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Foreword
In colleges and universities the different branches of Indian philosophy are studied and taught, and maybe the process will gather momentum with the passage of time. These students and teachers of philosophy make use of books pertaining to differnt topics mostly written in English while in case possible they also take help of high-grade texts composed in the ancient languags like Sanskrit, Prakrit etc. The students and teachers of course make use of this mass of literature, but I have often felt that if a little or more amount of literature dealing with this subject or that is available to them in their mother-tongue or in the national language they manage to gain a paritcularly clear understanding of the subject while as a result of this gaining a better understanding of it their taste for it increases. Very often, not only students but even teachers enquire as to what particular book in Gujarati or Hindi offers an all-comprehensive and comparative account of this or that topic pertaining to philosophy. This enquiry and demand of theirs was there before me. Hence with a view to satisfying this demand in howsover little a measure and thus helping them somewhat in their study, I have here in these lectures arranged in a garland form and in my own. fashion the flowers of ideas that have blossmed within the fold of Indian traditions around three chief topics pertaining to philosophy, viz. the world, soul and God. The evaluation of their utility can of course be made by students alone.
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The concluding remarks given under the title 'Life and Philosophy' and occurring after the fifth lecture-if the readers first go through them and then study these lectures they would be able to form some idea of the order of treating topics here adopted as also of the viewpoint I had in mind while arranging these topics, and hence would find it somewhat easy to follow the subject-matter under treatment. All the five lectures are written with Indian philosophy in view. In the case of each lecture a reference to the chief subject treated has been made at the very outset while the major and minor topics related to this subject that have been taken up are placed under a subtitle located appropriately. At the end of the lectures there has been given a wordindex where page wise reference has been made for technical terms, persons, texts, authors etc. The texts which I have utilized in the form of support and those which are menti. oned within the body of a footnote-they too are included in the wordindex,
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I was at Ahmedabad while at the time of writing out these lectures I went to Kashi. There I stayed for about three months but these lectu res were composed well within one-month-and-a-half or two. The rapidity in writing that was due to my stay at Kashi and the specially favourable condition that prevailed at the time of writing for all this the
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