ideal blessedness and quiet of self-realization is indeed the fundamental fact from which not only her philosophy but many of the complex phenomena of the civilization of India can be logically deduced. The sorrow around us has no fear for us if we remember that we are naturally sorrowless and blessed in ourselves. The pessimistic view loses all terror as it closes in absolute optimistic confidence in one's own self and the ultimate destiny and goal of emancipation. Unity in Indian Sādhana (philosophical, religious and ethical endeavours). As might be expected the Indian systems are all agreed upon the general principles of ethical conduct which must be followed for the attainment of salvation. That all passions are to be controlled, no injury to life in any form should be done, and that all desire for pleasures should be checked, are principles which are almost universally acknowledged. When a man attains a very high degree of moral greatness he has to strengthen and prepare his mind for further purifying and steadying it for the attainment of his ideal; and most of the Indian systems are unanimous with regard to the means to be employed for the purpose. There are indeed divergences in certain details or technical names, but the means to be adopted for purification are almost everywhere essentially the same as those advocated by the Yoga system. It is only in later times that devotion (bhakti) is seen to occupy a more prominent place specially in Vaisnava schools of thought. Thus it was that though there were many differences among the various systems, yet their goal of life, their attitude towards the world and the means for the attainment of the goal (sadhana) being fundamentally the same, there was a unique unity in the practical sadhana ́of almost all the Indian systems. The religious craving has been universal in India and this uniformity of sadhana has therefore secured for India a unity in all her aspirations and strivings. CHAPTER V BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY MANY scholars are of opinion that the Samkhya and the Yoga represent the earliest systematic speculations of India. It is also suggested that Buddhism drew much of its inspiration from them. It may be that there is some truth in such a view, but the systematic Samkhya and Yoga treatises as we have them had decidedly been written after Buddhism. Moreover it is well-known to every student of Hindu philosophy that a conflict with the Buddhists has largely stimulated philosophic enquiry in most of the systems of Hindu thought. A knowledge of Buddhism is therefore indispensable for a right understanding of the different systems in their mutual relation and opposition to Buddhism. It seems desirable therefore that I should begin with Buddhism first. The State of Philosophy in India before the Buddha. It is indeed difficult to give a short sketch of the different philosophical speculations that were prevalent in India before Buddhism. The doctrines of the Upanisads are well known, and these have already been briefly described. But these were not the only ones. Even in the Upanisads we find references to diverse atheistical creeds'. We find there that the origin of the world and its processes were sometimes discussed, and some thought that "time" was the ultimate cause of all, others that all these had sprung forth by their own nature (svabhāva), others that everything had come forth in accordance with an inexorable destiny or a fortuitous concourse of accidental happenings, or through matter combinations in general. References to diverse kinds of heresies are found in Buddhist literature also, but no detailed accounts of these views are known. Of the Upanisad type of materialists the two schools of Carvākas (Dhūrtta and Susikṣita) are referred to in later literature, though the time in which these flourished cannot rightly be discovered. But it seems 1 Śvetāśvatara, I. 2, kālaḥ svabhābo niyatiryadṛcchābhūtāni yoniḥ puruşa iti cintyam. 2 Lokayata (literally, that which is found among people in general) seems to have been the name by which all carvāka doctrines were generally known. See Gunaratna on the Lokayatas. probable however that the allusion to the materialists contained in the Upanisads refers to these or to similar schools. The Cārvākas did not believe in the authority of the Vedas or any other holy scripture. According to them there was no soul. Life and consciousness were the products of the combination of matter, just as red colour was the result of mixing up white with yellow or as the power of intoxication was generated in molasses (madaśakti). There is no after-life, and no reward of actions, as there is neither virtue nor vice. Life is only for enjoyment. So long as it lasts it is needless to think of anything else, as everything will end with death, for when at death the body is burnt to ashes there cannot be any rebirth. They do not believe in the validity of inference. Nothing is trustworthy but what can be directly perceived, for it is impossible to determine that the distribution of the middle term (hetu) has not depended upon some extraneous condition, the absence of which might destroy the validity of any particular piece of inference. If in any case any inference comes to be true, it is only an accidental fact and there is no certitude about it. They were called Cārvāka because they would only eat but would not accept any other religious or moral responsibility. The word comes from carv to eat. The Dhurtta Cārvākas held that there was nothing but the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, and that the body was but the result of atomic combination. There was no self or soul, no held that there was virtue or vice. The Suśikṣita Cārvas destroyed