History of Indian Philosophy: The Creative Period

This volume outlines the philosophic speculations from the hazy dawn of Vedic times, which in the opinion of the authors is the creative period, and includes into its fold a survey of Brahmana literature and speculations and its chronology and its subsequent transition to the Upanishadic period. The learned authors have very skillfully shown by way of comparative charts the chronological grouping of the Brahmana and Sruti texts according to the Sakhas which very scholarly sums up the learned exposition of the authors. Chapter nine, in essence represents the soul of the volume, and is the largest ad presents an evaluation of the Upanishadic philosophy by the authors and offers material for testing the plausibility of their new attempt at distributing the Upanishadic texts into stratified groups. In the opinion of the authors, this book should eventually be judges by this chapter. They have spared no pains in making it complete and up-to-date and in their conclusion they have ventured to differ in places from such masters as Garbe, Jacobi, Hertel, Oldenberg, Hopkins and others. The authors have treated of the Post-Upanishadic thought-ferment of different individual philosophers and have also drawn their conclusion as regards the place of the Mahabharata in the religious and philosophical history of Ancient India.