When thinking about major centers of philosophical thought, most people automatically think about the great Western thinkers thinking about men from Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato to Descartes, Locke, and Kant usually forgetting about another substantial source of philosophy, the Indian subcontinent. The word philosophy is derived from Greek to mean “the love of wisdom” and the Indian people have shown that they truly possess this love from ancient times to today’s modern society. Indian philosophy tries to explain man’s existence from creation to death and what may lay beyond death all in relationship to religion. Indian philosophical thought is slightly different than the Western approach and can be broken down into six parts: (1) knowledge, (2) reality, (3) God(s), (4) space and the universe, (5) man, souls, and mind, and (6) salvation. The Western analogy to this these categories are, respectively: epistemology, ontology, theology, cosmology, psychology, and soteriology. The goal of Indian philosophy can be summed up by the following short and simple statement: right knowledge of reality yields salvation. Hindu religion is very complex and can be describe a rubber band that stretches and changes its shape to encompass a multitude of areas. Indian philosophy and the different schools of thought grew in order to develop the right knowledge that would lead to an understanding of reality and salvation but these developments are not know by most of the normal practitioners of Hinduism. Though not known by the majority, Indian philosophy has greatly affected the development and practice of Hinduism.
The story of Indian philosophy starts with the birth of the civilization on the subcontinent between the year ...