Indian Mind Essentials Of Indian Philosophy And Culture

Author(s): Richard H Robinson
Publisher: Richard H Robinson
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269327/1

Page #1
Feature Book Review "This volume is a set of still photographs taken years ago of an illustrious group whose generation is now passing rapidly off the Indian intellectual stage." The Indian Mind (Essentials of Indian Phliosophy and Culture) edited by Charles A. Moore, with the assistance of Aldyth V. Morris. Honolulu : East-West Center Press and University of Hawaii Press, 458 pp., $9.50. This book is a collection of papers by participants (chiefly Indian) in the East-West Philosophers' Conferences 1939, 1949, 1959, and 1974. Though all the papers have been published previously, most of them have been some what revised here. The concentration of Indian papers in one volume highlights the distinctive features of the Indian contributions to the conferences, and provides a convenient work for use in courses on Indian philosophy, religion, and civilization, The scope of the book is much less comprehensive than the title. One might well contend that it contains the essentials of Hindu philosophy, but it most assuredly does not present the essentials of Indian culture. Most of the contributors are Hindus trained in Sanskrit and in European philosophy of an Edwardian British vintage. The exceptions are : one Hindu lawyer (C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar), one Hindu historian (Tara Chand), one Sinhalese Buddhist (G. P. Malalasekera), and a Japanese Buddhologist (Junjiro Takakusu). There is no Muslim though approximately 150 million inhabitants of geographic India are Muslims. Are their minds not Indian minds? No Indian Christians, Jains, or Sikhs are included, either. In short, the communal representation is much less complete than at most contemporary Indian philosophical conferences. This would not matter much if the papers did justice to Indian thought as a whole, but they don't. The sizable Muslim contribution to Indian thought and culture is ignored by most of the writers, and dealt with-briefly and well-only by Tara Chand, the historian. The Hindu writers regard Buddhism and Jainism as Israelites regarded Ishmaelites-of the right lineage, but the wrong branch.

Page #2
89 THE INDIAN (ESSENTIALS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE Buddhist epistemology and metaphysics are mentioned fairly often, though the level of acquaintance with Buddhist thought varies from proficiency (T. R. V. Murti) to ignorance (P. T. Raju and Kalidas Bhattacharyya). Buddhist ethical, social, and political thought is seldom considered, despite the fact that the Buddhists in ancient India had much more to say on many of the topics of the conferences than did the ancient Hindus. The book opens with Charles Moore's excellent essay, "The Comprehensive Indian Mind." He argues forcefully the case to which he devoted his life that for international well-being and Western intellectual integrity, we must come to understand Eastern thought. Then he proceeds to deal with some common misconceptions about Indian thought, emphasizing the change and development from period to period as well as the great variety at any one time. Finally, he lists seventeen features that are widely considered to characterize Indian philosophy as a whole, and indicates notable exceptions to each generalization. Moore differs sharply from his teacher and collaborator, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, on one point: the place of Advaita Vedanta in Indian philosophy. "The Vedas, the Upanisads, and the Bhagavad-Gita, along with one extreme Vedantin, Samkara, have dominated the Western 'picture' of Indian philosophy, but they do not constitute anything like the whole or the essence or even, as so often contended, the basic spirit of the almost infinite variety of [Indian] philosophical concepts, methods, and attitudes..." (p. 10). This warning is necessary, because eleven out of the nineteen articles are by members of the Advaita Vedanta Establishment, and they try repeatedly to represent Advaita Vedanta as the essence of Indian religion and thought, or to make the other schools preparatory or ancillary to Samkara's. Raju, page 41: "The Vedanta is regarded as the essence of Indian philosophy, and, of the Vedantic schools, the Advaita of Samkara..." Radhakrishnan's admirable and lapidary essay, "The Indian Approach to the Religious Problem" (pp. 173-182), is in fact just the NeoVedantin approach. However attractive, it is not the Indian approach. Raju, page 184..the highest forms of religious thought and spiritual philosophy, culminating in the non-dualism...of Samkara." Murti (pp. 335-336), Mahadevan (pp. 168-170) and Nikhilananda (pp. 145-150) expound and advocate Advaita Vedanta, but do not assert the primacy which they implicitly accord it. S. K. Saksena, himself deeply imbued with Vedantin ideas, however, says "The Advaita Vedanta...is, after all, only one philosophical point of view, the most extreme of all, and not typical even of Indian metaphysics, or any other Indian philosophical schools, as some are inclined to think" (p. 369). Bhattacharyya starts out (pp. 299-300) by declaring that none of the other systems is of less significance to Indian life in general than the Advaita. Then he launches a vigorous critique (pp. 304-306) on the Advaita denial of the ultimate status of individual persons. It is splendid to see so much variety within even this select sample of Indian philosophers. But didn't any sort of dialogue or communication develop between these eminent thinkers? Each writes as if he were

