RECENT PEOGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES. 275 



affect is merely borrowed to give an authority to their own sectarian tenets, which 

 would not otherwise have been accorded to them. 



The beginnings of speculative thought which I have noticed as existing even 

 in the hymns of the Rigveda, as well as in the Upanishads, were destined to 

 receive a wide and varied development in the philosophical schools.* As the 

 history of Indian philosophy has not yet been sufficiently studied, it is difficult to 

 say at what period the doctrines held by the different schools, which were 

 eventually denominated Sankhya, Nyaya, Vedanta, &c., were first propounded in 

 a definite shape. Sets of concise aphorisms (called in Sanskrit Sutras) constitute, 

 in most cases at least, the oldest form in which the tenets of these systems have 

 come down to us. The aphorisms are statements, for the most part very obscure, 

 as well as brief, of the leading principles of the several schools. Whether them- 

 selves at first committed to writing or not, they must have been handed down 

 accompanied by at least verbal explanations from the very date when they were 

 composed. Many of them would not otherwise have be'en intelligible. 



We need not however suppose, that the tenets which these aphorisms ex- 

 pound were all thought out at once, and embodied at the same time in the 

 systematic form in which they now appear. The various dogmas which are now 

 combined as component elements of the different schemes of speculation, had no 

 doubt in many cases existed previously in an isolated form, and were not thrown 

 together till they had been discussed and questioned by the advocates of anta- 

 gonistic doctrines. The relative antiquity of these different sets of aphorisms, 

 and of the schools which they represent, is not easy to determine, especially as 

 some of them, at least, refer mutually to one another. In the cases where these 

 mutual references occur, it is clear that even those bodies of aphorisms which 

 represent the oldest doctrines, must have been subsequently re- written, or at any 

 rate interpolated in those portions which controvert the principles of the rival 

 schools. That great freedom of speculation must have been permitted in India in 

 ancient times, is evident from a consideration of these aphorisms. The most 

 diverse opinions are there propounded on matters of the greatest importance. 



* I may remark, that though Indian philosophy has of late received considerable elucidation 

 from the pens of Dr Ballantyne, Professor FitzEdward Hall, and others, yet the main points had 

 already been given in Mr Colebrooke's Essays, read before the Royal Asiatic Society in 1823 and the 

 following years. See Colebrooke^s Misc. Essays, vol. i. 227-419 ; Dr Ballantyne's " Christianity 

 contrasted with Hindu Philosophy ; " his Lectures on the Vedanta, Nyaya, and Sankhya Philoso- 

 phies, and his translations of the aphorisms of the different systems ; Professor FitzEd. Hall's 

 " Rational Refutation of the Hindu Phil. Systems," translated from the Hindee. In regard to the 

 purely indigenous and original character of Indian philosophy, see Professor Max Mijller's Ap- 

 pendix on Indian Logic, in Archbishop Thomson's " Laws of Thought," 3d edition. Though in the 

 quotation given above, p. 9, Dugald Stewart speaks of the Indians having become acquainted with 

 the Greek language and philosophy through Alexander's invasion, yet in another passage (Works, 

 vol. i. p. 425), he thus expresses himself: "The metaphysical and ethical remains of the Indian 

 sages are, in a peculiar degree, interesting and instructive, inasmuch as they seem to have furnished 

 the germs of the chief systems taught in the Grecian schools." (Diss, on the Prog, of Met., Eth.. 

 and Pol. Phi'.) 



