Six Schools of Indian Philosophy
The six schools (shad-darshanas) of orthodox Indian philosophy — Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Purva Mimamsa, and Uttara Mimamsa (Vedanta) — developed by the beginning of the Christian era as systematic explorations of moksha, or salvation, alongside the more worldly concerns addressed by the Arthashastra, Dharmashastra, and Kamasutra. For UPSC History Optional aspirants, these six schools are essential: each rests on its own foundational sutras, offers a distinct theory of knowledge and reality, and — in the case of Vedanta — branches into six influential sub-schools (Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Dvaitadvaita, Shuddhadvaita, and Acintya Bheda Abheda) that shaped the later Vaishnava bhakti traditions. This article examines the background and classification of the six schools, each school in turn, and the major sub-schools of Vedanta.
Background: The Goals of Life and the Six Schools
- Once the state and the varna-divided social order had been firmly established, ancient thinkers advocated that a person should strive for the attainment of four goals:
- regulation of the social order, or dharma; economic resources, or artha; physical pleasures, or kama; and salvation, or moksha.
- Each of these objectives was expounded in writing: matters relating to the economy were treated in the Arthashastra, written by Kautilya; laws governing the state and society became the subject of the Dharmashastra; and physical pleasures were discussed in the Kamasutra.
- All three of these branches of knowledge were primarily concerned with the material world and its problems, touching on the question of salvation only marginally.
- Salvation, or moksha, became the central subject of the texts on darshana, or philosophy; it meant deliverance from the cycle of birth and death, first recommended by Gautama Buddha but later emphasised by some Brahmanical philosophers.
- By the beginning of the Christian era, six schools of philosophy had developed: Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa (or Purva Mimamsa), and Vedanta (or Uttara Mimamsa).
- These six schools of philosophy are the astika schools, originally called Sanatana Dharma; each school has a set of sutras, or aphorisms, that forms its nucleus and conveys its essential teaching.
- The first four of these schools accept the authority of the Vedas, but do not derive their philosophical principles from the statements of the Vedas — they are instead based on the teachings of individual Rishis, or sages.
- The last two schools — Purva Mimamsa and Vedanta — however, base their theological systems specifically on the statements of the Vedas.
- The four Vedas — the Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva — are each divided into four parts: Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad.
- The first two parts are predominantly ritualistic; the Aranyakas mark the shift from ritual to theology, which finds its culmination in the Upanishads.
- Purva Mimamsa (“the earlier deliberation”) bases its principles on the earlier (purva) parts of the Vedas, namely the Samhitas and Brahmanas.
- Vedanta (literally, “the last part of the Vedas”) is the study of the later parts — i.e., the Upanishads — and is therefore also called Uttara Mimamsa, or the later deliberation.
(1) Samkhya
- Samkhya, literally “count,” seems to have originated first; Kapila Muni is the founder of this system.
- According to early Samkhya philosophy, the presence of divine agency is not essential to the creation of the world — the world owes its creation and evolution more to Nature, or prakriti, than to God. This was a rational and scientific view.
- Around the 4th century AD, in addition to prakriti, purusha (spirit) was introduced as an element in the Samkhya system, and the creation of the world came to be attributed to both. According to this newer view, Nature and the spiritual element together create the world; thus, at the outset the Samkhya school was materialistic, but later tended to become spiritualistic.
- Samkhya accepts two basic tattvas, or principles:
- prakriti — primordial matter (matter, creative agency, energy); and
- purusha — the individual conscious being (self, soul, or mind), also called atma, which is immutable, eternal, and conscious by its very nature.
- Prakriti is inert and undergoes modifications while in association with a purusha; it evolves from subtle to gross, and manifests the visible world.
- Jiva (a living being) is that state in which purusha is bonded to prakriti in some form; the universe is described by this school as one created by purusha-prakriti entities, infused with various permutations and combinations of variously enumerated elements, senses, feelings, activity, and mind.
- It is a dualist philosophy — though the duality is between the self and matter, rather than between mind and body as in the Western dualist tradition.
- According to this school, a person can attain salvation through the acquisition of real knowledge, and his misery can be ended for ever.
- A living being can become free from ignorance by understanding that purusha is distinct from prakriti (the twenty-four elements that constitute matter).
- This knowledge can be acquired through perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana), and hearing (shabda); such a method is characteristic of a scientific system of inquiry. The existence of God, or a supreme being, is not directly asserted, nor considered relevant, by the Samkhya philosophers.
(2) Yoga
- This system was founded by Hiranyagarbha and later systematised and propagated by the sage Patanjali; Yoga provides the practical steps for realising the purusha as distinct from prakriti.