Page #3
90 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION unaware of what the others say. And when philosopher Brahmans differ so categorically, what authority are ordinary readers to follow ? This book possesses the merits as well as the defects of presenting Indian thought through the words of Indian spokesmen. One cannot help admiring the South Asian contributors' lucid and easy English style, their impressive bicultural erudition, and their adroitness in putting classical Indian concepts into modern Western terms as well as in filling ancient terms and tenets with modern content. The Anglo-American philosopher who is tempted to put these Indian philosophers down for their undeniable lack of analytic sophistication should pause to see how he looks by comparison : usually monolingual, monocultural, and "boxed" in the concerns and prejudices of an ingrown tradition. The Western ethics and social philosophy man will note that classical India did not appear to excel in these fields and that most of the philosophers who write here on topics such as "Social, Ethical, and Spiritual Values in Indian Philosophy" (Mahadevan), and "The Individual in Social Thought and Practice in India" (Saksena) do not seem to know what the words in their titles meen Non-etheless, the record of the South Asian contributors in their countries freedom struggles and in public service belies any charge that such thinkers are withdrawn from society. The roster includes one national president (Radhakrishnan), ambassadors (Radhakrishnan, Malalasekera), university vice-chancellors (Bhattacharyya, Tara Chand, Murti), a Gandhian social worker (Datta), and members of various government commissions. Even those who whitewash the past of Hindu India espouse progressive values and policies for modern India, and evince genuine concern for their country's amelioration. Moore recommends (p. 12) that the reader judge the Indian mind for himself on the basis of the presentations in this volume. We have already. observed that the sample is not representative, but at least it is possible to make some generalizations about the minds of Hindu philosophers who lean to Vedanta and got their B.A.'s between 1909 and 1933. They are very sensitive to Western criticism, and undertake to answer even patently unworthy charges against India and her thought. Their intellectual formation occurred in a period when the defense of cultural identity and worth was not merely a personal necessity but a public duty. Undertones of nationalist polemic run through even the most objective of these essays, and there are quite a few lapses into apologetic mythology. For instance, the barrenness of Indian philosophy from 1300 to 1900 is blamed on the Muslim and British conquerors Saksena, who normally thinks clearly and impartially, paints an idealized picture of ancient India as endowed with social equality and mobility, democracy, and freedom for for women (pp. 360-365). Then he alleges that Hindus were "enslaved" in the Middle Ages (i.e., by the Muslims, whom he doesn't name). "The caste system, all sorts of discrimination, restrictions on widow marriage, forced sati, slavery, early marriage, etc., spread on grounds of sheer survival. These are not the social thoughts and practices of civilized India in

Page #4
THE INDIAN (ESSENTIALS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE) 91 its period of glory; they are the survivals of a dead India in itself unfree and slave" (p. 366). This and similar passages from other contributors indicate a widespread failure to think clearly about the Indian past. Why would such socially debilitating institutions as caste rigidity, nonremarriage of widows, and forced sati conduce to the survival of Hindu society, especially when the Muslim and British overlords did not practice these customs and deplored Hindus doing so? Historians commonly hold that the Hindus were conquered because their rigid social system stultified their energies, while the much less numerous Muslims and Europeans were more powerful because of their freer and more egalitarian social structures. Tara Chand, the historian, sets the record straight. "Hindu polity and its legal system failed to meet fully the challenge of history" (p. 382). Islam and Hinduism interacted and influenced each other, and it was chiefly the irreconclability of the two ostensibly divine legal systems (shari'at and dharmasastra) which prevented the two cultures from merging completely (p. 586). Also, it is widely acknowledged that in the early Mughal period the bhakti and sufi movements, together with HinduMuslim social intercourse, had extensively broken down caste separatism in North India, and philosophy was just about the only field in which neither Hindus nor Indian Muslims were creative when Muslim rule was at its apogee. This sample of philosophers is definitely averse to history, and unmotivated to seek historical truth. Unsubstantiable dates are casually given. Raju (p. 42) avers that "many scholars" date the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad in the ninth century B.C., but does not mention that Keith, the most painstaking of scholars who have dealt with the question, denies that this Upanisad is much earlier than 600 B.C. Datta (p. 118) says that 'Indian philosophy has developed from the days of the Vedas...over a period of at least five thousand years." This would place the beginning of the Vedic period before the dispersal of the proto-Indo-Europeans and before the founding of the Indus civilization. Datta (p. 131) places the earliest Upanisads at 2000 BC. The attitude that history is phenomenal and unworthy of philosophical inquiry often slips out. Mahadevan says. "Due to historical circumstances, the classes became castes with numerous subdivisions, and a cold rigidity made them freeze, as it were, thus preventing the growth and progress of Hindu society. Fortunately, in recent times, the inflexibility of caste has been under the sledge-hammer blows of a revival of interest in the original teachings of Hinduism..." (p. 161). Evidently he thinks that historical circumstances are due not to the actions of Hindu society, but to some sort of fate for which men are not responsible. Fortune, not the forceful intrusion of Western liberal ideas and administration, is given the credit for the "back to the Vedas" movement with its protest against the iniquities of caste. It is quite natural that, such thinkers, not recognizing purusarthakriya in past history, should neglect to offer operational programs for implementing the ideal of a world philosophy which they endorse. Mahadevan

