The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy

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Friedrich Max Müller (6 December 1823- 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of Indian studies and religious studies.

Müller wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology. The Sacred Books of the East, a 50-volume set of English translations, was prepared under his direction. He also promoted the idea of a Turanian family of languages.

Hindu philosophy encompasses the philosophies, world views and teachings of Hinduism that emerged in Ancient India which include six systems (shad- darśana) Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta. In Indian tradition, the word used for philosophy is Darshana, from the Sanskrit root drish.

It is not without serious misgivings that I venture at this late hour of life to place before my fellow-workers and all who are interested in the growth of philosophical thought throughout the world. some of the notes on the Six Systems of Indian Philosophy which have accumulated in my note-books for many years. It was as early as 1852 that I published my first contributions to the study of Indian philosophy in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Mor- genländischen Gesellschaft. My other occupations, however, and, more particularly, my preparations for a complete edition of the Rig-Veda, and its voluminous commentary, did not allow me at that time to continue these contri- butions, though my interest in Indian philosophy, as a most important part of the literature of India and of Universal Philosophy, has always remained the same. This interest was kindled afresh when I had to finish for the Sacred Books of the East (vols. I and XV) my translation of the Upanishads, the remote sources of Indian philosophy, and especially of the Vedanta-philosophy, a system in which human speculation seems to me to have reached its very acme. Some of the other systems of Indian philosophy also have from time to time roused the curiosity of scholars and philosophers in Europe and America, and in India. itself a revival of philosophic and theosophic studies, though not always well directed, has taken place, which, if it leads to a more active co-operation between European and Indian thinkers, may be productive in the future of most im- portant results. Under these circumstances a general desire has arisen, and has repeatedly been expressed, for the publication of a more general and comprehensive account of the six systems in which the philosophical thought of India has found its full realisation.

More recently the excellent publications of Professors Deussen and Garbe in Germany, and of Dr. G. Thibaut in India, have given a new impulse to these important studies, important not only in the eyes of Sanskrit scholars by pro- fession, but of all who wish to become acquainted with all the solutions which the most highly gifted races of mankind have proposed for the eternal riddles of the world. These studies, to quote the words of a high authority, have indeed ceased to be the hobby of a few individuals, and have become a subject of interest to the whole nation¹. Professor Deussen's work on the Vedanta- philosophy (1883) and his translation of the Vedanta-Sutras (1887), Professor Garbe's translation of the Samkhya-Sutras (1889) followed by his work on the Samkhya-philosophy (1894), and, last not least, Dr. G. Thibaut's careful and most useful translation of the Vedanta-Sutras in vols. XXXIV and XXXVIII of the Sacred Books of the East (1890 and 1896), mark a new era in the study of the two most important philosophical systems of ancient India, and have deservedly placed the names of their authors in the front rank of Sanskrit scholars in Europe.