The Indian Mind: Essentials of Indian Philosophy and Culture
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Abstract
This book is a collection of papers by participants (chiefly Indian) in the East-West Philosophers' Conferences of 1939, 1949, 1959, and 1964. Though all the papers have been published previously, most of them have been somewhat revised here. The concentration of Indian papers in one volume highlights the distinctive features of the Indian contributions to the conferences, and provides a convenient work for use in courses on Indian philosophy, religion, and civilization. The scope of the book is much less comprehensive than the title. One might well contend that it contains the essentials of Hindu philosophy, but it most assuredly does not present the essentials of Indian culture. Most of the contributors are Hindus trained in Sanskrit and in European philosophy of an Edwardian British vintage. The exceptions are: one Hindu lawyer (C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar), one Hindu historian (Tara Chand), one Sinhalese Buddhist (G. P. Malalasekera), and a Japanese Buddhologist (Junjir6 Takakusu). There is no Muslim, though approximately 150 million inhabitants of geographic India are Muslims. Are their minds not Indian minds? No Indian Christians, Jains, or Sikhs are included, either. In short, the communal representation is much less complete than at most contemporary Indian philosophical conferences. This would not matter much if the papers did justice to Indian thought as a whole, but they don't. The sizable Muslim contribution to Indian thought and culture is ignored by most of the writers, and dealt with-briefly and well-only by Tara Chand, the historian. The Hindu writers regard Buddhism and Jainism as Israelites regarded Ishmaelites -of the right lineage, but the wrong branch. Buddhist epistemology and metaphysics are mentioned fairly often, though the level of acquaintance wyith Buddhist thought varies from proficiency (T. R. V. Murti) to ignorance (P. T. Raju and Kalidas Bhattacharyya). Buddhist ethical, social, and political thought is seldom considered, despite the fact that the Buddhists in ancient India had much more to say on many of the topics of the conferences than did the ancient Hindus.