SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

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THE UNION OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES. 1/3
the books translated till now in English are books and com
mentaries of the Ve-danta School), knows nothing of any other
school of philosophy existing in India and what authorities they
had, and has gradually come to deny the existence of even such;
.and young Indians educated in English deriving all their
pabulum from such source have also been ignorant of any other
phases of Indian Philosophy. We well remember an Indian
graduate in arts and law ask us, if there was any such thing as
a special school of Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy. Of course, he
wears Vibhuti and Rudraksha and worships Siva and he
knows that the Great Guru Sankara was an avatar of Siva
Himself and all the English books that treated of Hinduism
only talked of the Ve~danta Philosophy and his surprise and
ignorance as such were quite
natural. But as a result of the
great upheaval that is going on, and the greater attention that
is paid to the study of our philosophic and religious literature,
even our own people have been slowly waking up to the truth
of things. That stoutest adherent of V6danta, the editor of the
Light of the East was the first to yield and to point out in his
articles on the Ancient Sankhya System that the Gita
expounded also the Sankhya system, though he tries to make
an olla podnda of it by saying that Vedanta is Sankhya and
Sankhya is Vedai)ta that the Gita does not postulate many
Purushas (souls). A Madras Professor declared in the Pachaiyappa
s Hall that in some of the special
doctrines of the
Vedanta, such as the doctrine of Maya, and the identity of the
human Soul and the Supreme Soul etc., the Gita is silent. And
our brother of the Brahmavadin also affirms in his editorial
on Maya, dated i5th August 1896, after stating that the
word Maya scarcely occurs in the principal ttpanishats t and
where it does occur, it seems to be used mostly in the old
Vfcdic sense of power or creative power, declares, that
the whole the attitude of the Bhagavad Gita towards Maya
is similar to that of the Upanishats ;
and it is rather diffi
cult to evolve out of it the later Vedantic sense," of illusion* or
delusion.
on