Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c16.4

c16.4

**Their Ages.** In the midst of this multiplicity of schools of thought, the six systems of philosophy have stood out and held their own as the most typical and representative of them all. The six systems have come to be distinguished as orthodox systems from the heterodox systems of the Buddhists, Jains, and Chārvākas, because they are all somehow reconcilable with the Vedic system, though they mutually differ in their relations to the same. The six systems are known as (1) the *Sāṁkhya* of Kapila, (2) *Yoga* of Patañjali, (3) *Nyāya* of Gautama, (4) *Vaiśeshika* of Kaṇāda, (5) *Karma* or *Pūrva Mīmāṁsā* of Jaimini, and (6) *Śārīraka* or *Uttara Mīmāṁsā* or *Vedānta* of Bādarāyaṇa. It is to be noted that the philosophers to whom these systems are ascribed were not necessarily their originators. They gave the final form to the Sūtras which themselves refer to older philosophers. Some of the Sūtras, again, refer to the opinions of other Sūtras, which shows that the different philosophical Schools were already in existence before the final redaction of the Sūtras took place. It may further be noted that the extant literary works in which the doctrines of the six systems are embodied are themselves much later in date than their original founders. Thus the *Sāṁkhya-Kārikā* of Īśvara Kṛishṇa, giving the best exposition of the *Sāṁkhya* system, which was taken by Paramārtha to China in A.D. 546, is generally considered to be not older than the fourth century A.D., the period of Indian literary revival under the Gupta emperors. Similarly, Bādarāyaṇa, Jaimini, Kaṇāda, or Patañjali are to be regarded as mere eponymous founders of their respective philosophical schools, so that whatever might be the date of the actual composition of the Sūtras embodying their systems, they were ascribed to them in accordance with the characteristic and time-honoured Hindu literary practice of fathering the subsequent works of disciples upon their *gurus* (though there might be occasionally exceptions to this practice, as in the case of Śaunaka suppressing his own work in favour of his disciples). Thus though, on grounds of rigid chronological standard, the philosophical Sūtras do not come within the Sūtra period proper, they may be justifiably considered as belonging to that period on the basis of what Max Müller aptly calls "the chronology of thought" by which we are able to distinguish between the three phases of Vedic thought represented by Mantras, Brāhmaṇas, and Upanishads, followed by the period of the Sūtra literature, during which even the Buddhists were composing their *Suttas* after the literary fashion of the times.