with a soul apart from the body but that it the destruction of the body. The original work of the Cārvākas was written in sūtras probably by Bṛhaspati. Jayanta and Guṇaratna quote two sūtras from it. Short accounts of this school may be found in Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī, Mādhavas Sarvadarśanasamgraha and Gunaratna's Tarkarahasyadīpikā. Mahābhārata gives an account of a man called Cārvāka meeting Yudhisthira. Side by side with the doctrine of the Cavaka materialists we are reminded of the Ājīvakas of which Makkhali Gosāla, probably a renegade disciple of the Jain saint Mahāvīra and a contemporary of Buddha and Mahāvīra, was the leader. This was a thoroughgoing determinism denying the free will of man and his moral responsibility for any so-called good or evil. The essence of Makkhali's system is this, that "there is no cause, either proximate or remote, for the depravity of beings or for their purity. They become so without any cause. Nothing depends either on one's own efforts or on the efforts of others, in short nothing depends on any human effort, for there is no such thing as power or energy, or human exertion. The varying conditions at any time are due to fate, to their environment and their own nature'." Another sophistical, school led by Ajita Kesakambali taught that there was no fruit or result of good or evil deeds; there is no other world, nor was this one real; nor had parents nor any former lives any efficacy with respect to this life. Nothing that we can do prevents any of us alike from being wholly brought to an end at death2. There were thus at least three currents of thought: firstly the sacrificial Karma by the force of the magical rites of which any person could attain anything he desired; secondly the Upanisad teaching that the Brahman, the self, is the ultimate reality and being, and all else but name and form which pass away but do not abide. That which permanently abides without change is the real and true, and this is self. Thirdly the nihilistic conceptions that there is no law, no abiding reality, that everything comes into being by a fortuitous concourse of circumstances or by some unknown fate. In each of these schools, philosophy had probably come to a deadlock. There were the Yoga practices prevalent in the country and these were accepted partly on the strength of traditional custom among certain sections, and partly by virtue of the great spiritual, intellectual and physical power which they gave to those who performed them. But these had no rational basis behind them on which they could lean for support. These were probably then just tending towards being affiliated to the nebulous Samkhya doctrines which had grown up among certain sections. It was at this juncture that we find Buddha erecting a new superstructure of thought on altogether original lines which thenceforth opened up a new avenue of philosophy for all posterity to come. If the Being of the Upanisads, the superlatively motionless, was the only real, how could it offer scope for further new speculations, as it had already discarded all other matters of interest? If everything was due to a reasonless fortuitous concourse of circumstances, reason could not proceed further in the direction to create any philosophy of the unreason. The magical 1 Sāmaññaphala-sutta, Digha, 11. 20. Hoernlé's article on the Ājīvakas, E. R. E. 2 Samaññaphala-sutta, II. 23. force of the hocus-pocus of sorcery or sacrifice had but little that was inviting for philosophy to proceed on. If we thus take into account the state of Indian philosophic culture before Buddha, we shall be better able to understand the value of the Buddhistic contribution to philosophy. Buddha: his Life. Gautama the Buddha was born in or about the year 560 B.C.? in the Lumbini Grove near the ancient town of Kapilavastu in the now dense terai region of Nepal. His father was Suddhodana, a prince of the Sakya clan, and his mother Queen Mahāmāyā. According to the legends it was foretold of him that he would enter upon the ascetic life when he should see "A decrepit old man, a diseased man, a dead man, and a monk." His father tried his best to keep him away from these by marrying him and surrounding him with luxuries. But on successive occasions, issuing from the palace, he was confronted by those four things, which filled him with amazement and distress, and realizing the impermanence of all earthly things determined to forsake his home and try if he could to discover some means to immortality to remove the sufferings of men. He made his "Great Renunciation" when he was twenty-nine years old. He travelled on foot to Rajagṛha (Rajgir) and thence to Uruvela, where in company with other five ascetics he entered upon a course of extreme self-discipline, carrying his austerities to such a length that his body became utterly emaciated and he fell down senseless and was believed to be dead. After six years of this great struggle he was convinced that the truth was not to be won by the way of extreme asceticism, and resuming an ordinary course of life at last attained absolute and supreme enlightenment. Thereafter the Buddha spent a life prolonged over forty-five years in travelling from place to place and preaching the doctrine to all who would listen. At the age of over eighty years Buddha realized that the time drew near for him to die. He then entered into Dhyana and passing through its successive stages attained nirvāṇa'. The vast developments which the system of this great teacher underwent in the succeeding centuries in India and in other countries have not been thoroughly studied, and it will probably take yet many years more before even the materials for 1 Mahāparinibbānasuttanta, Digha, xvI. 6, 8, 9. |