Kaveri Books Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha on Review of the Different Systems of Hindu Philosophy, Translated by E B Cowell A E Gough

by Madhava Acharya

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Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, India, Religion, Hinduism

Paperback

First published October 15, 2005

Reviews

[Anmol]

Unfortunately my Sanskrit is not yet good enough to read this in the original, so I had to rely on the very outdated Cowell/Gough translation, which is good for some chapters, but barely coherent for others. In any case, I find Madhava's own division of the systems of Indian philosophy very disappointing: of course, the whole doxographical project is aimed at highlighting the supremacy of his own orthodox Advaita Vedanta. While that in itself is alright (after all, every historian of philosophy has their uninformed biases: just see how Russell treated Nietzsche), the real problem is Madhava's vague understanding of Buddhism and Jainism, which leads to his summary dismissal of both schools. He utterly fails to recognise that the diversity within Buddhist philosophy, had it been treated seriously by him, would have taken longer than the rest of the book. Instead, he just chooses a tongue-in-cheek discussion of 'momentariness' and 'nihilism', completely failing to understand Nagarjuna (or even so-called 'Hinayana' Buddhism for that matter: Indians really did become disconnected with Theravada philosophy once it went to Sri Lanka).

The realm problem with the Sarva-darsana-samgraha is the legacy which it has left behind. Hundreds of years later, Indian philosophers writing in English continue to follow its flawed doxographical discussion of the systems of philosophy. We know so much more about Buddhism than Madhava would have at his time, but we still refuse to acknowledge the philosophical depth of that tradition. This calls for some reflection, and it's about time we stopped writing (or even reading seriously for that matter, besides for historical interests) doxographies of this kind.

[Rohan Rajesh]

This is a fascinating historical work that reviews several traditions of ancient Indian philosophy and provides a strong argument for each of them before using a "superior" system to criticize it, ultimately ending in Shankara's system of Advaita Vedanta. The translation is comprehensive but too complicated in verbiage to make for easy reading. I recommend using ChatGPT to help summarize particularly complicated paragraphs.