philosophies would have been immensely useful to us, if he had chosen to dwell fully on these later developments of the Vedanta which are inextricably mixed with Sankhya, nay, with the Yoga, in various degrees. To such latter-day off-shoots belong the tenets preached by Brahmananda Saraswati 74 [74 The author of the Laghuchandrika, a commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, on advanced Nyaya principle, recently published at Kumbakonam, Tanjore District.] Madhusudana Saraswati 75 [75 The author of a commentary on the Brahma-Sutras and the Gita and of the Prasthana Bheda, previously referred to.] Vachaspathi Misra 76 [76 The author of Bhamati, a gloss on Sankara’s Brahma-Sutra-Bhashya, of the Sankhya Tattva Kaumudi, a commentary on Ievara Krishna’s Sankhya-Karika, and of the Nyaya-Varttika-Tatparya-Tika, a commentary on Udyotakara’s Nyaya Varttika.] Vignanabhikshu 77 [77 Wrote the Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya, the most authoritative commentary on the Sankhya Sutras, a Bhashya on the Brahma Sutras, the Yoga-Varttika, well-known as one of the stiffest books in Sanskrit, and also a commentary on the Swetasvatara Upanishad.]  Vallabha 78 [78 The author of commentary on the Brahma Sutras and the founder of the Suddhadvaita School.]  Sureswara 79 [79 Sureswara, the author of the colossal Vartika on Sankara’s Scholia to the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.] Srikantha 80 [80 Author of a commentary on the Brahma Sutras, claimed by some as anterior to Sankara’s Vide J. M. Nallaswamy Pillai’s translation of Sivagnanabotham, Introduction, pp. iii. et. seq.]  Amalananda 81 [81 Amalananda, author of Vedanta Kalpataru, a on Vachaspathi Misra’s Bhamati.] Vidyaranya 82 [82 Vidyaranya, in addition to being the author of Panchadasi, a philosophic treatise, and Jivanmukti Viveka, is the writer also of He is sometimes identified with Madhava the author of Sarvadarsana Sangraha, and sometimes with Sayana the author of the commentary on the Rig Veda. One thing only we can be certain about, and that is, that Sayana, Madhava, and Vidyaranya are the names of only two brothers, and in the present state of our lack of knowledge, it is unsafe to guess which particular names belonged to any one of these brothers. See inter alia, Krishna Sastry’s article on the Vijayanagar Kings. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. III.] Appaya Dikshita 83 [83 Appayya Dikshita, author of Parimala, a on Amalananda’s Vedanta Kalpataru and of Siddhantalesasangraha, an independent philosophical work. His Sivatattvaviveka is an excellent digest of the Saiva-Siddhanta philosophy.] and hosts of other men, not even the names of them being mentioned. But, no doubt, the general analysis of the mixture that is found in the later Vedanta and in the later Sankhya, displays a fund of critical acumen and discrimination of judgment, rarely met with among students of philosophy. Of the medieval Vedantists above mentioned many, nay, most were avowedly of Sankara’s following, introducing changes and innovations, of course as suited their fancy, while the rest were carried away by Sankhyan predilections. The terms Avidya, Maya, Pragna, Siva, Icvara and Prakriti underwent in these hands of these philosophers amazing diversity of explanations. On P.282, in expounding the doctrine of the later Vedanta, which, looking to the context and the method of explanation, refers evidently to that of Vidyararanya in his Panchadasi, Max Muller says, “The Omniscient, but personal Iswara is there explained as a reflection of Maya, but as having subdued her, while the individual soul, Pragna or Jiva, is represented as having been subdued by Avidya, and to be multiform, owing to the variety of Avidya.” This is a flagrant mistake. According to Vidyaranya, in fact the majority of later Vedantists, Iswara is not a reflection of Maya, in which case the statement makes no sense, but Iswara is a reflection of Brahman in Maya 84. [84 Panchadasi. Tattva Viveka Prakarana, Slokas 15 and 16. I shall quote from the Panchadasi, Vidyaranya’s own words:-
This view of Vidyaranya’s is what Max Muller is presumably thinking about. The following statement occurs in p. 285 supra, “I suggested once before that this very peculiar style of the Sutras would receive the best-historical explanation, if it could be proved that they represent the first attempts at writing for literary purposes in India.” We should think, on the other hand, that it is more probable that writing had nothing to do with the style of the Sutras at all, in view of the fact that even at the present day, Sutras are learnt by rote, supplemented by oral teaching from the Guru, and only the heavier commentaries are read out from manuscripts. The probability therefore lies more on the side of the view that Sutras were introduced to minimise the labour of students when the mnemonic literature had become unmanageable, than on the side that the Sutra style was in some way necessitated by the introduction of writing at the time.
