[732] See Dinesh Chandra Sen, Hist. Beng. Lang, and Lit. pp. 712-721. Even the iconoclast Devendranath Tagore speaks of the Universal Mother. See Autobiog. p. 240.
[733] So I was told, but I saw only six, when I visited the place in 1910.
[734] Rudhirâdhyâya. Translated in As. Researches, V. 1798, pp. 371-391.
[735] See Frazer, op. cit. p. 246.
CHAPTER XXXIII
HINDU PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is more closely connected with religion in India than in Europe. It is not a dispassionate scientific investigation but a practical religious quest. Even the Nyâya school, which is concerned chiefly with formal logic, promises that by the removal of false knowledge it can emancipate the soul and give the bliss of salvation. Nor are the expressions system or school of philosophy, commonly used to render darśana, altogether happy. The word is derived from the root dṛiś, to see, and means a way of looking at things. As such a way of looking is supposed to be both comprehensive and orderly, it is more or less what we call philosophical, but the points of view are so special and so various that the result is not always what we call a philosophical system. Mádhava's[736] list of Darśanas includes Buddhism and Jainism, which are commonly regarded as separate religions, as well as the Pâśupata and Śaiva, which are sects of Hinduism. The Darśana of Jaimini is merely a discussion of general questions relating to sacrifices: the Nyâya Darśana examines logic and rhetoric: the Pâṇiniya Darśana treats of grammar and the nature of language, but claims that it ought to be studied "as the means for attaining the chief end of man."[737]
Six of the Darśanas have received special prominence and are often called the six Orthodox Schools. They are the Nyâya and Vaiśeshika, Sâṅkhya and Yoga, Pûrva and Uttara Mîmâṃsâ, or Vedânta. The rest are either comparatively unimportant or are more conveniently treated of as religious sects. The six placed on the select list are sufficiently miscellaneous and one wonders what principle of classification can have brought them together. The first two have little connection with religion, though they put forward the emancipation of the soul as their object, and I have no space to discuss them. They are however important as showing that realism has a place in Indian thought in spite of its marked tendency to idealism.[738] They are concerned chiefly with an examination of human faculties and the objects of knowledge, and are related to one another. The special doctrine of the Vaiśeshika is the theory of atoms ascribed to Kaṇâda. It teaches that matter consists of atoms (aṇu) which are eternal in themselves though all combinations of them are liable to decompose. The Sâṅkhya and Yoga are also related and represent two aspects of the same system which is of great antiquity and allied to Buddhism and Jainism. The two Mîmâṃsâs are consecutive expositions of the teaching scattered throughout the Vedic texts respecting ceremonial and the knowledge of God respectively. The second Mîmâṃsâ, commonly called the Vedânta, is by far the more interesting and important.
The common feature in these six systems which constitutes their orthodoxy is that they all admit the authority of the Veda. This implies more than our phrases revelation or inspiration of the Bible. Most of the Darśanas attach importance to the pramâṇas, sources or standards of knowledge. They are variously enumerated, but one of the oldest definitions makes them three: perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumâna) and scripture (śabda). The Veda is thus formally acknowledged to have the same authority as the evidence of the senses. With this is generally coupled the doctrine that it is eternal. It was not composed by human authors, but is a body of sound existing from eternity as part of Brahman and breathed out by him when he causes the whole creation to evolve at the beginning of a world period. The reputed authors are simply those who have, in Indian language, seen portions of this self-existent teaching. This doctrine sounds more reasonable if restated in the form that words are the expression of thought, and that if thought is the eternal essence of both Brahman and the soul, a similar eternity may attach to words. Some such idea is the origin of the Christian doctrine of the Logos, and in many religions we find such notions as that words have a creative efficacy,[739] or that he who knows the name of a thing has power over it. Among Mohammedans the Koran is supposed to be not merely an inspired composition but a pre-existing book, revealed to Mohammed piecemeal.