Indian Philosophy Volume 1 Second Edition: With An Introduction By J.N.Mohanty

Great book and starting point for anyone who wants to read about Indian philosophy.... it's a great book for overview of indian philosophy. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan was Advaita vedanti and you can see the glimpse of it in this book. Overall a great book, without any western and Marxist biases.

Indian philosophy comprises diverse traditions of thought from the Indian subcontinent, broadly classified into orthodox (āstika) schools that accept the Vedas (Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, Vedanta) and heterodox (nāstika) schools that do not (Buddhism, Jainism, Carvaka). Centered on darśana (direct vision of truth), these systems explore metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, focusing on concepts like karma, samsara (reincarnation), and ultimate liberation (moksha/nirvana)

I'm a student of Philosophy persuading masters. The book is amazing, I got the contents as I wanted. But need to improve the page quality a little bit & also, I want to share that please tell the delivery boy(s) to come to the door-step of the given location to deliver. I have seen this earlier also. However, some of them are good but not all. They want us to reach them to pick it from road side. And thanks for the fast delivery.

Must read from an intellectual of many hues

Ok

This book could be subtitled as 'A Rational Analysis of Eastern Philosophy and Religion'. I am impressed by the ways Dr. S. Radhakrishnan writes: without taking any side, any bias, he tell the philosophical tales of each school of Indian Religion. The book appears to be synthesised with extreme care, word by word, and is laid chronologically with utterly rational and secular view. Writer sorts out every superstitious nonsense which prevailed as authority as he moves through the Dogmatic Post-Rig-Vedic period. This masterpiece comes in two volume. This is the first volume with 664 pages. It covers the ancient Indian religion; from Rig-Veda to Buddhism via. Upanishads, Epics, Jainism, The Bhagavad Gita. Can be read by both scholars and laymen. These couple of volumes are more than sufficient for any one willing to know or study Eastern thought.

Helped to have a great insight into the philosophical aspects of India

I liked this book

This is a wonderful book... but please be aware that it's the second edition as of 1929. Yes, there is a new introduction - but it's three pages long. I am not complaining; Radhakrishnan writes in absolutely gorgeous, articulate, nuanced English, and his grasp of the ideas and ability to transmit, contextualize and evaluate them is completely wonderful. And he used to be PRESIDENT OF INDIA!!! The very idea of a scholar/politician/philosopher existing in our time and leaving us such a wonderful masterpiece boggles my mind. I've been studying and practicing Buddhism for 25 years, and I wanted to learn more about the origin and context of the Buddha's teaching, and that has been immensely inspiring and helpful to me - I recommend it. Whatever your reasons for approaching this subject, I strongly recommend that if you're not already somewhat familiar with it, you start with "Indian Philosophy, a very short introduction," by Sue Hamilton. It's a 150 page book that will give you a wonderful entry into the vast survey that Radhakrishnan's two volumes and 1500 pages will provide you. The Very Short Introduction will also give you a good sense of whether you want to explore the Radhakrishnan or other works (for instance, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita). Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction I'm so grateful I came across Sue Hamilton's book and I'm so grateful to have both volumes of Radhakrishnan's. In any case, whatever your quest or journey is, please continue. Blessed be.

I may have attempted this book in the heady mixed up 60's but all I can say now in my dwindling days this is a book needed to explain in detail of Indian Religious Philosophy from the movement of a population into North India from the Vedas to Buddhism. Its a detailed study into world faiths & can be applied to greater understanding into how this has fitted into world faiths in general; for those trying to figure our a solution of our crazy mixed up world. But quite heavy if your wrist muscles are weak with old age.

Love this book! Fascinating and mind bending. Highly recommended.

