What it says on the tin ( )

Very well done VSI; since it's a ridiculously broad topic to cover in such a short format, Hamilton has to be selective, but she is rationally selective, and tries to make everything fit together in a narrative and in comparisons. It's dense, and hard, because the philosophy is dense and hard, not because Hamilton does a bad job. ( )

Finished this at work today on my breaks. It definitely lives up to its name "A very short Introduction".... which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in this case, for the most part it isn't. It definitely breezes through a lot of topics, some of which obviously doesn't get enough time to allow for full grasping of it. Which in some ways is a good thing; it forces one to read the primary sources or other texts (either way it requires further reading) but on the other hand, its a bad thing because its not simplistic enough for a laymen or for someone hoping to get caught up on a topic (especially one as vague and large such as this).

This does make me interested in the other books/topics of this series (with albeit different authors, one of whom is Simon Critchley, who I've read some of his works before). ( )

This is an especially dense Very Short Introduction, compressing its vast field into a 35,000-word neutron star of information. I found I had to take it slowly, despite the fact that the writing is clear and well-ordered.

Hamilton takes the decision to leave most key terminology untranslated, a decision I approve of, but it does leave the novice facing some pretty daunting discussions on things like svabhāva, or jñāna-kāṇḍa. Where other introductory books might write that ‘matter is seen as being less important than the underlying soul or consciousness’, Hamilton instead writes that ‘prakṛti is qualitatively inferior to puruṣa, and the sense of self imparted by the I-maker deluded’. This is ultimately better, but for a beginner like me it required some slow and careful reading.

I've shelved it under religion as well as philosophy; one of the things this books does especially well is make the point that the distinction between the two is a uniquely Western (and post-Kantian) one. Most of the thought systems here are, at least in some sense, soteriological, in that they have mokṣa or release from reincarnation as their more-or-less ultimate objective. To me with my feeble knowledge of Western philosophy a lot of it felt vaguely Pythagorean, or at any rate Pre-Socratic. Hamilton suggests near the end that those Indian philosophers who have become known in the West have done so by jettisoning the wider religious context of their arguments, and she looks forward to a time when a more authentically Indian milieu can be incorporated into these discussions. That seems to me to be a very fruitful and sensible position.

There is quite a lot here that I still don't understand (as you'd expect) – the intricacies of some of the Buddhist schools in particular are clearly far deeper than can be explored in this format – but what I am left with is a decent sense of the (impressively long) chronology and an idea of some of the key recurring themes. A focus on the power and meaning of language comes up a lot, as it does in Western thought, and that I found fascinating in the context of Sanskrit (except where it veers into epistemology, something I'm afraid I have always found totally uninteresting).

But most of the discussion, in this book at least, is metaphysical. The questions revolve around the nature of reality – whether or not there is some underlying nature separate from what we experience through our senses, and whether everything is ultimately the same one fundamental substance or rather made of a plurality of essences. You can see I've forgotten most of the proper terms already, but you get the idea.

Overall it's a very clear outline of what is obviously a big, complex field. It made me very aware of my ignorance in this area – but, as books like this need to, it also offers an excellent Further Reading section to help address the deficit. ( )

The materials covered are primarily related to prominent classical schools of philosophy and the persons responsible for their creation (when known), ranging from Pāṇini to Gotama Buddha to Śaṅkara. Reference to gods and political/social conditions that caused those ideas to flourish or die out were minimal. The ideas were presented in fairly chronological order, from ca. 2000 BCE to the 11th century CE, and the relationships between successive ideologies were explained.

While I've read a few things in this area in the past, my approach as a reader was certainly not that of a scholar. As a layperson, I was pleased with how clear and well organized this was. It really is a very short introduction to the topic, and as such the material presented was very condensed, but it is still quite readable, provides a helpful overview of the topic, and includes a nice selection of further readings for each school of thought.

One thing that I'm still confused about is the use of the word Hinduism. According to the author that is a misleading and anachronistic term, but I'm still not sure what an appropriate substitute (or substitutes) would be. ( )