            The Sankhya system is in a sense compact, in so far as all we could know of it are contained in a few books alone. Foremost there is Kapila’s Tattva Samasa referred to by Vignana Bhikshu in his Sankhya Pravachana-Bhashya, next we have Icvarakrishna’s Sankhyakarikas having three commentaries, one the Bhashya of Gaudapada, the other the Sankhya Tattva Kaumudi of Vachaspathi Misra and the third the commentary of Narayana Tirtha, and lastly we have the modern Sankhya Sutras, about the literary authorship of which there is a good deal of doubt, though some think (advanced originally by Balasastri of Benares in the Pundit) that  Vignanabhikshu was the author, with three commentaries, one by Aniruddha called Aniruddha vritti 85, [85 Sankhya-Sutras with Aniruddha’s and  Vedantin Mahadeva’s commentaries with Translation, by Dr. Garbe, Bib. Ind. Series.] the other by Vignanabhikshu called Sankhyapravachanabhashya 86 [86 A very good edition of it has recently been brought out by Dr. Garbe in the Harvard University Oriental Series in English characters.] and the last by Vedantin Mahadeva 85. All through the discussion in which Prof. Max Muller enters, in trying to ascertain the date of Gaudapada, the Tattva Samasa and the Sankhya-Sutras, he does not make any mention of Aniruddha or his commentary on the Sankhya Sutras. The latter commentator cannot be passed over in silence, in speaking of the dates of the developmental stages of the Sankhya system, since he is one of the important commentators of the Sankhya-Sutras whose sentences are quoted ipsissima verba by Vignana Bhikshu. Professor Max Muller apparently wants to make out that the modern Sankhya Sutras were the latest recension of the Sankhya doctrines which had been handed down from the Upanishad period through ever so many channels of books, tradition, contemporary authors and the like. It would much strengthen the case he wants to support, viz, that the modern Sankhya Sutras may have often changed their dress of language in the hands of the previous disciples, before they received their final literary form, if he could show the relation between the Sutras in Vignanabhikshu’s and Aniruddha’s commentaries. There is good reason to believe that the Sutras followed in Vignanabhikshu’s commentary is different from those in Aniruddha’s commentary. Granted that it is so, it would lend the weight of an argument to support Max Muller’s view, that the Sutras were undergoing many changes in the shape of accretions and omissions, and even thorough modifications of language, because, if within the limited space of time that divided Vignanabhikshu from Aniruddha there could be so much difference introduced into the text of the Sutras, how much more should have been the case in the wide interval that divided Vignanabhikshu from the fermenting period when Kapila evolved his doctrines? I hope to investigate shortly this striking difference in the apparently identical text of the Sankhya-Sutras used by Aniruddha and by Vignanabhikshu, and think of using the results of such investigation in ascertaining the true character of the Tattva-Samasa. On the p. 303 Max Muller states, “Of course we must leave it an open question for the present whether the extreme monistic view of the Veda 87, [87 Does Max Muller mean by this the Vedanta or the Upanishads? – V.V.R.] was die to Sankara, or whether like Ramanuja, he also could claim the authority of Purvacharyas, in his interpretation of Badarayana’s Sutras”. Max Muller has evidently forgotten the historical Gaudapada, who in his Karikas on the Mandukya Upanishad, shadows forth Sankara’s Monism as patently as is conceivable, and the stemma of Sankara we have given elsewhere should give the Professor an idea of Sankara’s Purvacharya Parampara, not to mention the names of other eminent teachers referred to by name in his Scholia on the Vedanta Sutras itself. The extreme Monistic view was floating in the air, and worked into the very thought of the thinking Hindus, long, long before Sankara defended it like a Huxley. Upavarsha and Gaudapada are living characters about whom we know so much form their works, and not phantom figments that we have to call up in our minds without knowing anything about their works, history, and so forth.
            It is a moot point whether the Sankhya ever paid any heed to the authority claimed for the Vedas by ether philosophers, whether it regarded them with feelings of respect and whether it cared to comply with what is enjoined in them. But Max Muller wants to effect a compromise, though not avowing his intention clearly, by asserting “The Sankhya whatever we may think of its Vedic character, never denies the authority of the Veda in so many words * * * *. Some scholars think that the recognition of the supreme authority of the Sruti was an after-though with Kapila, a mere stroke of theological diplomacy.” Here we must make a distinction between “Not denying the authority of the Veda in so many words” and “Asserting the authority of the Veda, in words, but disregarding, disobeying and insulting it actively in spirit.” The two sentences have a common sense distinction for us, in reality they meant the same thing for the Sankhyas. “The recognition of the supreme authority of the Sruti” was not “an after-thought of Kapila,” because he never recognized it except as a sort of sop for the censorious orthodox theists, and that too, for form’s sake only, in words; but the flagrant and contemptuous violation of the Vedas in a decided way, and actually finding fault, with them on all points, could be seen at every step. “The real theological diplomacy” never appertained to the Sankhya, but to the Sankhya as explained by the later commentators. The reason of this is not far to seek, because we know that the commentators on the Sankhya system were one and all of them Vedantins, and we may well imagine how anxious they would be to explain away Kapila as consistent with a submission to an infallible Veda. Max Muller says, “To judge from a passage in the beginnings of the Sankhya-Karikas it might seem indeed that Kapila placed his own philosophy above the Veda. But he really says no more than that certain remedies for the removal of pain enjoined by Veda are good, and that other remedies enjoined by philosophy are likewise good; but that of the two, the latter are better, that is, more efficacious.” The first part of the quotation does not picture Kapila in his true complexions; nor does it give a correct idea of what Kapila thought of the Veda. Max Muller is certainly referring to the second Karika of Icvara Krishna when he is ‘judging from a passage’ and that is,
           
