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Index Page
PREFACE.
THE great body of Hindu Philosophy is based upon six sets of very
concise
Aphorisms. Without a commentary, the Aphorisms are scarcely
intelligible; they being designed, not so much to communicate the
doctrine of the particular school, as to aid, by the briefest possible
suggestions, the memory of him to whom the doctrine shall have been
already communicated. To this end they are admirably adapted; and,
this being their end, the obscurity which must needs attach to them,
in the eyes of the uninstructed, is not chargeable upon them as a
fault.
For various reasons it is desirable that there
should be an accurate translation of the Aphorisms, with so much of
gloss as may be required to render them intelligible. A class of
pandits in the Benares Sanskrit College having been induced to learn
English, it is contemplated that a version of the Aphorisms, brought
out in successive portions, shall be submitted to the criticism of
these men, and, through them, of other learned Bráhmans, so that any
errors in the version may have the best chance of being discovered and
rectified. The employment of such a version as a class-book is
designed to subserve, further, the attempt to determine accurately the
aspect of the philosophical terminology of the East, as regards that
of the West.
These pages, now submitted to the criticism of
the pandits who read English, are to be regarded as proof-sheets
awaiting correction. They invite discussion.
J. R. B.
BENARES COLLEGE,
5th January, 1852.
Suggested Further Reading
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