There is no work to which a student who wished to study the doctrine of Soul as set forth in the Upanishads could be referred. There are excellent popular accounts of later Indian beliefs. Professor Deussen has written a very complete and scholarly exposition of the views of the great Vedantist Śankar Āeārya. And Professor Garbe has now given us an equally valuable presentation of the Sānkhya philosophy. But Śankara is of the eighth century of our era (about 760–820 a.d.); and the earliest

more »

... sponding commentary on Sānkhya—that of Gandapāḍa—is approximately dated by Garbe between 700 and 750 a.d. The very curt texts which these old commentators expound, though of quite unknown date, are probably at least three centuries earlier. What the student would want would be the views on the subject current in the Valley of the Ganges 1,200 years earlier, before the time when Buddhism arose.