Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective

A collection of essays in which Daya Krishna sets out to dismantle the accepted picture of classical Indian philosophy. That picture, he argues, was built by Western Indologists and by Indian thinkers seeking a spiritual identity under colonial rule, then handed down unquestioned through textbooks. He challenges the claims that Indian philosophy is essentially theological or spiritual, and that its central concern is liberation (mokṣa). In the enlarged edition, other essays question whether the Vedic corpus and the Upaniṣads form the unified authorities they are taken to be, point out textual problems in the Nyāya Sūtras and the Yoga Sūtras, and ask whether Īśvarakṛṣṇa's Sāṃkhya Kārikā is really Sāṃkhya at all. He also attacks the scheme of the four aims of life (puruṣārthas) and the dominance of rasa theory in aesthetics. His stated aim is to clear the ground, so that Indian thought can be studied as living argument connected to present concerns rather than as a fixed heritage.

It is a sustained challenge to the textbook picture of Indian philosophy, and a model of reading classical texts critically, as arguments to be tested rather than heritage to be revered.