- According to the Yoga school, a person can attain salvation through meditation and physical application.
- To obtain salvation, physical exercises in various postures called asanas are prescribed, along with a breathing exercise called pranayama; through these methods, the mind is thought to become diverted from worldly matters and to achieve concentration.
- These exercises are important, as they presuppose some development in the knowledge of physiology and anatomy in ancient times, while also indicating a tendency to withdraw from worldly difficulties.
- Practice of control over pleasure, the senses, and the bodily organs is central to this system.
- Yoga accepts the twenty-five principles of the Samkhya school, along with Ishvara (God) as the twenty-sixth — making it more theistic.
- Patanjali defines yoga as the cessation of all mental modifications; to attain this state, he prescribes eight steps, and hence this system is also called Ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga, reminiscent of Buddhism’s Noble Eightfold Path.
- These eight steps are: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi.
- The goal is to quiet one’s mind and achieve kaivalya (solitariness or detachment).
(3) Nyaya
- The Nyaya school, or the school of analysis, is based on the Nyaya Sutras, written by Gautama Muni in the 2nd century BC.
- Its methodology is based on a system of logic that has subsequently been adopted by the majority of Indian schools.
- According to Nyaya, salvation and release from suffering can be attained through the acquisition of knowledge; the veracity of a proposition or statement can be tested through perception, inference, comparison, and testimony. An example of how they used logic is given below:
- there is fire in the mountain,
- because it emits smoke;
- whatever emits smoke contains fire, such as the hearth.
- It holds that human suffering results from mistakes or defects produced by activity under wrong knowledge (mistaken notions and ignorance).
- The stress laid on the use of logic influenced Indian scholars, who took to systematic thinking and reasoning.
- The Nyaya school shares some of its methodology and its foundational understanding of human suffering with Buddhism; however, a key difference between the two is that Buddhism holds that there is neither a soul nor a self, whereas Nyaya, like other schools of Hinduism, believes that there is a soul and self, with liberation (moksha) as a state in which ignorance is removed.
(4) Vaisheshika
- The Vaisheshika school was founded by Kanada in the 6th century BC, and is atomist and pluralist in nature.
- The Vaisheshika school gives importance to the discussion of material elements, or dravya, drawing a line between particularities and their aggregate; earth, water, fire, air, and ether (sky), when combined, give rise to new objects.
- The Vaisheshika school propounded the atom theory, holding that all material objects are made up of atoms; Kanada postulated that the world is made of atoms (paramanu).
- All objects in the physical universe are reducible to a finite number of atoms, and Brahman is regarded as the fundamental force that causes consciousness in these atoms.
- Kanada taught that there are seven padarthas, or ontological entities, and that understanding these leads to self-realisation. The seven padarthas are:
- dravya (substance), guna (quality), karma (movement), samanya (generality), vishesha (speciality), samavaya (inherence), and abhava (non-existence).
- The Vaisheshika thus marked the beginning of physics in India, but this scientific view was diluted by a belief in god and spiritualism, and the school put its faith in both heaven and salvation.
- The Vaisheshika and Nyaya schools eventually merged, owing to their closely related metaphysical theories (although Vaisheshika accepted only perception and inference as sources of valid knowledge).
(5) Purva Mimamsa
- This system was propagated by the sage Jaimini, a disciple of Veda Vyasa; Mimamsa literally means the art of reasoning and interpretation.
- However, this reasoning was used to provide justifications for various Vedic rituals, and the attainment of salvation was made dependent on their performance.
- The main objective of the Purva Mimamsa school is to interpret and establish the authority of the Vedas.
- It requires unquestionable faith in the Vedas and the regular performance of Vedic fire sacrifices, to sustain all the activity of the universe; according to the Mimamsa school, the Vedas contain the eternal truth.
- The principal object of this philosophy was to acquire heaven and salvation; it holds that the essence of the Vedas is dharma.
- By the execution of dharma, one earns merit that leads to heaven after death; if one does not follow one’s dharma, or prescribed duties, one incurs sin and, as a consequence, suffers in hell.
- A person enjoys the bliss of heaven so long as his accumulated acts of virtue last; when these are exhausted, he returns to earth — but if he attains salvation, he becomes completely free from the cycle of birth and death.
- In order to attain salvation, the Mimamsa school strongly recommended the performance of Vedic sacrifices, which required the services of priests and legitimised the social distance between the various varnas.
- Through the propagation of Mimamsa philosophy, the brahmanas sought to maintain their ritual authority and preserve the social hierarchy based on Brahmanism.
