Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 18:71 (Jul 1861)
Article: A Sketch Of Hindu Philosophy
Author: David C. Scudder

BSac 18:71 (July 1861) p. 535

A Sketch Of Hindu Philosophy

Rev. David C. Scudder

India has never taken an active part in the drama of human history. Although emphatically the “land of desire” to all nations, it has itself, shut out both by physical barriers and natural inclination from engagement in the stirring scenes of earth, turned to the solution of those weightier problems which concern the spiritual life here and hereafter. Hence results that strange anomaly of a nation without a history; for events of time have too little significance in the estimation of the Hindu to be recorded on the calendar, or narrated for his own instruction or the benefit of his descendants.

But for this very reason is it that the history of India assumes so important a position in the esteem of a student of mankind, furnishing, as it does, an instance of a completely home-sprung development,” which finds no parallel elsewhere; a development, not so much of social, civil, and political, as of philosophical and religious ideas. To one who would acquaint himself with the history of such development in a country like India, where no documentary annals exist, the only resource left is to construct a history

BSac 18:71 (July 1861) p. 536

out of the body of literature which that country presents to him, and which will faithfully reflect the varying phases of thought and feeling which time produces.

Such a work is now doing for India. Taking their point of observation at that period in the life of India which the Greek invasion has made historic, oriental scholars have succeeded in discovering a clue to the mazes of Hindu literature. As the result of long-continued, pains-taking investigation, they have been able to resolve this mass of writings into five distinct portions, each portion representing, in a certain sense, a well-defined historical epoch. These divisions are the Vedas, the Philosophical Treatises, the Buddhistic writings, the Epic Poems, and the Purânas.

The Veda is the oldest historical document of India, and, indeed, of the Indo-European race. In its original form it consists of hymns in praise of the gods, or of supplication to them, which the ancient Aryans sang on their first occupancy of the plains of the Panjab. The religion of the people, as reflected in these hymns, was a religion of nature, and there was among them but little diversity of belief. As, however, from one mountain range two streams may rise which shall pursue totally diverse courses, so from the Veda as the source flowed two currents of thought and faith, existing together in history, yet constantly diverging in their character, so that the whole history of India life is but a history of these separate streams, in their individual courses and in their occa...