T.S. Eliot once wrote that the great philosophers of India, “make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys”; such is the complexity of Indian philosophy. Given that complexity, I knew that compiling a list of the most important Indian philosophy books wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. From my exceptionally limited understanding of this area of philosophy; the principal schools are classified as orthodox or heterodox. Orthodox schools include Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Yoga, Samkhya, Vedanta and Mīmāṃsā. The heterodox schools include Jain, Buddhist, Ajivika, Ajñana and Cārvāka. Thanks, Wikipedia! With so many schools of Indian philosophy, it is impossible for this list of the most important Indian philosophy books to be perfectly comprehensive, so I plead for your understanding of this. It is, however, brilliantly eclectic – with a combination of primary and secondary texts. To assemble a list of the most important Indian philosophy books I reached out to some of the world’s leading experts on the subject. I’ve been overjoyed by the sheer number of experts who agreed to participate. Before we discover the most important Indian philosophy books, we must first meet that panel of experts…

Jonardon Ganeri

Jonardon Ganeri, FBA, is a philosopher, specialising in philosophy of mind and in South Asian and Buddhist philosophical traditions. He is Global Network Professor in the College of Arts and Science, New York University and a member of the Philosophy programme at NYUAD. Ganeri graduated from Churchill College, Cambridge, and completed a DPhil in philosophy at University and Wolfson Colleges, Oxford. His most recent book is Attention, Not Self.

Nicolas Bommarito

Nicolas Bommarito is currently an Assistant Professor of philosophy at University at Buffalo. Before that, he was a Bersoff Fellow in the philosophy department at NYU. Nicolas studied at Brown University, Tibet University, and the University of Michigan. His research focuses on questions in virtue ethics, moral psychology, and Buddhist philosophy. His most recent book is entitled Inner Virtue.

Maria Heim

Maria Heim is Professor of Religion at Amherst College. She holds a PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University and a BA in Philosophy and Religion from Reed College. Maria is interested in the intellectual, philosophical, religious, and literary history of ancient India and she teaches courses in these areas, with a particular emphasis on Buddhism. Her most recent two books are on Buddhaghosa, including Voice of the Buddha and Forerunner of All Things.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University, as well as a Fellow of the British Academy. His areas of expertise include; Indian (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain) and comparative phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics, theology, and philosophy of religion; religion, politics and conflict. His most recent book is entitled Human Being, Bodily Being.

William Edelglass

William Edelglass is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at Marlboro College and Director of Studies at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. His research is primarily in the areas of Buddhist philosophy and environmental philosophy. William is chair of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Environmental Philosophy and is co-editor of the journal Environmental Philosophy. He is also co-editor of Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings.

Evan Thompson

Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and an Associate Member of the Departments of Asian Studies and Psychology. He works in the fields of cognitive science and cross-cultural philosophy, with special interests in Indian and Chinese philosophy. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy.

Elisa Freschi

Elisa Freschi holds a degree in Philosophy and a PhD in Sanskrit. She is currently working at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and I have published books (including Adaptive Reuse: Aspects of Creativity in South Asian Cultural History) and articles in the Journal of Indian Philosophy, Nagoya Studies, Indo-Iranian Journal and several others, on various topics of Sanskrit and philosophy. Elisa says her long-term program is to make “Indian Philosophy” part of “Philosophy”.

Jack Beaulieu

Jack Beaulieu is a graduate student at the University of Toronto. Jack’s primary research interests lie in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and early modern Indian philosophy. He focuses on engaging in cross-cultural work in analytic epistemology and philosophy of mind which draws upon the work of early modern New Reason (Navya-Nyāya) philosophers, especially 17th century philosophers such as Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya, Mahādeva Puṇatāmakara and Jayarāma Nyāyapañcānana.