Here the Veda is distinctly referred to as  impure, by Icvara Krishna; and not only impure, but also, ineffectual, defective and so on. This is explained as alluding (according to Gaudapada) to because it is said,
           
We see therefore what Icvara Krishna meant, and how Gaudapada understands what the Karikas signify, through anxious to explain away Kapila in conformity with the Veda; and the later Vedantin, Vachaspathi Micra, is still more anxious to explain away, although he too is not blind to the impure imperfections marring the Veda, when it advocates bloody hecatombs. He adds in his Sankhya Tattvakaumudi,
             and thereby feels it is an impure act that in some sacrifices men should go the length of eating the testes of sheep. Withal, he does not rest satisfied until he can make out that the sin involved in the act of killing an innocent animal is slight, by quoting Panchacikhacharya; and therefore the Siddhantin himself is made to say in the course of his defense of killing animals for sacrifices that
           
So much for the first part of the quotation from Max Muller, but the second part is certainly not the view of Kapila, as Max Muller wrongly declares, but, if we may so put it, is the view as gathered through the Claude Lorraine glasses of the commentator’s spectacles. The fact is, Kapila is uncompromising, and Max Muller wrongly lays the view of Vachaspathi Misra, the later Vedantin commentator, to Kapila’s charge. But Vignanabhikshu, who is again a Vedantin commentator of the Sankhya and too liberal in his view to be a faithful representative of any system, equates the Sankhya and the Vedanta, finding in the former, statements that are thoroughly endorsed by the Veda (vide Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya I, 5 infra). In p. 302 ambiguity, nay, positive mistake in expression ensues by imperfect punctuation in the sentence “* * and the Sankhya was clearly dualistic when it postulated Nature, not only as the result of Avidya or Maya, but as something real in the ordinary sense of the word* * *”. Here “not only as the result of Maya” should be “not, only as the result of Maya” for, otherwise the sentence makes no sense. 88 [88 After this in Max Muller’s (p. 304) book there is a reference to Tattvakaumudi v.2. It is a mistake. The reference must be to the 15th Vishaya under Karika II. Vachaspathi Misra whom Max Muller cites, be it remembered, was not a Sankhyan, but, a stout follower of Sankara, and he is declared to be a Mithila Brahmin and set down at the 9th century A.D., by Ganganath Jha. (See his edition of Sankhya-Tattvakaumudi. Sanskrit Introduction).] Again on p. 395 Max Muller speaks in a compromising way about the Sankhya’s view of the authority of the Veda, but I must say once for all that, as a matter of fact, the Sankhyas do not accord to it the respect with which the Vedantins quote it. From the way they are quoted, it would appear they are introduced more for the purpose of showing that they too have the support of the Veda, and that too, not in very great seriousness, and only as an after-thought. They gladly counted upon the sanction of the Veda when it had one, by chance, to give, and quietly ignored it, sometimes aggressively attacked it, nay even advanced their doctrines more strongly on that account, when the Veda would not chime in with the Sankhyan cult. The passages in the Sankhya Sutras where from Max Muller, in p. 306, is desirous of establishing the supposed respect shown by the Sankhyas to the authority of the Sruti are untenable, since in the Sankhya Sutras, the Advaitist expositors and reconciles of the Sankhya of a later time, speak a great deal, more than Kapila.
            Max Muller puts Vachaspati Misra in the middle of the 12th century A.D., following Prof. Garbe (p.289), and elsewhere states (p. 479) that “it was not till the 19th century that Vachaspati Misra finally re-established the Brahmanic view of the Nyaya in his Nyaya-Vartika-Tatparyatika.” From this it would seem that the Professor is minded to halt between the 10th and 12th centuries dating Vachaspathi-Misra, while Ganganath Jha in the Sanskrit introduction affixed to his edition of Sankhya-Tattva-Kaumudi urges some new facts in support of placing him more decidedly in the 9th century A.D. He says 89 [89 Sankhyatattvakaumudi edited by Ganganath Jha. ]
            and as regards the mistake Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi committed 90 [90 Read also introduction to Annam Bhatta’s Tarka Sangraha by Athalye, pp, 40 et. seq.] in placing Vachaspati Misra posterior to Sree Harsha, the author of the Khandanakhandakadya, because another Vachaspathi was credited with the authority of the Khandanoddhara, a criticism of Sree Harsha’s work, Mr. Ganganatha says:
            From these it is clear that Vachaspathi Misra was a Maithila Brahmin and should have flourished about the 9th century A.D., for Udayanacharya the author of “Parisuddhi”, a commentary on Vachaspathi Misra’s Tatparya Tika, lived in the reign of Lakshman Sen of Bengal, of whose era we have just commenced the 8th century. No doubt more than a century must have elapsed for an author to become sufficiently classic and so necessitate commentaries. Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi is mistaking another Vachaspathi who wrote a criticism on Sreeharsha’s work and who was posterior to him, for our Vachaspathi Misra. Evidently Tarka Vachaspathi did not note that in Sree Harsha’s work we meet with a criticism of Udayana’s “Parisuddhi” and of other works; and therefore if Taranatha had read the work, he ought to have inferred that Udayana lived anterior to Sreeharsha; this Udayana being a commentator on Vachaspathi Misra who is mentioned by Gangesa, author of 90 Chintamani, and criticized by him with due respect as Tikakara, must be considered anterior to Sreeharsha. Of course this Sreeharsha is not the Sreeharsha mentioned by Bana 91 [91 Tradition identifies Sriharsha in whose Court Bana flourished with Sreeharsha, the author of Khandanakhandakadya. But Cowell places the kind in the early part of the 7th century A.D. See Cowell and Thomas. Harsha Charita, preface p. vii. Evidently therefore the two Harshas are different.] In P. 319 infra, when speaking of the arrangement adopted in the Tattva Samasa about the treatment of the various Sankhyan Tattvas and the rest, occurs the sentence “Then follow the topics which are twenty-five in number,” and it ought to be corrected either into “the substances which are twenty-five in number” or if the topics which are twenty-five in number. (See P. 321 where the number of topics correctly enumerated is only 24). In discussing about the primary evolution of Buddhi from Avyakta (Prakriti). Max Muller makes out that it means Prakriti as illuminated, intellectualized and rendered capable of becoming at a later time the germ of Ahamkara (distinction of subject and object), Manas and Indriyas. So, as against the psychological acceptation, he says that Buddhi must also mean a phase in the Cosmic growth of the universe 92. [92 If we employ the Vedantic terminology, Max Muller’s suggestion simply tantamounts to a differentiation of Buddhi into Samashti (cosmic or objective), and Vyashti (subjective or psychic). This distinction must also effect the Ahamkara phase of the evolution of Avyakta. Of course when the Ahamkaric stage is reached the differentiation becomes only too patent.] He is most sensible in giving a cosmic explanation, for, as he says “Though this psychological acceptation is the common acceptation of Buddhi among native writers on Sankhya, yet sense is more important than commentaries.” The table on p. 333 is erroneous, as it derives Prakriti from Purusha and therefore negatives what is said in the Tattva Samasa. According to Tattva Samasa, Purusha is identified with the Brahman of the Veda; it is therefore possible that Sankhya in its primary stages was theistic 93. [93 cf. Kathaka III, 10, and VI, 7, 8; also, Sadanandas Vedanta Sara §128.] The main difference, between the later Karikas and the Tattva Samasa, which is not touched upon by Max Muller, is in the derivation of the Panchamahabhutas. In the former they are derived from the Panchatanamtras while in the latter they are derived direct from Ahamkara. Commenting on the Maitrayani Upanishad II, 5, Max Muller remarks “The whole is passage is however obscure, nor does the commentator help us much, unless he is right in recognizing germs of the later Vedantic ideas of a Prajapathi, called Visva or Vaisvanara, Taijasa, and Pragna.” We do not know what he means here by the later Vedantic ideas. This division is already found in the Mandukya 94 [94 We quote some of the passages at length here:-
           
Upanishad and Gaudapada’s Karikas to it. We can call the ideas later Vedantic if we put the Mandukya after Sankara. The account of evolution given according to Tattwasamasa is very confusing. The Purusha is represented as super intending Prakriti and hence the efficient cause of Evolution in a sense. Max Muller’s apology for the existence of the Sankhya as a philosophy in the world, and his learned discourse “on the Nature of Pain” from the point of view of Indian philosophers are admirable and well worth reading. Pointing to the two solutions proposed by the Vedanta and the Mimamsa to rid man of the trammels and misery of this world, he says that none of the solutions proposed by other philosophers, either ancient or modern, “seems to me to have so completely realized what may be called the idea of the Soul as the Phoenix, consumed by the fire of thought and rising from his own ashes, soaring towards regions which are more real than anything that can be called real in this life”, and later on adds, “Does Kapila really work upon perception and thought as an instrument, ready made by Prakriti for the use of the Purusha, but remaining inert like a telescope, till it looked through by the Purusha, or is it the first glance of Purusha at Prakriti in its first state of Avyakta or chaos, that gives the first impulse to the activity of Prakriti, which impulse is generally ascribed to the working of the Gunas.” He says he does not feel competent to pronounce any decided opinion for either view. The vindication of Sankhya from page 385 to page 398 is exhaustive and fortified with a good many arguments. The analysis of the human mood or attitude that may have given rise to the Sankhyan cult, on p. 383, and his thoughtful remarks on the special mental or psychic difficulties that ought to have harassed the original founders of the Sankhya, bring the ancient problems nearer to our heart. The comparison of the Sankhyan Prakriti and Purusha with the Cartesian automaton and chose pensaute 95 [95 This is superadded by Descartes to the automaton. Prof. Huxley showed that on the Cartesian assumption all our mental conditions are the symbols in consciousness of the changes taking place automatically in the organism. See Huxley. Method and Results, pp. 182-188.] is very instructive. Descartes theory, in the light if Huxley’s explanation, approaches nearer the Sankhyan Prakriti and Purusha, if we forget the reservation which Descartes made in not giving a Purusha to anything else but man. I hope to deal with this fully in my forthcoming paper on “The teachings of Prf. Huxley on the Infinite.” The later Sankhyan developments are meagerly touched; we have to make here the same complaint that Vignanabhikshu and Vachaspathi Misra are left in the dark as we made in connection with the Vedanta as developed by its later representatives.