Page #5
92 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION (p. 170) asks, "In what sense can we achieve 'a world philosophy through a synthesis of the ideas and ideals of the East and the West ?"" Then he proceeds to give a Sanskrit expression for "cosmic philosophy," and vaults from there to the vision of Krsna in his cosmic form in chapter 11 of the Gita. His point is that cosmic philosophy would require for its comprehension the eye divine. Mahadevan then lists five commendable desiderata for a world philosophy. These philosophers exhibit an idealist and elitist view of how cultural change takes place. Radhakrishnan speaks of "the metaphysical presuppositions which are the formative forces of any civilization" (p. 174). Of course, a few lines before this he affirms that "the great tradition which has affected all [India's] people is the work of human hands," an affirmation of the humanistic view of history which others in this volume push aside. Then he slips into elitism. "Organised religions strive to inspire the common man with a faith in the existence of God as revealed' in or by the founder of of a religious system... In this way, the gods and goddesses of the people of India were identified with the Supreme. The insistence throughout has been on the inward vision and transformation" (p. 180). In other words, superstition originates among the "common people," and true revelation descends from Brahman to the spiritual elite, from whom it is passed down in accommodated or surrogate form to dilute and transform the religion of the multitudes. Historically, that it is not how it happened. Despite the say-so of Raju (p. 44), Buddhism is not just an offshoot of the Upanisads; it drew on many other strands in popular Gangetic tradition, much of it perhaps non-Aryan. And it is not true, as Raju says (p. 186), that "all the Hindu religions grew out of Vedic thought. Religions in general do not grow out of philosophies, and theistic Hinduism assuredly did not arise within the Vedic tradition. Another aspect of this elitism is the limitation of these writers' concern for the sastras and formal systems, while ignoring all popular religious literature later than the Gita. Raju (pp. 198-202), under the heading "Religion and Ethical Values," talks only about the philosophical darsanas and makes no mention of the Puranas, Agamas, Tantras, and stotra literature in which the living values of popular Hinduism are embodied. And of course, none of these writers draws on the copious oral tradition or his own firsthand knowledge as a birthright participant in Indian culture. This is too bad, because most of these Hindus are quite religious men, and some (e.g., Mahadevan and Nikhilananda) are very well versed in the popular tradition. This curious limitation is probably because they conceived their role for the occasion as that of the philosopher, a man whose proper concern is "the highest." Also, they were doubtless aware that they were addressing a Western audience, and so were posing formally, as if for photographs. It is apparent that these philosophers have not been much exposed to the social sciences. Anthropology would have taught them the value of nonliterary, vulgar, and tribal traditions. A basic understanding of social

