The Philosophy of Ancient India (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897. Excerpt: ... BRIEF OUTLINE OF A HISTORY OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY. DISTINCTIVE leaning to metaphysical specu lation is noticeable among the Indians from the earliest times. Old hymns of the Rigveda, which in other respects are still deeply rooted in the soil of polytheism, show already the inclination to comprehend multifarious phenomena as a unity, and may therefore be regarded as the first steps in the path which led the old Indian people to pantheism. Monotheistic ideas also occur in the later Vedic hymns, but are not developed with sufficient logic to displace the multiform world of gods from the consciousness of the people The properly philosophical hymns, of which there are few in the Rigveda, and not many more in the Atharvaveda, belong to the latest products of the Vedic poetry. They concern themselves with the problem of the origin of the world, and with the eternal principle that creates and maintains the world, in obscure phraseology, and in unclear, self-contradictory trains of thought, as might be expected of the early beginnings of speculation. The Yajurvedas, also, contain remarkable and highly fantastic cosmogonic legends, in which the world-creator produces things by the allpowerful sacrifice. It is worthy of notice that the ideas of the portions of the Veda are intimately related with those of the earlier Upanishads, in fact in many respects are identical;1 their connexion is also further evinced by the fact that both in these Upanishads and in the cosmogonic hymns and legends of the Veda the subjects discussed make their appearance absolutely without order. Still, the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads, and, in part, also their precursors, the Brahmanas, which deal essentially with ritualistic questions, and the more speculative Aranyakas, are of the greatest imp...