            Chapter VII is entitled “Yoga and Sankhya.” In it are pointed out the common path travelled over by both Yoga and Sankhya together, and the point from which they began to diverge, as also the leading tenets as embodied in the Yoga sutras of Patanjali. Points that may appear somewhat startling or surprising to the English mind, not accustomed to the rigorous and, sometimes hair-splitting dialectics pursued by the Indian Logicians, or rather the philosophers that apply the Indian canons of logic to prove their assertions, are dealt with in a way that will appeal more readily to Englishmen and other Europeans, because always the underlying human springs are exposed, and comparison is instituted between the Greek and Roman philosophers on the one hand and the Indians on the other. In the philosophical portion, Yoga and Sankhya are one except for the fact that the Yoga recognizes an Icwara corresponding to the Sagunam Brahman of the Vedantins, and the Sankhya an absolute Purusha. Less stress is laid by the Sankhyans on the aspect of meditation, while more of it is inculcated in the Yoga which has necessitated such an elaborate system of rules and practices to be observed by the Yogins for their Samadhi leading up to Kaivalya “aloneness.” In the Sankhya meditation is recommended, though the intellectual method of reasoning and argumentation leading us up to a true discrimination between the Purusha and Prakriti is more what Kapila looks to. In this aspect Yoga is sometimes called the Theistic Sankhya. It is probable that both Yoga and Sankhya grew out of the same undifferentiated matrix, and the divergence set in only a little previous to the period of Sanskrit Renaissance, eventually ending in latter days in a complete divorce between the two systems. The Professor is right when he says that Rajendra Lal Mitra was wrong in representing the belief in one system God as the first and the most important tenet of Patanjali’s philosophy. It was only one of many of the outward steps, which as Bhoja Raja the commentator on Patanjali adds, “towards fixing the mind on one subject and of thus in time obtaining Samadhi.” 96 [96 Vide Boja’s Scholia on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras I, 33, 2.] When comparing Darwin, Kapila and Patanjali, Max Muller says, “Darwin himself went so far as to maintain most distinctly that his system of Nature required a creator who breathed life into it in the beginning.” He is thinking of the concluding lines of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”  Darwin himself distinctly tells us in one of his letters that he alluded to such a Creator simply as a “sop to Cerberus” 97 [97 op. cit from the chapter on ‘Religion’ in “Darwin’s Life and Letters” in 3 volumes, edited by his son, Francis Darwin.]  and to enlist the sympathies of clergymen and the like in propounding a doctrine which was sure to shock the religious susceptibilities of men moving in an altogether different mental groove in their conceptions of a Personal Creator and the whole creation that was of his making. His own opinions were that of an Agnostic. “I think” he says “that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind” and without doubt, the influence of conclusions deducible from the theory of Evolution, as Edward Clodd says 98 [98 Pioneers of Evolution, From Thales to Huxley, by Edward Clodd, pp. 160 et. seq.] “are fatal to a belief in the Supernatural.” Prof. Max Muller would have found a better friend to Kapila and Patanjali in people like Dr. A. R. Wallace. About the Yogic methods of obtaining Samadhi, and the devotional contemplation in which the Yogins indulge, there is a fine and ungarbled account. There is a reference to Mr. M. Seshagiri Sastri’s Report of Tamil and Sanskrit Manuscripts, when Max Muller speaking under the section of Vairagya about the doubtful nature of the real authorship 99 [99 Vide Tawney’s metrical translation of Bhartrihari’s Catakas, Introduction.] of Bhartrihari’s Vairagya Catakas. Max Muller thinks he might have collected verses from various sources as Subhashitas and made them into a compact Cataka. In fact Bhartrihari’s work is sometimes actually called Subhashitatrisati for which Max Muller refers as to Seshagiri Sastri’s Reports (p. 445 infra). He credits in a way the ‘miracles’ wrought by Kriyayogins though with a good deal of reservation. The Siddhis which are the outcome of Samyama are not the last and highest goal of Yoga philosophy as has often been supposed by Indian and by European Scholars. He says touching on the practices of the Modern Hindu Yogins “* * * we must also remember that the influence of the mind on the body and of the body on the mind is as yet but half-explored.” In p. 456 Iyengar appears as Iyangar. 100 [100 The mistake is certainly imported from Gurbe’s Handbook on “Yoga and Sankhya” in the Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research series.] In the course of Patanjali’s speculations, we do not find him locating the mind or the act of perceiving and conceiving, in the brain, or in the pineal gland, but, in one place he claims the muscle of the heart “as the seat of the consciousness of thought.” 101 [101 Patanjali. Yoga Sutras III. 34 ] Prof. Max Muller doubts on this score, I believe, it the 34th Sutra, nay, the whole chapter in which it occurs may not be spurious. He cannot understand what is meant when in the terms, ‘Vasanas’ and ‘Samvedanam’ Rajendra Lal Mitra 102 [102 Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with Bhojaraja’s Commentary Biblioth. Indic Series, Translation by B. L. Mitra, III, 9, and IV, 72.] is able to discover the theory of logoi in the mind of Patanjali, and when he compares the ‘three adhwans’ through which objects assail one’s mind to the Universalia aule rem, the Universalia in ve and the Universalia post rem. The final goal whether of the Yoga, or of the Sankhya, nay even of the Vedanta and of Buddhism, always challenges conception. We cannot predicate of it anything except as a state that transcends everything we know or imagine, and in which there is entire oneness