An Introduction to Indian Philosophy

by Satischandra Chatterjee

'Men live in accordance with their philosophy of life, their conception of the world.

In the history of Western philosophy we usually find the different schools coming into existence successively. Each school predominates till another comes in and replaces it. In India, on the other hand, we find that the different schools, though not originating simultaneously, flourish together during many centuries, and pursue parallel courses of growth. The reason is to be sought perhaps in the fact that in India philosophy was a part of life. As each system of thought came into existence it was adopted as a philosophy of life by a band of followers who formed a school of that philosophy. They lived the philosophy and handed it down to succeeding generations of followers who were atracted to them through their lives and thoughts. The different systems of thought thus continued to exist through unbroken

chains of successive adherents for centuries. Even today, we find the active followers of some of the chief philosophical schools in different parts of India, though development of indigenous philosophy has been much retarded now, owing to social and political vicissitudes.

'Optimism seems to be more immoral than Pessimism, for Pessimism warns us of danger, while Optimism lulls into false security.'6

Testimony is valid when it is the report of a reliable authority. In fact, the Jainas hold that it is on the authority of the teachings of the omniscient liberated saints (Jainas or Tirthaṅkaras) that we can have unerring knowledge about certain spiritual matters, which our limited sense-perception and reasoning cannot reveal to us.

The Jaina philosophy is a kind of realism, because it asserts the reality of the external world, and it is pluralism, because it believes In many ultimate realities. It is atheism as it rejects the existence of God.

Having rejected the authority of the scriptures, the notions of virtue and vice, and belief in life after death, the Cārvākas are naturally opposed to the performance of religious ceremonies with the object of either attaining heaven or avoiding hell or propitiating departed souls. They raise cheap laughter at the customary rites. If the food offered during funeral ceremony (śrāddha) for the departed soul can appease his hunger, what is the use of a traveller's taking food with him? Why should not his people make some offerings in his name at home to satisfy his hunger? Similarly, food offered on the ground floor should satisfy a person living upstairs. If the priests really believe, as they say, that the animals killed at a sacrifice (yajña) are sure to reach heaven, why do they not rather sacrifice their old parents instead of animals and make heaven sure for them? Religion is thus reduced to morality and morality to the search of pleasure. The ethics of the Cārvāka is only the logical outcome of his materialistic metaphysics.

Finally, it may be noted that the contribution of Cārvāka epistemology is not insignificant. The criticism of inference put in the mouth of the Cārvāka by his opponents reminds us of similar criticism made in modern times against the soundness of deductive logic. The Cārvāka view that no inference can yield certain knowledge is the view of many contemporary Western thinkers like the pragmatists and logical positivists.

metaphysical theory of reality as many-faced (anekāntavāda) and a consequent logical doctrine (syādvāda) that every judgment is subject to some condition and limitation, and various judgments about the same reality may, therefore, be true, each in its own sense, subject to its own condition.

Syādvāda or the Theory that Every Judgment is Relative

every object known by us has innumerable characters (ananta-dharmakam vastu).

The negative characters which determine the man consist of what he is not. To know him fully, we should know how he is distinguished from everything else;

characters (dharma)

that which possesses the characters (dharm

is generally called a substance (dravya). The Jainas accept this common philosophical view of substance. But they point out that there are two kinds of characters found in every substance, essential and accidental. The essential characters of a substance remain in the substance as long as the substance remains. Without these, the substance will cease to be what it is. Consciousness, for example, is an essential character of the soul. Again, the accidental characters of a substance come and go; they succeed one another. Desires, volitions, pleasure and pain are such accidental characters possessed by the soul-substance. It is through such characters that a substance undergoes change or modification. They may also be called, therefore, modes. The Jainas call an esse...

The world is composed of substances of different kinds. In so far as the essential characters of the ultimate substances are abiding, the world is permanent, and insofar as the accidental char...

Bau...

monistic Ved

Each of them looks at one side (ekānta) of reality only and thus commits the fallacy of exclusive predication. Change and permanence are both real. It should not be thought contradictory to say that a particular substance (or the universe as a whole) is both subject to change and free from it. Change is true of the substance in one respect (syāt), whereas permanence is true in another respect (syāt). The contradiction vanishes when we remember that each predication is relative and not absolute, as taught by sy

three factors: permanence, origination, and decay.24

By accepting this criterion of reality, the Jainas reject the Baudha view that reality consists in causal efficiency, i.e., that an object is real if it is capable of causing any effect.

Our knowledge about Buddha's teachings depends today chiefly on the Tripiṭakas or the three baskets of teachings which are claimed to contain his views as reported by his most intimate disciples. These three canonical works are named Vinayapiṭaka, Suttapiṭaka and Abhidhammapi

conduct for the congregation (sa

Buddha's sermons and ...

expositions of philosophica...

Mahāyānists, interpreted Buddha's view neither as a denial of reality beyond objects of ordinary experience, nor as a denial of any means of knowing the non-empirical reality, but only as signifying the indescribability of that transcendental experience and reality.

his non-empirical experience can neither be logically proved with arguments nor be expressed in empirical ideas and language.

