The Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha

As I was at that time the Oriental Secretary of the Bengal Asiatic Society, I was naturally attracted to the book; and I subsequently read it with my friend Pandit Mahesachandra Nyáyaratna, the present Principal of the Sanskrit College at Calcutta. I always hoped to translate it into English; but I was continually prevented by other engagements while I remained in India. Soon after my return to England, I tried to carry out my intention; but I found that several chapters, to which I had not paid the same attention as to the rest, were too difficult to be translated in England, where I could no longer enjoy the advantage of reference to my old friends the Pandits of the Sanskrit College. In despair I laid my translation aside for years, until I happened to learn that my friend, Mr. A. E. Gough, at that time a Professor in the Sanskrit College at Benares, was thinking of translating the book. I at once proposed to him that we should do it together, and he kindly consented to my proposal; and we accordingly each undertook certain chapters of the work. He had the advantage of the help of some of the Pandits of Benares, especially of Pandit Ráma Misra, the assistant Professor of Sánkhya, who was himself a Rámánuja; and I trust that, though we have doubtless left some things unexplained or explained wrongly, we may have been able to throw light on many of the dark sayings with which the original abounds. Our translations were originally published at intervals in the Benares Pandit between 1874 and 1878; but they have been carefully revised for their present republication.

The work itself is an interesting specimen of Hindu critical ability. The author successively passes in review the sixteen philosophical systems current in the fourteenth century in the South of India, and gives what appeared to him to be their most important tenets, and the principal arguments by which their followers endeavoured to maintain them; and he often displays some quaint humour as he throws himself for the time into the position of their advocate, and holds, as it were, a temporary brief in behalf of opinions entirely at variance with his own.[1] We may sometimes differ from him in his judgment of the relative importance of their doctrines, but it is always interesting to see the point of view of an acute native critic. In the course of his sketches he frequently explains at some length obscure details in the different systems; and I can hardly imagine a better guide for the European reader who wishes to study any one of these Darsanas in its native authorities. In one or two cases (as notably in the Bauddha, and perhaps in the Jaina system) he could only draw his materials second-hand from the discussions in the works of Brahmanical controversialists; but in the great majority he quotes directly from the works of their founders or leading exponents, and he is continually following in their track even where he does not quote their exact words.[2]

The systems are arranged from the Vedánta point of view,--our author having been elected, in A.D. 1331, the head of the Smárta order in the Math of Sringeri in the Mysore territory, founded by Samkara Áchárya, the great Vedántist teacher of the eighth century, through whose efforts the Vedánta became what it is at present--the acknowledged view of Hindu orthodoxy. The systems form a gradually ascending scale,--the first, the Chárváka and Bauddha, being the lowest as the furthest removed from the Vedánta, and the last, the Sánkhya and Yoga, being the highest as approaching most nearly to it.