India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c11.s3.31

c11.s3.31

These distinctions of philosophical thought mentioned in the *Svet. Up.* and the *Mahā-Bodhi Jātaka* (*Jāt.* V, p. 228 ff.) are presupposed in Pāṇini. For example, Pāṇini's *Āstika mati* is the Theistic school of *Purusha* or *Issarakāraṇavāda*. We know that orthodox Brahmanical thought laid great stress on this view which was developed in the earliest Sāṅkhya and attained its climax in the *Vedānta sūtras*. Pāṇini also mentions by name the *Bhikshusūtras* of Pārāśarya (IV.3.110), which probably denoted the earliest Vedānta treatises written in *sūtra* form. The nucleus of such a text did exist in Pāṇini's time. The *Purusha* or *Adhyātma* school ultimately absorbed other minor doctrines as *Prāṇa*, *Jyoti*, etc., by evolving a synthesis of all such causes in *Purusha*, and in course of time other views on matter and creation aligned themselves with that view, so that *Āstikavāda* as expressed in a number of orthodox schools became the most predominant pattern of Indian philosophy.