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APRIL, 1918]
THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
101
A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS THE EARLY HISTORY OF
INDIAN PHILOSOPHY. 1
BY HERMANN JACOBI.
[Translated with permission by Dr. V. A. Sukthankar, Ph.D., Indore.] TIE Indians have no historical tradition regarding the origin of their six philosophical systems; the general belief that they are very ancient has been most effectively strengthened, if not oocasioned, by the circumstance that their originators, who are believed to be the authors of the Sútras, are called Rşis, i. e., “Seers of olden days" Being free from such prejudices, philological research has arrived, on the ground of general considerations, at a relative chronology of the six systems, or rather, of three pairs of systems, as each two of them have always been closely allied with each other. The two Mimâ meas, as regards their contents, are closely associated with the Revelation; their followers are the Vedic theologians. The representatives of Sruti. Sankhya and Yoga hold the later religious ideal: asceticism and contemplation instead of sacrifice; their followers are representatives of the Smriti. Vai esika and Nyaya do not stand in an intimate relation to any strata of the older literature, neither the Revelation nor the Tradition. They form the Philosophy of the learned man of the world, the Pandit. 3 Thus three chief directions of Philosophy get clearly marked, each of which has for its representative, one of the classes of the Brahman community. The first draws its concepts and ideas from the Revelation; the second propounds a rational scheme of the world through bold speculation, and the third tries to bring it into systematic coherence through the examination of the facts of experience. As Sruti, Smriti and Sastra are the three successive stages of the development of the Indian spiritual life, the chief philosophical schools belonging to each of them, stand also in a similar relation of time to each other.
This much can be gathered from general considerations with a fair degree of certainty. Recently, however, we have acquired a positive starting point for constructing the history of Indian philosophy, and to expound it is the object of these lines. It is found in Kautilyam." a treatise on state-craft by Kautilya or Vişnugupta, which has very lately become accessible. The author is best known by the name of Chåņakya; he was the first Imperial Chancellor of the Mauryas, and overthrew the last of the Nanda princes and helped Chandragupta, the CANAPAKOTTOC of the Greeks, to the throne, as he himself says in the last verse of his work :
yena sátram ca sastram ca Nandarâjagata ca bhuh amarseno 'ddhritâny abu tena sastram idam kytam II
The translator is a former pupil of Prof. Jacobi.
2 This assertion will be proved more thoroughly in the course of this Essay. For the present it should be remembered that in works which are religious but do not belong to the Voda, soh as the Purance, the Sankhya ideas constitute the philosophical back-ground.
3 The oldest work of a non-religious character which has the doctrines of Vailerika and Nyaya for its philosophical basis is the Charakeanhita : for Vaisegika see I. 1, 43 ff., 63 ff.; for Nykya soe MI. 8.24 .
+ The Artha-Sastra of Kautilya, edited by R. Shama Sastri, Mysore, 1909. of the valuable contribution by Von Alfred Hillebrandt: On the Kautilya-Sastra and Allied Subjects in the 88th Annual Report of the Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Vatorländische Kultur ; and J. Hortel, Literary Matters from the Komsays Sdaira, WZKM., 24, p. 416 ff.