Indian Philosophy, Volume I Scholarly and immense, but in accessible Victorian prose. I'm not surprised it's remained the standard text for so long - who would now even begin to attempt to collate the whole of a civilisation's philosophy! Simultaneously ambitious and sprawling, complete and partial, disciplined and wayward, pedantic and phantastic, objective and personal, this worthy tome is a gathering and a marker. It serves well as fundamental introduction to the avenues of understanding that the mode of `Indian' experience must go down to achieve wisdom. Some prior interest in Indian philosophy - and therefore some patience - is presumed even in its Victorian compendiousness. My interest in reading often depended on which parts I found most pertinent. The first hundred pages or so go over the polytheism/henotheism of the Veda, and there is some accounting of the various Hindu deities etc. I was happier once we got to the Upanishads and, from there, the on-going reconfigurations and considerations of the absolute that is the contribution of India to world philosophy - the various formulations of the ground that have been overlooked [or one of which has been posited thoughtlessly as absolute and primary] by the narrower, religiously influenced `western' tradition. But for such an apparently comprehensive tome, it does sometimes feel sketchy. The book is not self-contained. Radhakrishnan frequently refers to things he himself hasn't yet described within his own text: he references sunyata without having explained what that might be. In fact, he steers clear of an exposition of the way in which Buddhism might be fundamentally different from Hinduism. It increasingly appears, in the course of his writing, that Radhakrishnan is not entirely self-effacing. The book begins to give an interesting, historical sense of the time in which it was written [first pub. 1922] and the intellectual and social predispositions of its author as well as the state of historical knowledge at the time. Radhakrishnan writes about Indian Philosophy within the purview of Schopenhauer, Hegel, the then current fashions and initial understandings of western expositors, and his own Hinduism. Radhakrishnan finds Hinduism more tenable than Buddhism: `As a philosophy and religion, the Gita is more complete than Buddhism...' p449. He negatively characterises the Hinayana, `It is not a healthy minded doctrine. A sort of world hatred is its inspiring motive.' Academically, and logically, he is unable to come to terms with the relativistic negation of an absolute in the basic premises of Buddhism. Apparently the Mahayana is superior to the untenable Hinayana because, `A metaphysical substratum is admitted.' Eh? He often insists that Buddha never denied the reality of the Atman: `Buddha is silent about the Atman enunciated in the Upanishads. He neither affirms nor denies its existence.' He then contradicts such assertions: for example, when positively quoting Nagarjuna on the very next page: `The Tathagata sometimes taught that the Atman exists, and at other times he taught that the Atman does not exist...' [p326/7.] Radhakrishnan does not clarify what it is that is being asserted and what denied, and how this is or is not Atman, or what is intended in relation to Atman/Brahman by the 'neither existence nor non-existence' of the middle way. Nor does he investigate the implications of emptiness; he has instead an emotional reaction against it - which itself is symptomatically interesting - and his language gets surprisingly graphic. The areas of text that are most fractured, contradictory and incoherent [though over a large Victorian scale of tens of pages, smuggled in to an apparent propriety] are those where he attempts to reconcile his respect for Buddha as a sage with his Hindu convictions. His exposition comes under pressure and seems to me to be contradictory - precisely because he cannot give up on there being an independently existing transcendent reality. His exposition continually reinvests Buddhism with this. And reinvests Hinduism with the insights of Buddhism. He provides a brilliantly clinical and precise exposition of the tenets of the Madhyamika and then says: but 'the whole show of Nagarjuna's logic is a screen for his heart, which believed in an absolute reality.' And yet, in a way, this is perhaps what happened historically with the consolidations of Shankara. It would seem equally churlish however [and incorrect for a Buddhist] to deny that Buddhism is intimately related to Hinduism; dependent as all theorizing and insight is upon the conditions of its time. Or, perhaps, the centrality of emptiness to contemporary understandings of Buddhism are themselves just a fashion and focus of now. Certainly Radhakrishnan seems to be on firmer and more trans-historical ground in his exegesis of the fundamentals of Hindu understanding. Therein, this book is colossal and the worthy prose often climbs to an impressive and inescapable ecstatic.

The most reliable writer on these subjects I am aware of.