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R. Mitra —Psychological Tenets of the Vaishnavas. [No. 1, 
the question. A brief analysis of the work may not, therefore, be un¬ 
welcome to the readers of this Journal. 
The writer of the work naturally takes for granted that his readers 
are perfectly familiar with the values of the technical terms and the 
bearings of the various schools of thought in this country, and therefore 
plunges at once in medias res. This course, however, will not be con¬ 
venient for English readers, and it is necessary, therefore, to preface this 
note with a few words on the leading Indian theories on soul, as a 
spiritual, self-conscious monad, distinct from the body, and concentrating 
in itself all the purest and most refined of human excellences—a spirit 
distinct from the entelechies of Aristotle. 
These theories may be described under three heads : 1st, Nihilistic ; 
2nd, Monistic ; 3rd, Dualistic. 
The first is represented by the Charvakas, who deny the existence of 
a soul. Like the Pessimists of this century they say there is no psyche. 
They hold that the soul, or the spiritual principle which vivifies and 
sensitizes living beings, is, like the body, derived from the parents, and 
dies with it. This means that vitality and consciousness are the 
results of organization, and cease with the complete ataxy of that 
organization. In other words, there is, apart from the body, no distinct 
essence, which, in association with matter, gives it life, and, dissociated 
from it, lives on, either to vitalize other bodies, or in an ethereal or spiritual 
form. The most essential attribute of this soul is its immortality, and 
most Indian philosophers add to it eternity, and these being wanting 
in the doctrine of the Charvakas and other atheists, it is rightly called 
Nihilistic. One school of Buddhists, and that the most important, pro¬ 
fesses a modified form of this nihilism, allowing the soul functional exis¬ 
tence for seons, but reducing it to ultimate vacuity from which it is held 
to arise. This is called S'.unyavdda, ‘ the theory of vacuity, ’ or Asadvdda 
‘ the theory of non-existence.’ None of these, however, is accepted by 
any leading Yaishnava school of thought, and need not, therefore, be 
noticed at greater length here. 
The second head resolves itself into two divisions—1st, Generically 
Monistic ; 2nd, Absolutely Monistic. Those who entertain the theory im¬ 
plied by the first division hold that every living being has a separate 
soul, which is uncreate and immortal. It is consciousness itself, and 
spiritual in nature, but defined in character, no one soul merging into, or 
bearing any relation to, another, and yet it is essentially so identical with 
one and another, that as a genus all souls are exactly alike, and as such 
there is perfect unity. Unity is also predicated of this soul on the 
ground of there being no species of soul of any other kind, and thereby 
is meant that there is no Divine or Supreme soul. In fact it is with a 
