What did Indian philosophers believe

Abstract

Popular writers about Christianity sometimes maintain that only modern fundamentalist Christians take the Biblical creation story literally; no one in pre-modern days, they say, ever thought of doing so. Karen ARMSTRONG represents this view in various publications, in one of which she states (2005b): ‘Until the advent of the modern period, nobody would have regarded the six-day creation story [of the Bible] as a literal, historical account.’ She is not the only one to maintain such a position. Some scholars of religion hold quite generally that myths were not taken literally in earlier days. Ninian SMART (1996: 138), to mention but one example, has the following to say about myths in general and about the way they are understood at present and in the past: