ve us a picture of the attitude
of mind of these debaters and we find that most of these
debates attempt to criticize the different schools of thinkers by
exposing their inconsistencies and self-contradictions by close
dialectical reasoning, anticipating the answers of the opponent,
asking him to define his statements, and ultimately proving that
his theory was inconsistent, led to contradictions, and was opposed
to the testimony of experience. In reading an advanced work on
Indian philosophy in the original, a student has to pass through an
interminable series of dialectic arguments, and negative criticisms
(to thwart opponents) sometimes called _vita@n@da_, before he can
come to the root of the quarrel, the real philosophical divergence.
All the resources of the arts of controversy find full play
for silencing the opponent before the final philosophical answer
is given. But to a modern student of philosophy, who belongs to
no party and is consequently indifferent to the respective victory
of either side, the most important thing is the comprehension of
the different aspects from which the problem of the theory of
knowledge and its associated metaphysical theory was looked at
by the philosophers, and also a clear understanding of the deficiency
of each view, the value of the mutual criticisms, the speculations
on the experience of each school, their analysis, and their
net contribution to philosophy. With Vedanta we come to an
end of the present volume, and it may not be out of place here
to make a brief survey of the main conflicting theories from the
point of view of the theory of knowledge, in order to indicate the
position of the Vedanta of the S'a@nkara school in the field of
Indian philosophy so far as we have traversed it. I shall therefore
now try to lay before my readers the solution of the theory
of knowledge (_prama@navada_) reached by some of the main
schools of thought. Their relations to the solution offered by
the S'a@nkara Vedanta will also be dealt with, as we shall attempt
to sketch the views of the Vedanta later on in this chapter.

408

The philosophical situation. A Review.

Before dealing with the Vedanta system it seems advisable
to review the general attitude of the schools already discussed to
the main philosophical and epistemological questions which determine
the position of the Vedanta as taught by S'a@nkara and
his school.

The Sautrantika Buddhist says that in all his affairs man