Page #6
and the Itiny suppo THE INDIAN (ESSENTIALS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE) 93 dynamics would have counteracted the belief that cultural innovation starts uniquely with eruptions of the Divine in the minds of Great Men. The general understanding of natural science shown by these philosophers is likewise rather low, and they do not betray any acquaintance with philosophy of science. This need not be attributed to any supposed unworldliness or innate idealism of the Indian Mind. It is just that the social sciences were virtually nonexistent, and the humanities were rigorously segregated from the natural sciences, in the curricula of the Indian colleges where they took their undergraduate training. Accordingly, they can repeat with assurance British humanists' and theologians' specious denunciations of science. Occasional attempts to show kinship betwecn science and Indian religious thought are equally unsound. Nikhilananda says, "The concentration practiced by scientists may be said to belong to this category [i.e., yogic supernatural cognitive power]. Without deep concentration they could not have understood the inner nature of the atom and released the energy locked in it" (p. 139). Later he says, "Samadhi can be attained by all human beings. Each one of the steps leading to it has been reasoned out and scientifically tested" (p. 143). Plainly, he has no idea how scientific discovery and testing are done. The usual strategy is to stake out a preserve for religious philosophy by insisting that science is incapable of answering the deepest questions about man. Radhakrishnan puts it elegantly : We cannot understand man scientifically, as if he were only an unusually complicated object of Nature. An objective account de-personalizes man and reduces him to a heterogeneous mass of fragments, which are studied by the different sciences. There is the biological man, the social man, the political man, and also the individual man, who feels pain and joy, bears responsibility, does good or evil, and is conscious of his alienation from himself when he ceases to be subject and becomes an object. (P. 178) All of this is just declared, without any attempt at proof. If one did not already know that Radhakrishnan, as a Vedantin holds that the real man is the atman, which is to be known only as the absolute and always immediate subject, this paragraph would seem to be an appeal for an interdisciplinary project in the human sciences, plus an existentialist protest (with sociological implications) against the psychiatric effects of excessive objectlvization. These Hindu philosophers struggle mightily to dispel the charge that spiritual philosophy is responsible for the economic backwardness of modern India. They do so rightly, because the charge is commonly made even now by social scientists and development personnel whose general theory of social causation is diametrically opposed to such simple-minded idealism. Bhattacharyya tackles the charge head-on :

Page #7
94 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION Except in metaphysics, again, which concerns the essence of the individual, Indians have not generally underrated the status of the body and the mind... The only school of Indian philosophy that has preached inaction as the ultimate goal of life is the Advaita Vedanta...and it is clearly said in the Advaita that performance of such actions is a necessary prerequisite for earning the right (adhikara) to inaction. (Pp. 308-309). He explains the Advaita case in two closely reasoned paragraphsadmitting that this system must bear some responsibility for Hindu inaction under adverse political conditions, and concluding : "Hence, according to the Advaita philosopher, no action is free, and action cannot, therefore, belong to the essence of the individual" (p. 310). But is he right that Advaita alone held this view? The pluralist systems are in accord with nondualism that liberated souls are inert and nonparticipant, and that action is a means which must be transcended when the goal is reached. He frankly admits what he considers a fundamental weakness of Indian philosophy : that it has not adequately considered "the problem of the relation of the liberated individual to other individuals, liberated or not, or, in the light of this, the relations that should bind unliberated individuals to one another" (p. 311). Bhattacharyya clearly views Indian philosophy as a living tradition with an open future, and his admission of its weakness is preparatory to his own attempt to work the problem through, a task for which he is manifestly competent. But historically, he overlooks the massive concern of Mahayana Buddhism with this very problem, and he likewise fails to note that Mahayana alone of all the Indian schools affirmed ultimate status for salvific action by liberated beings. He cites the Gita's concept of disinterested action as an instance of "free actions, actions, viz., which are moral and spiritual [ and ] thus constructive and forward looking, not acts of mere withdrawal" (p. 310). This disposes of the charge that Hindu thought commends pragmatic inaction to the ordinary person, but does not deal with the objection that even disinterested action, karmayoga, in the Gita is merely a means, does not have ultimate status, and so is less real and less valuable than ultimate inaction. Whether or not Indian philosophy has prevented many Indians from grappling seriously with worldly problems, it has visibly deterred our sample of Indian philosophers from thinking seriously in their role as philosophers) about these questions. The first sections of the book, dealing with metaphysics and epistemology, are, on the whole, well done and convey the impression that the writers felt at home with their subjects. The later sections, dealing with ethical, social, and political thought, have attractive Western-style titles and subheadings, but the subject matter is often pretty thin, and even at its best represents a particular contributor's ingenuity in wresting ideas of modern relevance from recalcitrant traditional material. A good instance is Bhattacharyya's fine explication of the