(6) Uttara Mimamsa (Vedanta)
- The Vedanta, or Uttara Mimamsa, school concentrates on the philosophical teachings of the Upanishads (mystic or spiritual contemplations within the Vedas), rather than the Brahmanas (instructions for ritual and sacrifice); Vedanta focuses on meditation, self-discipline, and spiritual connection, more than on traditional ritualism.
- Vedanta means “the end of the Veda”; it refutes the conclusion of Purva Mimamsa and states that the essential teaching of the Vedas is to realise Brahman, the Absolute Truth, rather than dharma in the form of injunctions.
- The Brahmasutra of Badarayana, compiled in the 2nd century BC, formed its basic text.
- Later, two famous commentaries were written on it — one by Shankara in the 9th century, and the other by Ramanuja in the 12th.
- Shankara considered brahma to be without any attributes, while Ramanuja’s brahma had attributes; Shankara considered knowledge, or jnana, to be the chief means of salvation, while Ramanuja’s road to salvation lay in practising devotion, or loving faith.
- Vedanta philosophy is traced to the earlier Upanishads. According to it, brahma is the reality, and everything else is unreal (maya); the self (soul), or atma, coincides with brahma.
- Therefore, if a person acquires the knowledge of the self (atma), he acquires the knowledge of brahma, and thus attains salvation; both brahma and atma are eternal and indestructible.
- Such a view promotes the idea of stability and unchangeability — what is true spiritually could also be true of the social and material situation in which a person is placed.
- The theory of karma came to be linked to Vedanta philosophy: it means that, in his present birth, a person must bear the consequences of actions performed in his previous birth.
- Belief in rebirth, or punarjanma, became an important element not only in the Vedanta system but also in several other systems of Hindu philosophy; it implies that people suffer not because of social or worldly causes, but because of causes which they can neither know nor control.
- Vedanta is widely accepted as the apex of all six systems, because it deals exclusively with the Absolute Truth and explains Reality most consistently.
Sub-Schools of Vedanta
- Owing to the rather cryptic and poetic nature of the Vedanta sutras, the school separated into six sub-schools, each interpreting the texts in its own way and producing its own series of sub-commentaries:
- Advaita (the best-known, which holds that the soul and Brahman are one and the same);
- Vishishtadvaita (which teaches that the Supreme Being has a definite form, name — Vishnu — and attributes);
- Dvaita (which espouses a belief in three separate realities: Vishnu, and an eternal soul and matter);
- Dvaitadvaita (which holds that Brahman exists independently, while soul and matter are dependent);
- Shuddhadvaita (which holds that Krishna is the absolute form of Brahman); and
- Acintya Bheda Abheda (which combines monism and dualism by holding that the soul is both distinct and non-distinct from Krishna, or God).
- These can also be categorised into two divisions — personal and impersonal: in the former, devotion to a Personal God is the means to perfection; in the latter, one realises oneself as the all-pervading, impersonal Absolute Truth.
- According to the impersonal school, called Advaita, the Absolute Truth, or Brahman, is formless and devoid of any attributes; it is eternal and conscious, and Brahman is the only reality. The phenomenal world is an illusion, perceived out of ignorance of Brahman, and individual beings are non-different from Brahman.
- In contrast, the personal school holds that the Absolute Truth is a person, designated as Bhagavan or Purushottama, with a spiritual form and many variegated attributes; the impersonal feature described above is but the brilliant light emanating from the transcendental body of this Absolute Person. The world, being a creation of Bhagavan, is real, but undergoes cycles of creation and dissolution; individual beings (jivas) are part of Bhagavan’s potency and can never be absolutely non-different from Him.
Advaita
- “Advaita” literally means “not two,” and is often called a monistic or non-dualistic system, essentially referring to the indivisibility of the self (Atman) from the whole (Brahman).
- Advaita refers to the recognition that the true self, Atman, is the same as the highest reality, Brahman; followers seek liberation, or release, by acquiring knowledge of the identity of Atman and Brahman. Knowledge of Brahman destroys Maya, the illusory appearances that cover the Real, Brahman.
- The principal exponent of the Advaita Vedanta interpretation was Adi Shankara, in the 8th century, who systematised the works of preceding philosophers.
- Adi Shankara is best known for his systematic reviews and commentaries (Bhasyas) on ancient Indian texts; his masterpiece of commentary is the Brahmasutrabhasya (literally, commentary on the Brahma Sutra), a fundamental text of the Vedanta school of Hinduism.
