Background
Dasgupta was born on October, 1887 in Kushtia, Nadia, Bengal, British India (now Bangladesh) in a Vaidya family. His ancestral home was in the village Goila in Barisal District.
(However dogmatic a system of philosophical enquiry may ap...)
However dogmatic a system of philosophical enquiry may appear to us, it must have been preceded by a criticism of the observed facts of knowledge. The details of the criticism and the processes of self-argumentation by which the thinker arrived at his theory of the Universe might indeed be suppressed, as being relatively unimportant but a thoughtful reader would detect them as lying in the background behind the shadow of the general speculations, but at the same time setting them off before our view. An Aristotle or a Patanjali may not make any direct mention of the arguments which led them to a dogmatic assertion of their theories, but for a reader who intends to understand them thoroughly it is absolutely necessary that he should read theiri in the light as far as possible of the inferred presuppositions and inner arguments of their minds ; it is in this way alone that he can put himself in the same line of thinking with the thinker he is willing to follow and can grasp him to the fullest extent. In offering this short study of the Patanjala metaphysics, I shall therefore try to supple- ment it with such of my inferences of the presupposi- tions of Patanjali's mind, which I think will add to the clearness of the exposition of his views, though 1 am fully alive to the difficulties of making such inferences about a philosopher whose psychological, social, religious and moral environments differed so widely from ours.
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(The work appears in five volumes. Each volume is devoted ...)
The work appears in five volumes. Each volume is devoted to the study of the particular school of thought of Indian Philosophy. Vol. I comprises Buddhist and Jaina Philosophy and the six systems of Hindu thought, viz., Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisesika, Mimamsa and Vedanta. Vol. II completes studies in the Sankara school of Vedanta. It also contains the philosophy of the Yogavasistha, the Bhagavadgita and speculations in the medical schools. Vol. III contains an elaborate account of the principal dualistic and pluralistic systems such as the philosophy of the Pancaratra. Bhaskara, Yamuna, Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Vijnanabhiksu and philosophical speculations of some of the selected Puranas. Vol. IV deals with the Bhagavata Purana, Madhva and his school, Vallabha, Caitanya, Jiva Gosvami and Baladeva Vidyabhusana. Vol. V treats of the southern schools of Saivism, viz., Saiva Siddhanta, Vira Saivism, philosophy of Srikantha, Saiva philosophy in the Puranas and in some important texts. In the words of the Oxford Journal 'the collection of data, editing and the interpretation of every school of thought is a feat unparalleled in the field of history of philosophy.'
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(Practical guide promotes Rajayoga and compares its essent...)
Practical guide promotes Rajayoga and compares its essential features with other systems. First of two parts deals with yoga metaphysics, delineating characteristics and functions of Prakrti and Purusa, reality of the external world, and process of evolution. Second part expounds yoga ethics and practice, with emphasis on yoga method, stages of samadhi, and related topics. Practical guide promotes Rajayoga and compares its essential features with other systems. First of two parts deals with yoga metaphysics, delineating characteristics and functions of Prakrti and Purusa, reality of the external world, and process of evolution. Second part expounds yoga ethics and practice, with emphasis on yoga method, stages of samadhi, and related topics. Practical guide promotes Rajayoga and compares its essential features with other systems. First of two parts deals with yoga metaphysics, delineating characteristics and functions of Prakrti and Purusa, reality of the external world, and process of evolution. Second part expounds yoga ethics and practice, with emphasis on yoga method, stages of samadhi, and related topics.
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historian philosopher scholars
Dasgupta was born on October, 1887 in Kushtia, Nadia, Bengal, British India (now Bangladesh) in a Vaidya family. His ancestral home was in the village Goila in Barisal District.
Dasgupta studied in Ripon College Calcutta and graduated with honours in Sanskrit. Later, he received his master's degree from Sanskrit College, Calcutta in 1908. He got a second master's degree in Western Philosophy in 1910 from the University of Calcutta.
Dasgupta’s career of scholarly publications began with his 1920 doctoral dissertation, A Study of Patanjali, which discussed that thinker’s system of Yogic thought. His major work, however, was the massive, five-volume A History of Indian Philosophy, which emerged gradually over a period of more than thirty years and which Matilal hails as “a pioneering work” and “unique of its kind.”
In 1924 Dasgupta joined the Presidency College as Professor of Philosophy. Later, he became the Principal of Sanskrit College, and later joined the University of Calcutta as a Professor.
In 1932, he worked as President of the Indian Philosophical Congress. His own philosophy was known as Theory of Dependent Emergence.
Dasgupta, unlike other historians of Indian philosophy before him, relied extensively on original Sanskrit sources and even unpublished Sanskrit manuscripts.
Assessing Dasgupta’s own philosophical leanings through the multi-volume prism of the History.
His valuable book was 1933’s Indian Idealism, in which he attempted, within the space of little more than two hundred pages, to summarize aspects of Vedic, Upanishadic, Vedantic, and Buddhist thought.
Dasgupta made major contributions to the study of Indian philosophy and aesthetics, and to the popularization of Yogic philosophy in the Western world.
Dasgupta’s lifelong aesthetic bent is demonstrated, as well, by his posthumously published volume of poems, The Vanishing Lines, and his numerous works on aesthetics and literature in Bengali, his first language.
A particularly influential book of Dasgupta’s has been his 1924 Yoga as Philosophy and Religion, which has been reissued several times on both sides of the Atlantic.
(However dogmatic a system of philosophical enquiry may ap...)
(Practical guide promotes Rajayoga and compares its essent...)
(The work appears in five volumes. Each volume is devoted ...)
Dasgupta married Himani Devi, a beautiful lady and the younger sister of India's pioneer film director and founder of Bombay Talkies Himanshu Rai and had six children with her. About 1941 or 1942 Dasgupta moved away from his wife Himani Madhuri Dasgupta and their six children, and he stayed with Suramā Mitra, his secretary and student, whom he married in 1945.
