Indian Philosophy v2.c28.s1.2

v2.c28.s1.2

THROUGHOUT the history of Indian thought, the ideal of a world behind the ordinary world of human strivings, more real and more intangible, which is the true home of the spirit, has been haunting the Indian race. Man's never-ceasing effort to read the riddle of the sphinx and raise himself above the level of the beast to a moral and spiritual height finds a striking illustration in India. We can watch the struggle for four millenniums (or longer, if the recent archæological finds in Sind and the Punjab, which are withdrawing the shroud that hid the remote past, are to be taken into account). The naïve belief that the world is ruled by the gods of Sun and Sky, who watch from on high the conduct of men, whether it is straight or crooked; the faith that the gods who can be persuaded by prayer or compelled by rites to grant our requests, are only the forms of the one Supreme; the firm conviction that the pure stainless spirit, to know whom is life eternal, is one with the innermost soul of man; the rise of materialism, scepticism and fatalism, and their supersession by the ethical systems of Buddhism and Jainism, with their central doctrine that one can free one-self from all ill only by refraining from all evil, in thought, word and deed—God or no God; the liberal theism of the *Bhagavadgītā*, which endows the all-soul with ethical in addition to metaphysical perfections; the logical scheme of the Nyāya, which furnishes the principal categories of the world of knowledge which are in use even to-day; the Vaiśeṣika interpretation of nature; the Sāṃkhya speculations in science and psychology; the Yoga scheme of the pathway to perfection; the ethical and social regulations of the Mīmāṃsā and the religious interpretations of the Supreme reality, as put forward by Śaṃkara, Rāmānuja, Madhva and Nimbārka, Vallabha and Jīva Gosvāmī—form a remarkable record of philosophical development in the history of the human race. Type succeeds type, school follows on school, in logical sequence. The life of the Indian was ever on the move, shaping itself as it grew, and changing from time to time in relation to its physical, social and cultural contexts. In the early stages the ancient Indians were doing everything for the first time. They had practically no wisdom of the past to fall back upon. They had, moreover, enormous difficulties to contend with, which are now almost things of the past. In spite of these, their achievement in the realm of thought and practice is a considerable one. But the cycle is not complete, and the range of possible forms is not exhausted; for the sphinx still smiles. Philosophy is yet in its infancy.