Chapter 3 introduced ten systems in a few hundred words each — enough to tell them apart. These pages give each one the space it needs: its texts and its lineage, the problem it is actually solving, its technical machinery, the objections it faced and how it answered them, and where it left its mark.
Each page stands on its own. Read them in any order, or use the comparison tables below to find the one you want.
The ten split six-and-four along a line that has nothing to do with belief in God, and nothing to do with being religious.
The conventional count is nine: six Vedic plus three non-Vedic (Cārvāka, Jaina, Bauddha). Ten appears when Ājīvika is added, and it usually is not — because by the time the classical doxographies were compiled the Ājīvikas had all but died out, and no Ājīvika text survives to argue its own case. This series covers it anyway. A school that both the Buddha and Mahāvīra thought worth attacking by name is not a footnote, and its absence from the standard list tells you something about how these lists were made.
Separately, ṣaḍ-darśana — “the six” — refers only to the Vedic six, and is the phrase you will meet most often.
The theory of knowledge and of argument. Four means of knowing, sixteen categories, a five-membered inference, a taxonomy of fallacies — and the technical language that every other school ended up having to argue in.
An inventory of everything there is, in six categories and nine substances, built on partless atoms. The most sustained attempt at a physics and an ontology in Indian thought.
Two irreducibles — inert nature and inactive consciousness — and twenty-five categories evolving from the first. The oldest systematic Indian philosophy, and non-theistic on principle.
Sāṅkhya's metaphysics plus a method: a graded discipline for stilling mental activity, with a precise map of what happens at each stage — and a God who is not a creator.
How to read a text that has no author. A theory of injunction, six means of knowledge, intrinsic validity, and a hermeneutic apparatus so exact that Indian courts still cite it.
One root text, eight incompatible readings of it. What brahman is, what you are, and whether the difference between those two questions is real. The largest philosophical tradition in India.
Perception alone is a means of knowledge; matter alone exists; consciousness is what matter does when arranged a certain way. No text of theirs survives — we know them almost entirely through the arguments their opponents had to build to answer them.
Everything is fixed by niyati, destiny. Effort changes nothing, and the wise and the foolish alike will take exactly as long to be free. A major movement in its day, with royal patronage and its own cave temples — and now entirely lost.
Reality has infinitely many aspects, so every claim must be qualified by the standpoint it is made from. Plus karma as literal subtle matter, a physics of bondage, and the most demanding ethics of non-violence anywhere.
No self, no substance, nothing that lasts into a second moment — and four internal schools that disagree about what is left. Also the sharpest logicians on the subcontinent, whose work forced Nyāya to rebuild itself.
| School | Founder or first systematiser | Root text | Date of the root text | The text that actually made it a system |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nyāya | Gautama, also called Akṣapāda | Nyāya-sūtra | c. 2nd c. CE, on older material | Vātsyāyana's Bhāṣya; then Gaṅgeśa's Tattva-cintāmaṇi, 14th c. |
| Vaiśeṣika | Kaṇāda, also called Ulūka | Vaiśeṣika-sūtra | c. 2nd c. BCE – 2nd c. CE | Praśastapāda's Padārtha-dharma-saṅgraha, c. 6th c. CE |
| Sāṅkhya | Kapila (legendary) | Sāṅkhya-kārikā | c. 350–450 CE | The Kārikā itself — the earlier sūtra text is lost |
| Yoga | Patañjali | Yoga-sūtra | c. 350–450 CE | Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, which is inseparable from it |
| Mīmāṃsā | Jaimini | Mīmāṃsā-sūtra | c. 200 BCE – 200 CE | Śabara's Bhāṣya; then Kumārila and Prabhākara, 7th c. |
| Vedānta | Bādarāyaṇa | Brahma-sūtra | c. 200 BCE – 450 CE | Eight of them — see tier 3 |
| Cārvāka | Bṛhaspati (legendary) | Bṛhaspati-sūtra | lost; fragments only | None survives. Jayarāśi's Tattvopaplavasiṃha is the nearest thing |
| Ājīvika | Makkhali Gosāla | — | — | Nothing survives. Reconstructed from Buddhist and Jaina polemic |
| Jaina | Mahāvīra, 24th of the Tīrthaṅkaras | The Āgamas | c. 5th c. BCE onward | Umāsvāti's Tattvārtha-sūtra, c. 2nd–5th c. CE |
| Bauddha | The Buddha | The Tripiṭaka | c. 5th c. BCE onward | Depends on the school: Abhidharmakośa, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Triṃśikā, Pramāṇavārttika |
| School | Means of knowledge | What is ultimately real | Is there a self? | Is there a God? | Goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nyāya | 4 — perception, inference, comparison, testimony | Many kinds of thing, all of them mind-independent | Yes — many, each a substance | Yes, and argued for | apavarga |
| Vaiśeṣika | 2 — perception, inference | Atoms, and the six categories | Yes — many, all-pervading | Yes (in the developed system) | apavarga |
| Sāṅkhya | 3 — perception, inference, testimony | Two: prakṛti and puruṣa | Yes — many, and inactive | No, and argued against | kaivalya |
| Yoga | 3 — as Sāṅkhya | Two, as Sāṅkhya | Yes — many | Yes, but not a creator | kaivalya |
| Mīmāṃsā | 6 (Bhāṭṭa) or 5 (Prābhākara) | The world, souls, and dharma | Yes — many, and eternal | No, and argued against | Heaven; later, mokṣa |
| Vedānta | 3 to 6, and testimony ranks highest | Brahman — variously alone, or with the world and souls | Yes, though what it is is the whole dispute | Yes — and identical with brahman | mokṣa |
| Cārvāka | 1 — perception only | Four elements | Only the living body | No | None. Live well |
| Ājīvika | — | Atoms, souls, and niyati | Yes | No | Release, at a fixed date |
| Jaina | Direct and indirect, subdivided into five kinds of knowledge | Six substances, souls among them | Yes — infinitely many | No creator; liberated souls are divine | mokṣa / kevala |
| Bauddha | 2 — perception, inference | Disputed between the four schools | No | No creator | nirvāṇa |
| Position | Claim | Held by | Consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Satkāryavāda | The effect pre-exists in its cause; production is manifestation | Sāṅkhya, Yoga, and most of Vedānta | Nothing genuinely new ever appears; the world was already in prakṛti or in brahman |
| Asatkāryavāda | The effect does not pre-exist; production is genuine novelty | Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā | A whole is a new thing over and above its parts — which then needs samavāya to hold it there |
| Vivartavāda | The effect is only an apparent modification of the cause | Advaita Vedānta | The world does not really come out of brahman; it only seems to |
| Pratītyasamutpāda | Nothing has an intrinsic nature; everything arises in dependence on conditions | Bauddha | The question “does the effect pre-exist?” presupposes something with a nature, and so does not arise |
| Anekānta | From one standpoint the effect pre-exists, from another it does not; both hold | Jaina | The dispute is a symptom of one-sidedness rather than a real disagreement |
Start with Nyāya for the standard account, then Bauddha for Dignāga's much leaner rival account, then Cārvāka for the case that inference proves nothing at all.
Vaiśeṣika for a full inventory, Sāṅkhya for the leanest possible one, Jaina for the strangest and most carefully argued one.
Vedānta and its eight answers, against Bauddha's denial that the question has a referent. This is the central quarrel of Indian philosophy.
Mīmāṃsā for duty derived from an authorless text, Yoga for a training programme, Jaina for the strictest ethics, Cārvāka for the case against all three.
Mīmāṃsā, without question — it is the discipline that invented the problem and most of the solutions, and its rules are still cited in Indian courts.