- His commentaries on the ten Mukhya (principal) Upanishads, and on the Bhagavad Gita, are also important.
- Adi Shankara organised Hindu monks under four Mathas, with headquarters at Dvaraka in the West, Jagannatha Puri in the East, Sringeri in the South, and Badrikashrama in the North.
Vishishtadvaita
- Vishishtadvaita (“Advaita with uniqueness, or qualifications”) is a non-dualistic school of Vedanta philosophy.
- It is a non-dualism of the qualified whole, in which Brahman alone exists but is characterised by multiplicity; it can be described as qualified monism, qualified non-dualism, or attributive monism, believing that all diversity subsumes into an underlying unity.
- Ramanuja, the main proponent of Vishishtadvaita philosophy, contends that the Prasthana Traya (“the three courses”) — namely the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras — are to be interpreted in a way that shows this unity in diversity.
- According to Shankara, whatever is, is Brahman, and Brahman itself is absolutely homogeneous, so that all difference and plurality must be illusory.
- According to Ramanuja also, whatever is, is Brahman; but Brahman is not of a homogeneous nature, and instead contains within itself elements of plurality, owing to which it truly manifests itself in a diversified world.
- The Brahman of Shankara is in itself impersonal; Ramanuja’s Brahman, on the other hand, is essentially a Personal God.
- There are three key principles of Vishishtadvaita:
- Tattva: the knowledge of the three real entities, namely jiva (living souls, the sentient), ajiva (the insentient), and Ishvara (Vishnu-Narayana, or Parabrahman, the creator and controller of the world);
- Hita: the means of realisation, through bhakti (devotion) and prapatti (self-surrender);
- Purushartha: the goal to be attained, as moksha, or liberation from bondage.
- Ramanuja (1017–1137 CE) was born into a Tamil family in the village of Sriperumbudur.
Dvaita
- Dvaita, also known as Bhedavada and Tattvavada, is a school of Vedanta founded by Madhvacharya (1238–1317).
- Dvaita stresses a strict distinction between God — the Brahman (Paramatman) — and the individual souls (jivatman); according to Madhvacharya, individual souls are not created by God, but nonetheless depend on Him for their existence.
- Dvaita Vedanta, a dualistic understanding of the Vedas, espouses dualism by theorising the existence of two separate realities.
- The first, and more important, reality is that of Vishnu, or Brahman — the supreme Self, God, the absolute truth of the universe, the independent reality. The second reality is that of a dependent, but equally real, universe that exists with its own separate essence.
- Everything composed of the second reality — such as the individual soul, matter, and the like — exists with its own separate reality.
- Like Ramanuja, Madhvacharya also embraced Vaishnavism, which understands God as personal and endowed with attributes; to Madhvacharya, the Vedantin Brahman was Vishnu.
- Madhva established the Krishna temple at Udupi.
Dvaitadvaita
- Nimbarka, a Vaishnava philosopher, hailed from the Andhra region; Nimbarka’s philosophical position is known as Dvaitadvaita (Bhedabheda vada).
- The categories of existence, according to him, are three: chit (individual soul, or jiva), achit (jagat), and Ishvara.
- Chit and achit are different from Ishvara, in the sense that they possess attributes (guna) and capacities (swabhava) different from those of Ishvara.
- Ishvara is independent and exists by Himself, while chit and achit have existence dependent upon Him; at the same time, chit and achit are not different from Ishvara, because they cannot exist independently of Him.
- Here, “difference” means a kind of existence that is separate but dependent, while “non-difference” means the impossibility of separate existence.
Shuddhadvaita
- Shuddhadvaita is the “purely non-dual” philosophy propounded by Vallabhacharya (1479–1531 CE), the founding philosopher and guru of the Vallabha sampradaya (“tradition of Vallabh”), or Pushtimarg (“the path of grace”) — a Hindu Vaishnava tradition focused on the worship of Krishna.
- Regarding the relationship between the two realities — the world and God — Vallabhacharya believed that God (Brahm) is pure and non-dualistic; but at the same time, unlike Shankaracharya, he strongly believed that souls and Nature (the universe) are not illusion, but real.
Acintya Bheda Abheda
- Acintya Bheda Abheda (“inconceivable oneness and difference”) is believed to have been taught by the movement’s theological founder, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), and differentiates the Gaudiya (Bengal) tradition from other Vaishnava sampradayas.
- It can best be understood as an integration of the strict dualist (Dvaita) view of Madhvacharya and the qualified monism (Vishishtadvaita) of Ramanujacharya, while rejecting the absolute monism (Advaita) of Adi Shankara.
