The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy

Philosophy and Philosophers.

WHILE in most countries a history of philosophy is inseparable from a history of philosophers, in India we have indeed ample materials for watching the origin and growth of philosophical ideas, but hardly any for studying the lives or characters of those who founded or supported the philosophical systems of that country. Their work has remained and continues to live to the present day, but of the philosophers themselves hardly anything remains to us beyond their names. Not even their dates can be ascertained with any amount of certainty. In Greece, from the earliest times, the simplest views of the world and of the destinies of man, nay even popular sayings, maxims of morality and worldly wisdom, and wise saws of every kind, even though they contained nothing very original or personal, were generally quoted as the utterances of certain persons or at least ascribed to certain names, such as the Seven Sages, so as to have something like a historical background. We have some idea of who Thales was, and who was Plato, where and when they lived, and what they did; but of Kapila, the supposed founder of the S&mkhya philosophy, of Pata/l^ali, the founder of the Yoga, of Gotama and Ka?iada, of Badarayawa and 6raimini, we know next to nothing, and what we know hardly ever rests on contemporary and trustworthy evidence. Whether any of these Indian philosophers lived at the same time and in the same place, whether they were friends or enemies, whether some were the pupils and others the teachers, all this is unknown to us, nor do I see any chance of our ever knowing more about them than we do at present. We read that Thales warned King Croesus, we are told that Empedocles finished his days by throwing himself into the flames of Aetna, we know that Socrates drank poison, and that Anaxagoras was the friend of Pericles, but there is nothing to connect the names of the ancient Indian philosophers with any historical events, with any political characters, or with dates before the time of Buddha.