Buddhism, though primarily an ethical-religious movement, thus came to give birth to about thirty schools, not

four distinguished in India by Buddhist44 and non-Buddhist writers. In this account, (a) some Bauddha philosophers are nihilists (śūnya-vādī or Mādhyamika), (b) others are subjective idealists (Vijñānavādī or Yogācāra, (c) others still are representationists or critical realists (Bāhyānumeya-vādī or Sautrāntika), and (d) the rest are direct realists (Bāhyapratyakṣa-vādī) or Vaibhāṣika). The first two of the above four schools come under Mahāyāna and the last two under Hīnayāna. It should be noted, however, that under both Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna there are many other schools.45

To the metaphysical question 'Is there at all any reality, mental or non-mental?' three different replies are given: (a) the Mādhhyamikas hold46 that there is no reality, mental or non-mental; that all is void (śūnya). Therefore, they have been known as the nihilists (śūnya-vādins). (b) The Yogācāras hold that only the mental is real, the non-mental or the material world is all void of reality. They are, therefore, called subjective idealists (vijñānavādins). (c) Still another class of Bauddhas hold that both the mental and the non-mental are real. They may, therefore, be called realists. Sometimes they are styled Sarvāstivādins (i.e. those who hold the reality of all things), though this term is often used in a narrower sense by some Buddhist writers.

But when the further epistemological question is asked: 'How is external reality known to exist?' this third group of thinkers, who believe in external reality, give two different answers. Some of them, called Sautrāntikas, hold that external objects are not perceived but known by inference. Others, known as Vaibhāṣikas, hold that the external world is directly perceived. Thus we have the four schools, representing the four important standpoints.

been understood in India, by non-Buddhist philosophers in general, to mean that the universe is totally devoid of reality, that everything is śūnya or void.

when we perceive a snake, in a rope, the object perceived, namely, the snake is absolutely fasle. Hence the mind or the subject which knows such an object turns out to be false and its knowledge also becomes false. Thus it may be concluded that all that we perceive within or without, along with their perception and the percipient mind, are illusory like dream-objects. There is, therefore, nothing, mental or non-mental, which is real. The universe is śūnya or void of reality.

The word śūnya, used by the Mādhyamikas themselves, is chiefly responsible for this notion—because śūnya means ordinarily void or empty.

But when we study this philosophy more closely, we come to realise that the Madhyamika view is not really nihilism, as ordinaily supposed, and that it does not deny all reality, but only the apparent phenomenal world perceived by us.

Behind this phenomenal world there is a reality which is not describable by any character, mental or non-mental, that we perceive. Being devoid of phenomenal characters, it is called śūnya. But this is only the negative aspect of the...

the real nature of objects cannot be ascertained by the intellect and cannot, therefore, be described. That which is real must be independent and should not depend on anything else for its existence and origination. But everything we know of is dependent on some condition. Hence it cannot be real.

Again, it cannot be said to be unreal. Because an unreal thing, like a castle in the air, can never come into existence. To say that it is both real and unreal or that it is neither real nor unreal, would be unintelligible jargon.50 Śūnyatā or voidness is the name for this indeterminable, indescribable real nature of things. Things appear to exist, but when we try to understand the real nature of their existence, our intellect is baffled. It cannot be called either real or unreal, or both real and unreal, or neither real nor unreal.

the indescribable nature of things is deduced from the fact of their being dependent on o...

'The fact of dependent origination is called by us śūnyatā.'51 'There is no dharma (character) of things which is not dependent on some other condition regarding its origi...

It would appear, therefore, that śūnya only means the conditional character of things, and their consequent constant changeability and ...

middle (madhyama) path, because it avoids extreme views by denying, for example, both absolute reality and absolute unreality of things and asserting their conditional existence.

Buddha, as we saw, called the theory of dependent origination—the middle path.54 And so Nāgārjuna says55 that śūnya-vāda is called the middle path because it implies the theory of dependent origination.

Śūnya-vāda can therefore, also be interpreted as a theory of relativity which declares that no thing, no phenomenon experieced, has a fixed, absolute, independent character of its own (svabhāva) and, therefore, no description of any phenomenon can be said to be unconditionally true.

To this philosophy of phenomena (or things as they appear to us), the Mādhyamikas add a philosophy of noumenon (or reality in itself). Buddha's teachings regarding dependent origination, impermanence, etc., apply, they hold, only to the phenomenal world, to things commonly obsereved by us in ordinary expericence. But when nirvāṇa is attained and the conditions of sense-experience and the appearance of phenomena are controlled, what would be the nature of the resultant experience? To this we cannot apply the conditional characters true of phenomena. The Mādhyamikas, therefore, hold that there is a transcendental reality (noumenon) behind the phenomenal one and it is free from change, conditionality and all other phenomenal characters.

As Nāgārjuna says: 'There are two truths, on which Buddha's teaching of Dharma depends, one is empirical (saṁvṛti-satya) and meant for the ordinary people, another is the transcendental or the absolutely true one (paramārtha-satya). Those who do not know the distinction between these two kin...

the Tathāgata or one who has realised nirvāṇa. His nature also cannot be described.

That is why, when Buddha was asked what becomes of the Tathāgata after nirvāṇa is attained, he declined to discuss the question.

the silence of Buddha regarding all metaphysical questions about non-empirical things can be interpreted to mean that he believed in a transcendental experience and reality, the truths about whi...

the Mādhyamika approaches very close to Advaita Vedānta as taught in some Upaniṣads and elaborated later by Gauḍapāda and Sa