Abstract

This book stands as a panegyric of the glories and grandeur of Indian philosophy without managing to embody or display those heights of attainment itself. In the few essays that are worthwhile, the author attempts to correct a number of misconceptions about Indian thought: that it is world-denying, that it promotes spiritual pessimism, that it bases its philosophical claims more on intuition than on rational argument, and that it is concerned more with inner than with outer reality. In support of his claims, he sets forth what he believes to be the basic tenets of Indian philosophy, which are: the divine or spiritual nature of the universe, the ultimate moral order of the universe, the transmigration of the soul, the ultimate destiny of man through "the liberation of the soul from bondage to the body," and the implicit trust placed in the testimony of seer-saints "to whom they [truths] are supposed to have been revealed beyond doubt in their direct and immediate experience." In a chapter entitled, "Svapramanatva and Svaprakasatva: An Inconsistency in Kumärila's Philosophy," he presents a fairly informative and well-reasoned argument that the validity of cognitions cannot be verified on the basis of both the inherent quality of the senses which give immediate satisfaction and the quality of external conditions which must await subsequent investigation. Finally, he soundly criticizes R. C. Zaehner's The Comparison of Religions for interpreting and evaluating Hindu religion and philosophy through the spectacles of Catholic Christianity. But his own contention, reiterated again and again throughout the book, that "there is nothing in common between Hindu religion and philosophy," makes no sense. Surely, one thing which distinguishes Indian philosophy from Greek and modern philosophy in the western world is the continual insistence by Indian thinkers that philosophical reflection and rational argumentation are not ends in themselves but merely means to salvation, paths to Enlightenment.--J. B. L.