The Spiritual Heritage of India by Swami; Prabhavananda

Author:Swami; Prabhavananda [Prabhavananda, Swami;]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-10-01T13:42:03.423524+00:00

Book IV

The Six Systems of Thought

Chapter 9

The Six Systems of Thought: General Remarks

The spiritual aspirant, as we have read repeatedly in the course of this book, first hears the truth, second, reasons upon it, and, third, meditates upon it. The Six Systems of Hindu philosophy are concerned with the second of these three steps. They have always in view the goal of the aspirant, which is final liberation, but as a means to that goal they seek to give him a complete intellectual grasp of the Self, God, and the universe in which he lives.

The Six Systems of Hindu thought are the Vaiśeṣika of Kaṇāda, the Nyāya of Gotama, the Sāṁkhya of Kapila, the Yoga of Patañjali, the Mīmāṁsā (also called Pūrva Mīmāṁsā) of Jaimini, and the Vedānta (also called Uttara Mīmāṁsā) of Vyāsa. Because of certain metaphysical similarities, these six systems (independent though they were in origin) may for convenience sake be reduced to three, Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya forming one group, Sāṁkhya and Yoga a second, and Mīmāṁsā and Vedānta a third.

The exact dates of the origin of these schools of thought are not known, though it is certain that the general ideas that make up their substance existed prior to Buddhism and even during the Epic Period. Nor is it known just who their founders were: Kaṇāda, Gotama, and the others whose names are associated with them are not their founders. The sūtras in which the views embodied in them were systematically formulated were a series of aphorisms uttered by the sages sometime during the early Buddhistic period—roughly between 600 and 200 BC.1

From a time when the art of writing was still unknown, these sūtras were preserved in memory and handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil. They are so extremely laconic in form as to be well-nigh unintelligible without commentaries and explanatory notes, and oral supplements of this nature were early associated with the original aphorisms and transmitted with them. More and more commentaries and notes were gradually added, and in time written down, and the custom of composing them persisted even until the sixteenth or seventeenth century of the Christian era.

The Six Systems are regarded as āstika, or orthodox, because, unlike Buddhism and Jainism, they accept the authority of the Vedas on all questions pertaining to the nature of the universe. Moreover, there is nothing unorthodox in expanding, within limits, on the original revelations. For, as has already been explained in the introductory chapter of this book, though reason is given its due part in all the philosophies of India, there is everywhere the assumption that it will be aided by those intuitive perceptions to which the Vedas give the first recorded expression.

Actually the Six Systems of philosophy, reduced to three distinct groups, are not mutually contradictory, though in certain of their theories they would seem to be so. They really represent, not conflicting schools of thought, but a progressive development from truth to higher truth to the highest truth. Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika

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