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wherever possible a preliminary survey of the conditions that brought them into being and estimate their indebtedness to the past as well as their contribution to the progress of thought.” (IP, Preface, p. 9).
SR is a renowned historian of philosophy and he brings out lucidly the role, function and duty to be played by a historian of philosophy in the following para :
“The historian of philosophy must approach his task not as a mere philologist or even as a scholar, but as a philosopher who uses his scholarship as an instrument to wrest from words the thoughts that underlie them. A mere linguist regards the views of ancient Indian thinkers as many fossils lying scattered throughout upheaved and faulty strata of the history of philosophy, and from his point of view any interpretation which makes them alive and significant is dismissed as farfetched and untrue. A philosopher on the other hand realises the value of the ancient Indian theories which attempt to grapple with the perenial problems of life and treats them not as fossils, but as species which are remarkably persistent... It is the task of creative logic, as distinct from mere linguistic analysis to piece together the scattered data, interpret for us the life they harbour and thus free the soul from the body. Collection of facts and the accumulation of evidence are an important, but only a part, of the task of historian who attempts to record the manifold adventures of the human spirit. He must pay great attention to the logic of ideas, draw inferences, suggest explanations and formulate theories which would introduce some order into the shapeless mass of unrelated facts. If the history of philosophy is to be more than a bare catalogue of facts about dead authors and their writings, if it is to educate the mind and enthral the imagination, the historian should be a critic and an interpreter and not a mere mechanical "ragpicker" (IP. 6 pp. 71-672)
"Indian Philosophy" (Vol. I and Vol. II) is his magnum opus wherein he successfully rises to fulfil and abide by the norms laid down by him for a historian of philosophy; he is also "convinced that we must interpret thinkers at their best and not at their worst.” It i.e. "Indian Philosophy" is not "a barc presentation of categories and arguments of systems discussed”? and these remarks apply happily mutatis mutandis to his treatment of Buddhism. At this juncture it is significant to note that he "so easily identifies himself with the stand-point of the system he is presenting that concepts become fluid and their connections become natural.”
SR lays down that a writer should be evaluated in the context of times, and climes in which he flourished, when he observes that "to know what Buddha actually taught or what his earliest followers thought he did, we
