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viii
Preface
Philosophy in India includes not only morality but religion also. The most characteristic feature of religion is emotion or sentiment associated with a system of beliefs, and as such in the treatment of the dominant schools of philosophy that originated in South India one cannot help emphasizing the important pathological developments of the sentiment of devotion. The writer hopes, therefore, that he may be excused both by those who would not look for any emphasis on the aspect of bhakti or religious sentiment and also by those who demand an over-emphasis on the emotional aspect which forms the essence of the Vaisnava religion. He has tried to steer a middle course in the interest of philosophy, which, however, in the schools of thought treated herein is so intimately interwoven with religious sentiment.
The writer has probably exceeded the scope of his treatment in dealing with the Arvārs, whose writings are in Tamil, but there also he felt that without referring to the nature of the devotional philosophy of the Arvārs the treatment of the philosophy of Rāmānuja and his followers would be historically defective. But though the original materials for a study of the Arvārs are in Tamil, yet fortunately Sanskrit translations of these writings either in manuscript or in published form are available, on which are almost wholly based the accounts given here of these Tamil writers.
The treatment of the Pañcarātra literature offered some difficulty, as most of these works are still unpublished; but fortunately a large volume of this literature was secured by the present writer in manuscript. Excepting Schrader's work, nothing of any importance has been written on the Pancarātra School. Though there are translations of the bhāsya of Rāmānuja, there has been no treatment of his philosophy as a whole in relation to other great philosophers of his School. Practically nothing has appeared regarding the philosophy of the great thinkers of the Rāmānuja School, such as Venkața, Meghanādāri and others, most of whose works are still unpublished. Nothing has also been written regarding Vijñānabhikṣu's philosophy, and though Nimbārka's bhāsya has been translated, no systematic account has yet appeared of Nimbārka in relation to his followers. The writer had thus to depend almost wholly on a very large mass of published and unpublished manuscript literature in his interpretation and chronological investigations, which are largely based upon internal evidence;