Page #8
THE INDIAN (ESSENTIALS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE) 95 theory of individual freedom implicit in the doctrine of the three gunas (pp. 301-302). The basic difficulty seems to lie in the definition of "spiritual", which Bhattacharyya glosses with "adhyatmika" (p. 301). Raju says, "all values of life-ethical (including the social and political), intellectual, and aesthetic-are spiritual, provided they are recognized and realized as oriented toward the innermost spirit" (p. 183). Raju does make a good case for the spirituality of secular affairs, provided they are directed to the spirit. But no Hindu philosopher in this book questions the hierarchy in which philosophy is the queen of the sciences (Saksena, p. 23), metaphysics is the summit of philosophy, and the object of metaphysics is the atman, the absolute subject which is intrinsically alien to the world of objects. Though they try to discuss the concrete, phenomenal human individual, their hearts are not in it, and they keep slipping away and passing on to "the highest." Another fecund source of intercultural misunderstanding is the current Hindu philosophers' definition of "practical" which Saksena explains with exemplary clarity: In the West, the term "practical" has referred to man's relation I with his environment and to changes and alternations in it. It has not been so in India, where the term has referred to just the opposite meaning of effecting change and alteration within one's own self... In short, the emphasis on the practical in India has been with reference to the inner transformation of man rather than to any socialized transformation in his style of living. (Pp. 37-38). What Sanskrit word, if any, do these men have in mind when they say "practical" in English? Certainly not vyavaharika, which has much the same sense that "practical" has in the West. For Muslims, as Tara Chand points out (p. 384), spiritual (eibadat) and practical (mu 'amalat) affairs are antonymic. There does not appear to be traditional sanction for using "practical" in the opposite of its ordinary meaning. This semantic inversion seems to be subservient to the apologetic claim that Indian philosophy is practical because it leads to spiritual realization, in contrast to Western philosophy which, they say, is theoretical and concerned only with truth for truth's sake. Saksena argues the thesis with better than average cogency: "... as contrasted with the origin of philosophy in the West, which lies in the intellectual possibility of doubt in the nature and the existence of anything whatever... With all of them [the classical dar sanas ], it has not been merely the problem of knowing or of solving an intellectual puzzle but of finding a more satisfactory way of living" (pp. 30-31). Then he claims that the Western philosophers' distinction between the apparent and the metaphysical worlds has remained practically a dead letter in the conduct of lives, whereas Indian life has been

Page #9
96 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION profoundly and durably influenced by this philosophical distinction (p. 32). Saksena is vague about just how metaphysics has affected Indian life, and he overlooks the far-reaching effects that Plato, Kant, Hegel, and others have had upon Western politics, religion, art, and science. He subsequently shows the same unconcern for empirical verification when he declares: "While, for all practical purposes, the analogous moral theory of Kant's conscientious living and action is only of historical interest in the West, the theory of niskamakarma [ non-attached living ] is still significant in India because it is a philosophy of action which lays down an ethical determinant to the epistemological validity of knowledge as well" (p. 35). The last hundred pages of this book are devoted to the status of the individual in Indian thought and culture. Bhattacharyya's "The Status of the Individual in Indian Metaphysics" is splendid as far as it goes. He is critical, imaginative, and generally sound. However, he does not consider the Buddhist and Jaina positions, and in reply to a question states wrongly that the Buddhist position will be considered in detail by others, and, lamely, that he ignores Jainism becnuse of space limitation. T. R. V. Murti, in "The World and the Individual in Indian Religious Thought," presents essentially his personal philosophy on the topica blend of Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, and original thought. His Vedanta is noticeably influenced by Mahayana in the direction of active altruism (p. 330). The best article in this last section is Tara Chand's "The Individual in the Legal and Political Thought and Institutions of India." He makes crystal clear that fullblown individualism came to Indian society only with the British, and that the concept was actualized by investing the individual with property ownership, legal rights, and direct transactions with government. In one sentence, he clarifies the confusion between temporal and spiritual which besets the other contributors to this section: "Under both cultures [Hindu and Muslim] the individual was divested of freedom in temporal matters in order to safeguard freedom in matters which were considered of supreme value, i.e., in spiritualities" (p. 386). The two articles on Buddhism show next to no relation to the rest of the book. G. P. Malalasekera's "Some Aspects of Reality as Taught by Theravada Buddhism" is generally accurate and discriminating. He has a good passage on the meaning of "real" (p. 67), which can profitably be used to interpret other articles in this book. There is a good discussion of moral responsibility, free will. and free action (pp. 80-81). Occasionally he confuses his own thought with the Buddna's, as for example, on page 73: "Here was a problem which the Buddha felt could not be solved by argument or mere logic (atakkavacara), for in logic one has to presuppose the reality of the thinking subject as standing outside the process of thinking... Only one kind of logic, he said, could help here: the logic of events." This may be implicit in the techings of Gautama as rendered

