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APPENDIX A: THE SIX SYSTEMS
Sankhya and Yoga, Mīmāmsā and Vedanta, Vaiścṣika and Nyaya, the six classic systems, philosophies, or more literally "points of view" (darśanas; from the root drs, "to see"), are regarded as the six aspects of a single orthodox tradition. Though apparently and even overtly contradictory, they are understood to be complementary projections of the one truth on various planes of consciousness, valid intuitions from differing points of view-like the experiences of the seven blind men feeling the elephant, in the popular Buddhist fable. The founders, actual or supposed-Kapila, Patañjali, Jaimini, Vyāsa, Gautama, and Kanāda-should probably be regarded rather as schools than as individuals. Nothing is known of them but their names. Their sūtras stand at the beginning of a copious literature of commentators, yet are themselves but the last terms of a long foregoing period of discussion, each of them including arguments against all the others. Moreover, without the commentaries the texts would be unintelligible: they are not the self-sufficient works of independent thinkers, but mnemonic "threads" (sūtras) for the guidance of oral teaching in the ancient Indian style of the guru and his adhikarin.1
SANKHYA and YOGA have been discussed supra, pp. 280-332. They treat of the hierarchy of the principles (tattvas) that proceed from the effects of purusa in prakṛti and support the experiences of dream and waking consciousness.
1 Cf. supra, pp. 48-49.
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