History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

Page 95

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 Upaniṣads 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 (svabhava), 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 Cārvākas (Dhūrtta and Susikṣita) are referred to in later literature, though the time in which these flourished cannot rightly be discovered. But it seems
1 Svetāśvatara, I. 2, kālaḥ svabhābo niyatiryadṛccha bhūtāni 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.