Now, let’s discover the most important Indian philosophy books…

Nicolas Bommarito:

This is a bit of a cheat since it’s in two volumes! Too many people think of Indian philosophy as happening in the distant past. Matilal, who passed away in 1991, wrote widely on logic, language, ethics, and metaethics. Being educated in both Indian and Western systems, he shows how analytic philosophy can look when inflected by classical Indian thought.

Jonardon Ganeri:

The Nyāya-sūtrais the source-text for a philosophical tradition that went from strength to strength over two millennia, and is still flourishing today. It is the definitive source for Indian indigenous reflection about the very nature of philosophical argumentation, but is much more than that, for there is also a well-developed philosophy of mind and a brilliant epistemology. This new translation makes the text, which should be read with the early commentaries, available to a wide audience. Jack Beaulieu: This is the foundational text of the Nyāya school and sets the terms of debate for all future Indian epistemology, or pramāṇavāda. Even Buddhists, the arch enemies of pre-modern Naiyāyikas, work within the framework articulated in this text. The Nyāya-sūtra is itself aphoristic, but read with the commentaries of Nyāya philosophers such as Vātsyāyana, Vācaspatimiśra, Uddyotakara, and Udayana, the reader finds clearly articulated, sophisticated views about a wide range of topics in areas such as epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Those familiar with Buddhist denials that the self exists will appreciate Naiyāyikas’ rebuttals, and the analytic philosopher will even be delighted to find that Naiyāyikas from as early as the 5th century CE mount rigorous defenses of strikingly contemporary theories in epistemology, such as epistemological disjunctivism. For an excellent translation of the Nyāya-sūtra with commentaries, check out Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips’ recent translation.

Maria Heim:

Indian philosophy begins with the Upaniṣads, a collection of twelve treatises composed over centuries starting around the 8thcentury BCE. Their principal insight is the discovery of human reflexivity, of consciousness being aware of itself as the foundation of the world. The world is what we are aware of and so the cosmos itself is, in some sense, consciousness. The Upaniṣads contain the seeds of nearly all later philosophical preoccupations in later traditions: the nature and relationship of self and cosmos, the sustained exploration of experience, and the search for highest happiness. I recommend Patrick Olivelle’s translation. Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad This is a genre composed since around 800BCE for 1500 years, but twelve of them, the last from around 200BCE are considered the most authoritative. The ideas in the earliest of them have been foundational to Indian philosophy. Entire systems have been built on commentaries of them, and it is clear that the Buddha is reacting to ideas from them that would have been available to him. Their vocabulary was adopted by other schools of thought as well. Key issues they bring up and discuss including why there is something at all, what sort of principle could explain the rest of reality, the nature, range and limits of thought, and the existence and definition of self. They also inaugurate dialogical modes of inquiry that implicitly or explicitly set in motion the rich tradition of classical Indian epistemology. A fine translation by Patrick Olivelle makes them accessible to the general reader.

Elisa Freschi:

Dignāga is the first author of the so-called Logic and Epistemological school of Buddhism. His work changed the history of South Asian philosophy both in form and content. As for the form, Lawrence McCrea showed (in a 2013 article) how Dignāga inaugurated a philosophical style which involved the direct confrontation with verbatim quotations from the texts of one’s opponents. As for content, Dignāga identified the three basic elements of a valid inference (presence of the probans in the locus, presence of the probans in what is equivalent to the locus and absence of it in what is not the locus). He also discussed how testimony is not an independent instrument of knowledge, but only a case of inference. This means that not even the words of the Buddha had an independent validity! Readers can get an idea of Dignāga’s masterpiece, the “Compendium on the Instruments of Knowledge” through Masaaki Hattori’s On perception (1968).

Jonardon Ganeri:

It is now widely accepted that the philosopher Dignāga revolutionised philosophy in India, developing new strategies of argumentation, new ways of doing and writing philosophy, and many new and fascinating ideas in the philosophy of mind and other branches of philosophy. He wrote several brilliant books, all of which are worth reading, but his magnum opus is the Compendium on Knowledge. There are now excellent translations of three of the five chapters.