Page #10
THE INDIAN (ESSENTIALS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE) 97 in the Pali Suttas, but Gautama does not in fact say so in any Sutta. Junjiro Takakusu's article, "Buddhism as a Philosophy of "Thusness'," is probably the most inscrutable piece of Oriental English ever published. Moore recognizes (footnote, p. 86) that "there is much in this chapter which is strange and difficult for the Western reader." He recommends preparatory study of Buddhism, and attributes the difficulty in part to the condensation of so much material into so little space. This is very charitable, as the more extensive treatment of the subject in Takakusu's Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy is equally impenetrable. too. The trouble does not lie on the superficial linguistic level. Takakusu's manuscript has been well edited, and lapses in English syntax and idiom are remarkably few. The vocabulary at first glance looks English, But further examination reveals the whole difficulty. The taxt is an intellectual palimpsest in which layers from several languages, cultures, periods, and schools are neither properly erased nor clearly readable. For example, Takakusu is very fond of "determinism," and "indeterminate." He never defines these terms, and uses them in various and puzzling senses: "Void" means "indeterminate" (p. 103); "the indeterminateness of Nirvana" (p. 104); "Confucianism is a determinism in the sense that Heaven is considered the basic principle of human life" (p. 104); "The idea of indetermination in the world of differentiation is expressed by many terms: 'having no special nature' or 'having no definite nature'; 'all things are emptiness' or 'having no special state'; 'all are of temporary existent by combination of causes' " (pp. 105-106). Then he says: "[Nirvana] simply meant the eternal continuation of his [the Buddha's] personality in the highest sense of the world" (p. 108). Nirvana is thus not indeterminate in any of the meanings Takakusu gives, unless "in the highest sense" really signals a shift of truth-level. All these English phrases mask Sino-Japanese calques for Sanskrit terms such as sunya, nihsv abhava, asadbhuta, and pratityasamutpada. But then Takakusu tosses the reader a specious analogy with modern physics which indicates that he has understood neither term of the comparison. "Buddhism has been teaching the Principle of Indetermination of matter and mind for over 2,500 years, but no anxiety or inconvenience has been caused by it as some modern physicists fear over the spread of the idea of the Uncertainty Principle of physical science" (p. 106). At the risk of further uncharity, one may hazard the suggestion that Takakusu himself is not troubled by multivalence, self-contradiction, and sheer meaninglessness, because for him language is not a means of communicating ideas but of inducing emotive states and ritually validating cultural institutions. If this is the real purpose of his verbal behavior, it is disguised by sporadic attempts to philosophize. He presents an elaborate dialectic which he says is Nagarjuna's, but which is in fact Takakusu's own homegrown cross between Nagarjuna and Hegel (pp. 111-112). It is an oscillation between "commonsense truth" and "higher truth" in which the synthesis of the two at each stage becomes the common-sense truth for

Page #11
98 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION the next stage. Such failure to distinguish the Indian, the Sino-Japanese, the European, and the author's own ideas runs through the whole article. This piece does not achieve the editor's aim of rounding out the picture where the Hindu contributors had little to say, but it does inadvertently provide a comparison which is very complimentary to "the Indian mind." The volume as a whole provides a very serviceable companion to Radhakrishnan and Moore's A Source Book in Indian Philosophy. There is no better anthology of topical articles bridging the texts in translation to the student's own philosophical language and problems. A consideration running throughout this review has been to enable the nonspecialist reader to place these articles within the context of Indian intellectual history. I should add that most of the contributors shine better in debate than in the expository format, and that many of them have significally modified their views in the intervening years. The volume is a set of still photographs taken years ago of an illustrious group whose generation is now passing rapidly off the Indian intellectual stage. RICHARD H. ROBINSON (Courtesy : Philosophy East & West) University of Wisconsin THE SILENT SINNERS In the face of affluence of poverty and the hanjurian suffering the defenders of the status quo and those who speak for spiritual methods of social revolution are in fact the silent sinners of the invisible war perpetuated in the Third World where living corpses, shadows of human beings, hopless men, women, and children victimised in an endless perpetuaty by the oppressive and unjust system, and where their remnants of life are devoured by tuberculosis-schistosomiasis, infant diarrhea, etc. by the myriad diseases of poverty but most of which are termed by the civilised haves as "tropical diseases." In fact in the modern advancement of science and technology such diseases have become the phenomenon of the past. - Editorial, PSA, Vol. I, No. 1