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materialists and Samkhya and Yoga philosophers. In application, anviksiki is narrower in sense, while "darsana” is wider. The use of these terms by the Indians proves that ancient Indians also held the conception of philosophy comparable to that of the Greeks.
The bigotry of the traditionally minded Western intellectuals is attacked by Western Sinologists also. Professor Huges says:
For a very long time in south and north-western Europe those highly influential people, the teachers of the youth, impressed on their pupils that our civilization owed a great debt to ancient Greece and Rome: so much so that in matters of right thinking and good taste what Greece and Rome thought and did at their highest levels was in the nature of a standard... Yet we are fully consious today of the fact that our civilization has burst its bands and is moving inexorably into a future which, whatever its debt to our Graeco-Roman past, and all other pasts, cannot be estimated solely in terms of our Great Tradition.5
The opinion that Oriental philosophy also should be kept in mind is becoming more and more prevalent among intellectuals. Recently Bertrand Russell published a voluminous history of philosophy. This work is entitled A History of Western Philosophy.6 This title contains the limiting adjective "western”, which implies the present-day opinion that beside the stream of philosophical thought in the West there are other currents in the East.
Then, how are we able to explain the relationship between Western and Eastern thoughts? All philosophers, Eastern and Western, have dealt with the same problems of the universe and man, and attempt to explain the same subjects. If we can find the similarity between Western and Indian thoughts through the processes of development of philosophy during more than two thousand years, we shall also be able to take notice of the fact that some philosophical notions are common to both; that is, many philosophical problems are universal to humankind and should be treated not only historically, but also from a genuinely philosophical viewpoint. The fact that truth can be found among all peoples and in all creeds, has been acknowledged through many centuries by scholars.
When expressions are the same in different languages, we should not assume their difference, unless we are able to show on other grounds than that they belong to two different traditions and that they do not
5 E. R. Hughes: Chinese Philosophy in Classical Times (Everyman's Library), pp. XII-XIII
6 Bertrand Russell: A History of Western Philosophy, New York, Siman and Schuster Inc., 1945.