with the spirit of Nature. If we attempt to speak of the Ultimatum in language that is necessarily conditioned by the limited nature of our understanding, and by the binding influence of the law of Causality and of Time and Space, we are sure to make of if an unmeaning phantasmagoria. To say therefore that the finale of the Yogins implies nihilism is as absured as to say that the finale of the Vedantism is atheism. Max Muller is of the same view, and adds speaking of all our philosophers, “There remains with me a strong conviction that Indian Philosophers are honest in their reasoning’s and never use empty words. But there remains much to be done, and I can only hope that if others follow in my footsteps, they will in time make these old bones to live again. These ancient Sages should become fellow-workers and fellow-explorers with ourselves in unknown continents of thought, and we ought not to be afraid to follow in their track. They always have the courage of their convictions, they shrink from no consequences if they follow inevitably from their own premises. This is the reason why I doubt whether the admission of an Icwara or Lord by Patanjali, in contradistinction to Kapila, who denies that there are any arguments in support of such a being, should be put down as a mere economy, or as an accommodation to popular opinion” (p. 473).
            “Nyaya and Vaiseshika” form the subject of the eighth chapter. The information about the books on later Nyaya is unfortunately not given by Max Muller even to a fairly good extent, and of course, it is enough for readers who do not think of extending their studies deeper into Nyaya. Gotama’s Nyaya Sutras which is commented on by Vathsyayana 103 [103 He is also known as Pakshilaswamin.] is the chief book Prof. Max Muller follows in giving an account of the Nyaya system. For a comprehensive summary of the history of the Nyaya philosophy in India, there is not any good book at present to which the student might refer with advantage. But what Max Muller gives in his present book, coupled with that given by Mahadeo Rajaram Bodas in his introduction and preface to Athalye’s edition of Annambhattas Tarka Sangraha must be sufficient to anybody who seeks general information on the Nyaya. However to supply the deficiency of the book I shall here give a short account of the salient points of the history of Nyaya. After the Buddhist Dignaga brought out a Scholia, explaining Gotama’s Sutras, in Buddhist fashion, came into existence the starting point wherefrom diversity arose in the plane of what was previously unity. A whole world of schools was fashioned from time to time, no two agreeing with each other, giving rise to an amount of polemic dialectics that is almost inconceivable. The whole movement eventually culminated in the “Nadiya School,” in which the primary aim of the Nyaya as a philosophy searching after the Infinite in Nature and joining Man to It was lost sight of, but Logic as a science began to be developed. Gangesopadhyaya, the author of Chintamani, and Gadadhara, the author of “Gadadhari” which is sometimes looked upon as a sort of scholia on Chintamani, were the two leading men of the Nadiya School.first The amount of commentaries, scholia, and dissertations, dealing with subjects dealt with in the Chintamani, we can measure only by cart-loads, making the literature on Indian Logic something very bewildering, and not possible for even a man of unremitting application to master them in his life-time. In the early Nyaya, Udyotakara commented on Vatsyayana in his work the Nyaya-Vartika, and a Scholia on the latter work the Nyaya-Vartika-Tatparya-Tika, was written by Vachaspati Misra, the well-known Vedantin commentator on Sankara’s Brahma Sutras, Udayana who lived about the 12th century A.D., wrote a gloss on Vachaspati’s work called “Paricaddhi.” Udayana and Vachaspathi, and even Gangesa Upadhyaya were attacked by Sreeharsha in his work called Khandanakhandakadya which is usually set down later than 14th Century A.D. Khandanoddhara is the work written by one Vachaspati who lived about the 16th Century and in which attacks were directed against Sreeharsha’s views. It may be remarked that Gangeeopadhyaya was the man that gave to the logical portion of the Nyaya an extremely prominent place, and his work is truly neither Nyaya in the old sense nor any other philosophy. The book written by him namely Chintamani is an independent work, which is not indebted to any previous work for the plan or conception, and what it seeks to do is to divert the Nyaya philosophy, of its religious element and to develop and perfect the logic which always preponderated in the Nyaya more than in any other philosophy, because it went to the Infinite by pure reason, as resting on Pratyaksha, Anumana, Upamana and Sabda, and which was present though in a less degree in other philosophies, as for instance in the Sankhya and the Mimamsa. In Chintamani, the syllogism as such is perfected to a degree unknown anywhere else and as a consequence, logic reached a finish and exhaustiveness that cannot but vent itself in hair-splitting sophistry dialectic egg-dancing and ingenious argumentative feats. Annambhatta, and long previous to him. Sankara Misra (who was anterior even to Gangesopadhyaya) had begun the independent work of welding the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika, and making of the mixture an independent system, 104 [104 Of the same school are Bhashparich chheda with its Commentary Muktavali (of which the Tarkasangraha is an abstract). Sivaditya’s Saptapadarthi Tarkakaumudi. Tarkamrita etc. The school may be said to have restored the Nyaya in a sense after the shock it sustained at the hands of the Nadia School.] retaining the Sapthapadarthas and the atomic theory of the Vaiseshika, appropriating the logic of the Nyaya wholesale, and rejecting the rest from both of these. I was obliged to speak so much about these developments of the Nyaya, since what Max Muller gives about these is next to meagre, and as a historian of philosophy, he speaks more about the ancient Gotama-Sutras.
