HE sciences of Logic and of Grammar were, as far as history allows us to judge, invented or originally conceived by two nations only, by Hindús and Greeks. All other nations, if they ever cultivated these sciences, received the first impulse from without. The Romans from the Greeks, the Germans from the Romans, the Arabs from the Greeks, the Jews from the Arabs. That the two most highly gifted nations of the world, the Hindús and the Greeks, should both have been led, each in its own way, to a study of the laws of thought and the laws of language, seems in itself perfectly natural. At the time, however, when the different systems of Hindu philosophy became first known to the scholars of Europe, at the beginning of this century, everything that came from the East was looked upon as of extreme antiquity. There had been vague traditions of Indian philosophy long before the time of Aristotle. There were reports of early Greek sages travelling to India as the fountain-head of ancient wisdom. Alexander himself had found himself in India face to face with a whole nation of philosophers. It was readily admitted, therefore, that the Hindú system of Logic was more ancient than that of Aristotle, and that the Greeks borrowed the first elements of * Communicated by Professor Max Müller. their philosophy from the Hindús. Alexander, who had been himself in conversation with the Logicians of India, might have sent some of their treatises to his tutor at home, and Aristotle would have worked them up into a system of his own. This view was actually taken and defended by men like Görres.* They were struck by many points of coincidence in both systems of Logic. In each there were Categories, Genus, and Species, and even Syllogisms! It could not be otherwise — the Greeks must have borrowed it from the Hindús. That two nations, if they once conceived the idea of analysing the laws of thought, could possibly arrive at similar results even on the most general points, and that it would require coincidences in many minute details or in palpable errors, to prove beyond doubt that the two systems had a common origin, seems never to have occurred to these enthusiastic Orientalists. But on the other hand, does it show a higher power of logical reasoning or historical criticism, if we find men like Niebuhr taking the opposite view of the matter, and deriving Indian philosophy from Greece ? Niebuhr is reported to have said in his Lectures on Ancient History, "If we look at Indian Philosophy, we discern traces of a great similarity with that of the Greeks. Now as people have given up the hypothesis, that Greek philosophy formed itself after Indian philosophy, we cannot explain this similarity except by the intercourse which the Indians had with the Græco-macedonic kings of Bactra." To Niebuhr and to most Greek scholars it would naturally be next to impossible to believe that Greek Logic and Greek * Görres undertook to prove that the Greeks had borrowed some technical terms from the Sanskrit. Indian philosophers admit five elements, and the fifth is called akâs, ether. This ether has quite a different meaning from the aing which some Greek philosophers considered as the fifth or highest element. Görres, however, quotes (without giving a reference) a passage from Aristotle, where this fifth element is mentioned under the name of ἀκοτ-ονόματον, and this he translates by "akâs-nominatum,” · ἀκοτ-ονοματον being evidently an ingenious conjecture for ἀκατονόμαστον. philosophy in general were of foreign origin and a mere importation from India. They know how Greek philosophy grew up gradually, how its course runs parallel with the progress of Grecian poetry, art, and civilization. They know that it is a home-grown production as certainly as that Plato and Aristotle were Greeks and not Brahmans. But, then, a Sanskrit scholar has just the same conviction with regard to Indian philosophy. He can show how the first philosophical ideas, though under a vague form, existed already in the mind of the early poets of the Veda. He can trace their gradual development in the Brâhmanas and Upanishads. He can show how they gave rise to discussions, how they took a more distinct form, and were at last fixed and determined in the most scientific manner. He too is as certain that Indian philosophy was a native production of India, as that Gotama and Kanâda were Hindús and not Greeks. Until, therefore, it can be proved historically that Greeks received their philosophy from India or Indians from Greece or until coincidences can be pointed out which it is impossible to explain otherwise, it will be best to consider both Greek and Indian philosophy as autochthonic, and to derive from their mutual similarities only this consolatory conviction that in philosophy also there is a certain amount of truth which forms the common heirloom of all mankind, and may be discovered by all nations if they search for it with honesty and perseverance. According to the accounts which the Brahmans themselves give of the history of Indian philosophy, there have been, and there still exist, six systems of philosophy. They are called the Sânkhya, Mîmânsâ, Nyâya, Yoga, Vaiseshika, and Vedânta. These systems are not represented to us in a successive order, they do not apparently arise one upon the ruins of the other, like the schools in the history of Greek and German philosophy. They always seem to run parallel, each maintaining its place side by side with the others, and each representing a distinct view of the Universe, and of the relation of the seeming to the real world. Even at the present day the Brahman unites three or more of them in his course of study. |