ABSTRACT
With some simplification we can put the beginning of systematic thought in India in the last centuries B.C. Various religious, psychological and metaphysical conceptions are indeed known before that, but they first take on systematic form in the classical texts that survive from that time, texts called 'Siitra' by the Brahmins - the word means both a statement of doctrine and a work consisting of such. Of these texts six are Brahmanic in character, the Siirrzkhya-kiirlka, the Yoga-, Purva-Mlmiirrzsii-, Vediinta-, Nyiiya-and Vaise~ika-sutra. The last seems to have been first edited in about the first century A.D., the Nyiiya-sutra first about 200; their contents, however, are ascribed at least in part to an earlier period. Everyone of these Siitras has occasioned a swarm of commentaries, commentaries on commentaries, commentaries of the third order etc., and nearly the whole philosophical literature of India consists of commentaries. The teachings of these schools can be characterized thus:
Siirrzkhya: dualistic ontology and cosmogony. Yoga: systematization of mythical and ascetical practice.
