Systems of Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 50

INTRODUCTION
47
endorse the following stricture passed by Max Müller against that part of the Yoga Sūtras where the miraculous powers allegedly acquired by a practising yogin are enumerated : "... we get more and more into superstitions, by no means without parallels in other countries, but for all that, superstitions which have little claim on the attention of the philosopher, however interesting they may appear to the pathologist" (The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, p. 351). But then Max Müller had himself gone on to add : "These matters, though trivial, could not be passed over, whether we accept them as hallucinations to which, as we know, our thinking organ (organs ?) are liable, or whether we try to account for them in any other way. They form an essential part of Yoga philosophy and it is certainly noteworthy even from a philosophical point of view, that we find such vague and incredible statements side by side with the specimens of the most exact reasoning and careful observation" (Ibid., p. 352). Moreover, the acquisition of miraculous capacities was not considered even by Gandhi to be the true aim of yoga practice; for in his eyes this aim was 'self-culture' as he understood it.
3. NYAYA (AND VAISESIKA)
For reasons partly technical and partly ideological the Nyāya-Vaiseșika system yet remains 'under-studied' by the students of Indian Philosophy—Indian as well as Western. On account of their logical rigour--as also on account of their highly evolved technical terminology
even the elementary Nyaya-Vaiseșika texts are tough enough to scare the novice. Another reason for the comparative neglect of the system lies in the content of its teaching. The Nyāya-Vaiseșika philosophy is a type of empirical realism and as such it is opposed to the transcendental idealism of Advaita Vedānta-the system patronized by a majority of scholars working in the field of Indian philosophy. Max Müller's attitude