India is uniquely positioned to cater to the whole world with a rich pool of ancient wisdom, knowledge, and traditions. It is for millions of years India has remained the center of the thoughts of philosophy and reflections on spirituality. The power and profundity of her mind and the purity of her soul was the hallmark of India. In the words of Max Muller: 'If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India." Though flowing in very different directions, like the Ganges and the Indus, the systems of Indian philosophy can be traced back to the same distant heights from which they took their rise. Nowhere else has the lust for philosophy been so strong as in India. Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato seem to have been influenced by Indian metaphysics. With the Hindus, Philosophy is not an ornament or a recreation, but a major interest and practice of life itself; and the sages received in India the honor bestowed in the West upon men of wealth or action. It is learned from the Upanishads how Janaka, the King of Vindhes, as part of a religious feast, set one day apart for a philosophical disputation among Yajnavalkya, Ashavala, Artabhāga and Gärgi. The king gave a reward of a thousand cows and many pieces of gold to the victor.
In India, these is indeed sufficient material to learn about the origin and growth of philosophical ideas, but hardly any for studying the lives or characters of those who founded the philosophical systems of that country. It was the usual course for a philosophical teacher in India to speak rather than to write. The whole of India's ancient literature is divided into two parts, Shrutam, what was heard, and Smritam, what was remembered. Shrutam or Shruti (revelation) came afterward to mean what has been revealed while Smritam or Smriti (tradition) comprised all that was recognized as possessing human authority only. The literature of the Hindus such as the hymns of the Rigveda is said to be the revelation of a higher power, commonly called Brahman. The philosophy that is now in possession in short aphorisms of Sutras belongs to Smriti or tradition. In Sutras each system of Indian philosophy whether Samkhya of Kapila, Yoga of Patanjali, Nyaya of Gautama, Vaishesika of Kanāda, Vedanta of Badarayana, or Parva-Mimämsä of Jaimini is complete in itself. There is no topic within the sphere of philosophy that does not find a straightforward treatment in these short aphorisms. When these aphorisms present abstracts of the various systems of Indian philosophy, the last stage of Vedic period, as represented in the Upanishads, previous to the Sutras, is, in fact, the most valuable to give an insight into the early growth of Indian philosophic thought where the terms like Brahman, Atman, Dharma, Vrata, Yoga, Mimânsă, etc. are expounded. Max Muller writes: ".... India was fertilized, not only by the Ganges and Indus but by ever so many rivers and rivulets, all pointing to the snowy mountains in the north, we can see the Indian mind also being nourished through ever so many channels, all starting from a vast accumulation of religious and philosophic thought of which we seem to see the last remnants only in our Upanishads....."
