ABSTRACT
Philosophers in the Brāhmaṇical culture of classical India developed
extraordinarily sophisticated conceptions of the human intellect, the
mechanisms through which it functions, the nature of its awareness, and
its metaphysical status. The various views of intellect in India fi rst arose
out of ancient sources of cosmological and psychical speculation in the
Upaniṣads and in general systems of metaphysics such as Sāṃkhya. These
early depictions of the human intellect were later forged and refi ned through
continuous debate among the “worldviews” or “scholastic systems” (darśana) of Indian thought, both Vedic, such as the later Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā,
Vedānta, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, and the non-Vedic, within the multifarious forms
of Buddhism, Jainism, and Cārvāka.