            On P. 483, M.N. Dvivedi is mentioned by mistake as the editor and translator of the Yogasarasangraha, instead Ganganath Jha. The Nihereyasa is, according to Gotama the Summum Bonum, the Non Plus Ultra of blessedness and this can be realized as taught by him through a knowledge of the sixteen great topics of the Nyaya Philosophy. No doubt logic plays a great part also in Jaimini’s philosophy, though, it is only in the Nyaya and especially its later developments that logic began to be cultivated almost as an independent branch of thought. The Buddhists took immense interest in the Nyaya philosophy, and the many recessions we have in it are due to the first impule given to it at independent exposition by Dignaga, Dharmakirthi and others. And the hot controversy that ensued between the Buddhistic and the Brahminic branch of the Nyaya give rise to an immense number of dialectic publications from both sides, in the centuries following the Renaissance period of Sanskrit Literature. Gotama’s Sixteen Padarthas were rejected by the later Naiyayikas, excepting Pramana and Prameya, and we can easily see that Vitanda, Galpa, Khala and the like deserve a place as topics in schools, that were given to perfecting Logic as a science, as a branch of thought. After dealing with the Nyaya according to Gotama, in order to give us a good glimpse into the attitude of later men as Madhavacharya and others towards the Nyaya as a system of philosophy. Max Muller takes the account of the Nyaya from Madhava and discusses it. We must not lose sight of the fact that as the Nyaya degenerated into logic from being a philosophy, later men who were commentators and staunch friends of the Nyaya betook to it only as a piece of dialectic exercise, having their faith elsewhere it any one of the two prominent systems of philosophy, the Sankhya and the Vedanta, as a whetstone to sharpen their wits and a peg to hang their culture, learning, and word display on. People of Vachaspathi Misra’s manner who was a Vedantin by creed and culture, well represent this division. But of course if any of the higher philosophic points that may the smothered under a heap of controversial disquisition; were to be attacked by the Buddhists and others, these people who were the commentators, whatever their own views might have been in philosophy or religion, used to defend the Nyaya against the opponents, for the sole sake of its being a Hindu system. It is also useful to remember that the later Nyaya principles were much useful to men of any system of philosophy in later times, as a street training and a powerful instrument in attacking each other, just as in these days a good logician of any following converts us to his own creed by the strength of his controversial vigor. The points of resemblance between the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika, their relations to each other are admirably handled in the chapter. Indian and Greek Logic are contrasted and their points of similarly are well emphasized. In p. 500 “Comparison on Anumana” is the heading of a paragraph which ought to be corrected into “Comparison or Upamana.” Such mistakes show that Gough whom Max Muller feels bound to thank so much, has done his work very conscientiously, and well testify to Gough’s unsparing troubles to run over the proofs. The transformation of sensations into percepts and of percepts into concepts, falling naturally to the function of Manas, have not born fully realized by Indian philosophers, though with the European notions they have assumed larger proportions in importance. Max Muller is of opinion that the Geed and the Indian logic must each be supposed to be autochthonic till better information about the inter-relations of the two countries in the beginnings of the historic period could be lead, though the members of a syllogism are curiously, enough found both in Aristotle and Gotama. He defends the Nyaya against the accusations brought against it by Ritter in his “History of Philosophy.” If the philosophical portion were to be properly sifted and then looked at if the Indian principles of classification in bringing about the Sixteen Topics which on account of the wrong translation of some people Ritter took to be tables of categories were well analyzed, and if the conception of philosophy from the Hindu point of view were well understood, then the Nyaya would have struck Ritter as good a system as any European system of philosophy. In the later or modern Nyaya. Pramana, receives the best attention. Max Muller strives a good deal, after telling us what all the Indian schools of philosophy thought of Sphota, to equate it, in significance, conception, and evolution of meaning to the Greek Logos, and he is most likely right. But the similar growths in the two countries were only autochthonic. There is fault of syntax and confusion of idea in the sentence (p. 524). “The opinion that sound exists always and eternally and is only made manifest by each speaker, which is held by th Mimausakas, is rejected by Kanada, sounds and words being accepted as momentary manifestations only of Eternal Sound”. In connection with the meaning pf Sphota and with the value of sound as the essence of language, or rather that thoughts cannot exist without words, (an old theory with Max Muller) Panini who is introduced to us as a philosopher with a cult of his own in Madhava’s Sarva Darsanasangraha, 105 [105 Cowell and Gough. Sarva Darsana Sangraha, Translation, Trubner’s Oriental Series pp. 203, et. seq.] is made to bear witness to the validity of the view of Max Muller. Every system of philosophy, nay, all our Hindu scriptures are searched for what they have to say on Sphota, till Max Muller gloriously comes out with the view that the Human Mind, according to himself and Indian philosophy has its true existence, home and life in the Divine Mind, an idea that is little more than hinted in the New-Platonic philosophy.
