. The word is derived from the
root _dris_, to see, and means a way of looking at things. As such a
way of looking is supposed to be both comprehensive and orderly, it is
more or less what we call philosophical, but the points of view are so
special and so various that the result is not always what we call a
philosophical system. Madhava's[736] list of Darsanas includes
Buddhism and Jainism, which are commonly regarded as separate
religions, as well as the Pasupata and Saiva, which are sects of
Hinduism. The Darsana of Jaimini is merely a discussion of general
questions relating to sacrifices: the Nyaya Darsana examines logic and
rhetoric: the Paniniya Darsana treats of grammar and the nature of
language, but claims that it ought to be studied "as the means for
attaining the chief end of man."[737]

Six of the Darsanas have received special prominence and are often
called the six Orthodox Schools. They are the Nyaya and Vaiseshika,
Sankhya and Yoga, Purva and Uttara Mimamsa, or Vedanta. The rest are
either comparatively unimportant or are more conveniently treated of
as religious sects. The six placed on the select list are sufficiently
miscellaneous and one wonders what principle of classification can
have brought them together. The first two have little connection with
religion, though they put forward the emancipation of the soul as
their object, and I have no space to discuss them. They are however
important as showing that realism has a place in Indian thought in
spite of its marked tendency to idealism.[738] They are concerned
chiefly with an examination of human faculties and the objects of
knowledge, and are related to one another. The special doctrine of the
Vaiseshika is the theory of atoms ascribed to Kanada. It teaches that
matter consists of atoms (anu) which are eternal in themselves though
all combinations of them are liable to decompose. The Sankhya and
Yoga are also related and represent two aspects of the same system
which is of great antiquity and allied to Buddhism and Jainism. The
two Mimamsas are consecutive expositions of the teaching scattered
throughout the Vedic texts respecting ceremonial and the knowledge of
God respectively. The second Mimamsa, commonly called the Vedanta, is
by far the more interesting and important.

The common feature in these six systems which constitutes their
orthodoxy is that they all admit the authority of the Veda. This
implies more than our phrases revelation or