A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s1.13

c14.s1.13

Something too must be allowed for the tendency of the Indian mind to prefer the general to the particular, which is shown in widely different spheres of knowledge. We hear, for instance, in Buddhist texts of certain definite heresies, but we are equally faced with schematic lists of unsound philosophical views which are asserted to have been held by others, but which in large measure are obviously mere inventions. Throughout the history of Indian philosophy the same thing is seen; no one seems to be in the least interested in the history of doctrines, no one writes a history of philosophy as contrasted with summaries of opposing doctrines; no one even attempts a real history of politics or medicine. What interests writers is not questions of the opinions of predecessors as individuals, but the discussion of divergencies of doctrine all imagined as having arisen *ex initio*. The names of some great authorities may be preserved, as in the case of the schools of philosophy, but nothing whatever with any taint of actuality is recorded regarding their personalities, and we are left to grope for dates. This indifference to chronology is seen everywhere in India, and must be definitely connected, in the ultimate issue, with the quite secondary character ascribed to time by the philosophies.