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A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 by Surendranath Dasgupta
page 19 of 817 (02%)
to write books in vernaculars in order to popularize the subject does
not appeal to them. Through the activity of various learned bodies and
private individuals both in Europe and in India large numbers of
philosophical works in Sanskrit and Pâli have been published, as well as
translations of a few of them, but there has been as yet little
systematic attempt on the part of scholars to study them and judge their
value. There are hundreds of Sanskrit works on most of the systems of
Indian thought and scarcely a hundredth part of them has been translated.
Indian modes of expression, entailing difficult technical philosophical
terms are so different from those of European thought, that they can
hardly ever be accurately translated. It is therefore very difficult
for a person unacquainted with Sanskrit to understand Indian philosophical
thought in its true bearing from translations. Pâli is a much easier
language than Sanskrit, but a knowledge of Pâli is helpful in
understanding only the earliest school of Buddhism, when it was in its
semi-philosophical stage. Sanskrit is generally regarded as a difficult
language. But no one from an acquaintance with Vedic or ordinary literary
Sanskrit can have any idea of the difficulty of the logical and abstruse
parts of Sanskrit philosophical literature. A man who can easily
understand the Vedas. the Upani@sads, the Purânas, the Law Books and
the literary works, and is also well acquainted with European
philosophical thought, may find it literally impossible to understand
even small portions of a work of advanced Indian logic, or the
dialectical Vedânta. This is due to two reasons, the use of
technical terms and of great condensation in expression, and
the hidden allusions to doctrines of other systems. The

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tendency to conceiving philosophical problems in a clear and unambiguous
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