            In the last chapter the Vaiseshika philosophy is brought in and the dates of its Sutras are discussed in entirety. Max Muller takes up the work of Haribhadra who was a Brahmin convert to Jainism and died in 528 A.D. From the treatment the Vaiseshika receives in his work, from the researchers of Prof. Leumann in Jaina literature, and from the dates derived from Tibetan sources, brought to light by the Journal of the Buddhist Text Society, the Vaiseshika Sutras are set down in the first century A.D. The tenets of the Vaiseshika as given in the Vaiseshika Sutras and their later recension as given to us in Annambhatta’s book are described. The chief commentator of the Vaiseshika Sutras, Pracastapada, does not so much as even receive a mention in the book. According to our Professor, the Greek atomic theory as expounded by Empedocles and others have nothing to do with the Indian system. Kanada’s atoms are supposed never to assume visible dimensions till there is a combination of three double atoms, neither the single nor the double atoms being supposed to be visible by themselves. This is not the view taken by any of the Epicurean Philosophers. Therefore the conception is quite peculiar to Kanada and it distinguishes him from the Greeks as being thoroughly independent in speculation. The last category of the Vaiseshika philosophy, Samavaya (Inhesion or Inseparability) is peculiar to the Indian soil. The relationship and interdependence and inseparability between two halves and a whole for instance, though known to European philosophies did not receive a name of its own. This is another of the proofs that our logic is of independent origin, and worked out by our ancient thinkers in times lost to memory. At the end, the whole of the Six Systems are summed up, with the object of tracing the common fountain from which all the rivers have taken their rise. They have all sprung from the same soil though cultivated by different hands. Vignana Bhikshu is quoted largely to bear out the Professor’s view. To illustrate with what regard or contempt, each system of thought was considered at particular periods of Indian philosophic activity or intellectual life, opinions from the Bhagavat Gita, the Mahabharata down to the Padmapurana are quoted by Vignana Bhikshu. And to him behind all the manifold diversity of cults of Indian Philosophy, there is the same attempt to find the Divine Mystery that pervades the visible universe. They represent various stages reached by different phases of thought in their endeavors to unravel the mystery of the apparent disparity of the Universe, and to unite the inner Man with the outer God.
            Whatever may be thought of the study of Indian Philosophy as a piece of intellectual training there is no doubt, that to the seriously thinking student, it opens out vistas that transcend the reach of his vision, and gives him glimpses of the majestic Enigma of this Cosmic Scheme, setting him thirsting for the real Light. It is doubtful if the philosophers of any other nation in the world went the length of seeing in the splendor of the Inner Self the blinding glory of the pulsating Spirit of Nature. And it is this solemn eloquence that is implied in the silence, or the dim reservation, of our philosophers, when they have to touch upon topics appertaining to the Infinite Goal of man and all the passing Panorama of sound and music, of wail and woe, and sometimes of cheer and happiness, that rings in the ears of Max Muller with a thousand tongues, when he exclaims, “To have mounted to such heights, even if we have to descend again frightened and giddy, must have strengthened the muscles of human reason, and will remain in our memory as a sight never to be forgotten, even in the lower spheres in which we have to more in our daily life and amidst our daily duties. Speaking for myself I am bound to say that I have felt an acquaintance with the general spirit of Indian philosophy as a blessing from my very youth, being strengthened by it against all the antinomies of being and thinking, and nerved in all the encounters with the sceptician and materialism of one our own Ephemeral philosophy.” 106 [106 The italics are of my own introduction.] This is the testimony of a man who has devoted years of patient study to mastering our philosophy, and only a true Vedantin can obtain the comfort and mental quietude he has derived, as necessaries to brave the fleeting phantoms of this work-a-day world. It is in India alone that Religion and Philosophy have lived in indissoluble unison, the one nerved with the freedom of right-thinking from Philosophy and the other mellowed by the sweetness of spirituality from Religion. Divorce is unknown in India between Philosophy and Religion, and the fatigue of one soft sister never became the strength of the other. To us it has always been taught by our ancient Seers that spiritual realms are not beyond our ken, even when our souls are tabernacle in the flesh, and that glories of the next world can be sensed in this. But up those narrow stirs, and steep galleries which we should tread before sighting our original Home, and breathing the atmosphere that is congenial to our true natures, we should carry with us the lamp of that maxim that has been uttered with stately melody, by one of our own earliest Brahmavadins:-
              
[107 Patanjali, Yoga-Sutras, II, 36.]
V. V. RAMANAN.