THE BIRTH OF INDIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN BUDDHISM

The author has long been recognised as one of the leading European authorities on Pali and Buddhist literature. In this work she endeavours to trace historically the rise and development of Hindu reflection on man and the human mind during a period of more than a thousand years. Embodying as it does the fruits of well-nigh half a century's labour, the volume cannot fail to be appreciated by all who are interested in Indian culture. This work is an attempt to envisage faithfully something true in the history of a very interesting current in human ideas. This something true is the analysis and theory of mind in the movement and culture we understand by Early Buddhism, as well as in that of its direct descendant still thriving in Burma, Ceylon and Siam, called Theravada, or the Doctrine of the Elders. This also is called Buddhism—some call it Hina-Yana, some Southern Buddhism. The quest is to present summarily some of the thought contained in the mother-doctrine and her first-born child, much of which is still inaccessible to him. The second object is to bring nearer the day when the historical treatment of psychology will find it impossible to pretend that the observation and analysis of mind began with the Pre-Socratics. Psychologists are, some of them, curiously unhistorical even with regard to the European field with its high fence of ignorance and prejudice. Theories are sometimes put forward as new that have been anticipated in both Europe and Asia.