Jignasa Journal Of History Of Ideas And Culture Part 01

Author(s): Vibha Upadhyaya and Others
Publisher: University of Rajasthan

Page 128

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13. A Comparative Historiography of Vedic and Pre Socratic Thought
Susmita Pande
The study of relationship between Greece and India goes as far back as the in the eighteenth century when William Jones proclaimed parallels between Gautam and Aristotle. Kanāda and in the Thales, Jaimini and Socrates, Kapila and Pythagoras, Pātanjali and Zeus and so on. Even Sylvan Levy had stated in a light vein the comparison of Neoplatonists with Kapila and Pātanjali.
But this style of random comparison without delivering deeply into the accurate texts created a situation where these theories were dismissed easily. A wave of cultural purity swept over these views. Following Hegel it was believed that, India was a historical part of nature and comparison between nature and culture could not be made.
A second effort in this direction began in the post World War II period (the beginning of post colonial period). The Journal Philosophy East and West contributed a lot in this direction. The early contribution to this journal were more accurate regarding their source books but their methodology was the same. George P. Congers wrote an important article "Did India Influence Early Grock Philosophy". But this also lacked philological analysis, archaeological grounding and historical context, although his observation that Heraclitus and the Buddha both emphasized the idea of flux was interesting
Among the other scholars who made comparisons between lodian and Greek Philosophy were Helmuth von Glasenapp' and A.N.Marlow.
Marlow along with other scholar of that generation propounded the view that Greek thought was rational humanism and that irrational and mystic ideas professed by Orphics and Pythagoreans probably came from India. During the early years of the Twentieth Century Ranade's work A Constructive Survey of Upanisadic Philosophy also pointed to some parallels between the Greek and Indian thought.
During the last few years some other works were done in this direction. To name a few, Daniel Ingall's Study of Relationship betucen the Cynics and Pasupatas, M.L.West's Early Grock Philosophy and the Orient" were important. But still Persia was regarded as the channel from which an array of related ideas entered Greece and India.
Still recently very significant work was done in this direction by Prof. Udai Prakash Arora and Prof. Dayānāth Tripātbi. Dr. Aroras "Greeks on India"traces the early Greek knowledge of India and Prof. Tripāthis "Hellenism and Hindu "is a thorough study based on philosophy, archaeology and history of ideas.