A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History, and Literature c5.444

c5.444

The merits of the various schools have been thus summed up:— “When we consider the six Darsanas, we shall find that one of them, the Uttara-mīmānsā, bears no title to be ranked by the side of the others, and is really little more than a mystical explanation of the practical injunctions of the Vedas. We shall also admit that the earlier Vedānta, very different from the school of Nihilists now existing under that name, was chiefly a controversial essay, seeking to support the theology of sacred writ, but borrowing all its philosophical portions from the Yoga school, the most popular at the time of its composition. Lastly, the Nyāya is little more than a treatise on logic, introducing the doctrines of the theistic Sānkhya; while the Vaiseshika is an essay on physics, with, it is true, the theory of atoms as its distinguishing mark, though even to this we feel inclined to refuse the imputation of novelty, since we find some idea of it lurking obscurely in the theory of subtile elements which is brought forward in Kapila’s Sānkhya. In short, the basis of all Indian philosophy, if indeed we may not say the only system of philosophy really discovered in India, is the Sānkhya, and this forms the basis of the doctrines expounded in the Bhagavad-gītā.”—Cockburn Thomson.