Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 638

APPENDIX A
mīmāṁsā (in two schools: that of Prabhakara and that of Kumārila), Sānkhya, and Yoga, the philosophy of Vedavyāsa,20 and the Vedanta of Sankara.27 Madhava, an eminent fourteenthcentury Vedāntist of the school of Sankara, delineates likewise in his Sarvadarśanasangraha (“Epitome of All Systems") 28 sixteen philosophies, adding to the above the Vedanta of Rāmānuja, the doctrines of a number of Śivaite sects, and Pānini's treatment of the laws of the metaphysical, eternal, and magical language of the Vedas in his Sanskrit Grammar.29
In the final analysis, the orthodoxy of India has never been grounded in a college or academy. Neither can it be defined by any numbering of views. For its life is in the mokṣa of the actual sages: such, for example, as Rāmakrishna (1836-86) in the nineteenth century and Ramaņa (1879-1950) in our own.30 These "wild geese" (hamsas), teaching numerously in every part of the land of the Bharatas, have renewed the ineffable message perennially, in variable terms, which philosophers classify and adhikarins transcend.
J. C.
25 A sharp divergence in the unity of the Mimamsă-darśana begins with the appearance of these two scholastics, c. 700 A.D. Cf. Keith, The KarmaMimämsä, p. 9.
26 I.e., the philosophy of the Mahabhārata.
27 Winternitz, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 419-420.
28 Translated by E. B. Cowell and A. E. Gough, 2nd edition, Calcutta, 1894.
29 Winternitz, op. cit., p. 420.
80 Sri Ramana Maharsi ("the Great Ṛsi") of Tiruvannamalai (an ancient holy city in the south of India) taught no formal doctrine, but with the piercing question "Who are you?" drove his disciples to the Self. Cf. Heinrich Zimmer, Der Weg zum Selbst; Lehre und Leben des indischen Heiligen Shri Ramana Maharshi aus Tiruvannamalai, edited by C. G. Jung, Zurich, 1944; cf. also B. V. Narasimha Swami, Self-Realization, Life and Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Tiruvannamalai, 1936, and Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who Am I? (translated by Ramana Dasa S. Seshu Iyer), Tiruvannamalai, 1937.
614