Evan Thompson:

This book offers a magnificent creative synthesis of numerous Indian philosophers, systems, and schools, intertwined with state-of-the-art analytical philosophy, all in the service of an original account of the self as immersed in lived experience, supported by elaborate cognitive systems, and emotionally engaged in action. Jack Beaulieu: It was a close call between this book and Bimal Krishna Matilal’s Perception, a groundbreaking defense of direct realism that set the method for future cross-cultural philosophy (although I hope Perception still ended up on this list!). The Selftakes the methodology found in Perceptionand refines it that much further. In building a theory to answer the question “What am I?”, Ganeri reconstructs and engages with a considerable range of sophisticated views about the self and the mind from Buddhist, Nyāya and Cārvāka philosophers. The result is a paradigm-setting work of cross-cultural philosophy that illustrates just how rich Indian philosophy of mind is and just how productive analytic philosophy can be when it engages with Indian philosophy. This book presents one of the clearest cases for why philosophy must go cross-cultural.

William Edelglass:

Nāgārjuna, writing in the late second or early third century of the common era, argues that objects of experience, and also motion, time, causality, materiality, as well as the Buddha, awakening, suffering, and every other concept, are empty of the substantial existence we conventionally attribute to them. Nāgārjuna’s critical analyses, showing that anything that arises dependent on conditions is empty of any possible mentally imputed essence, including emptiness itself, spurred much philosophical commentary and debate in India. His understanding of emptiness permeated much Buddhist thought in Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea, and has fascinated many Western thinkers for the last century; perhaps more than any other text, it is described as the most important book of Buddhist philosophy. Jay L. Garfield’s translation and commentary is an excellent introduction to Nāgārjuna’s work.

Nicolas Bommarito:

This is a translation of & commentary on Nāgārjuna’s classic text and the format allows one to both read the primary text and have it presented and contextualized in a way that is sensitive to the outlook of a contemporary analytic philosopher. It gives not only the experience of a classic Buddhist text, but the experience of understanding it

Maria Heim:

This 5thcentury CE Buddhist text, “The Path to Purification” is an extraordinary phenomenological and therapeutic analysis of human experience. Its author, Buddhaghosa, was the principal interpreter of the Buddha’s scriptures in the Theravada tradition and offered a sophisticated theory of hermeneutics. The Visuddhimagga provides systematic phenomenological and contemplative methods for examining – and transforming – perception, emotion, intention, and understanding at a remarkably finely-grained level. An early pioneer in Buddhist studies, Edward Conze, claimed that should he find himself on the proverbial desert island clutching but a single volume, he would want it to be the Visuddhimagga.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad:

The Khandana Khanda Khadya (khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya) – The Sugar Crystals of Confutation– by Shri Harsha (12thc) changed the course of technical philosophy in pre-modern India. Shri Harsha belonged to the school of Advaita Vedanta, which holds that reality is one thing, consciousness. Different Advaitins gave different arguments for the consistency between this tenet and the plurality evident in experience. Shri Harsha’s defence consists in refuting any epistemology built on a commitment to a pluralistic realism about objects and subjects, while also rejecting any ontology of purely mental objects. His arguments provoked realist schools into developing more sophisticated logical and epistemological tools. Today, they could usefully engage with debates about idealism, panpsychism, realism and scepticism in Western philosophy. Ganganatha Jha’s translation needs updating, but Ethan Mill’s recent work on Indian scepticism points to Shri Harsha’s innovative epistemology and radical metaphysics, and the different ways in which recent scholarship has begun to read him.

Elisa Freschi:

Kumārila Bhaṭṭa reacted to Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya (mentioned as my No. 1) and his contribution completely changed the picture of South Asian philosophy. For instance, he showed how the validity of a cognition needs to be intrinsic because if one were to need external validation for each cognition, that would lead to an infinite regress (since even the validating cognition would need further validation and so on). More in general, he systematised the philosophy of his school in a powerful way, bridging from hermeneutics to ontology via the main focus on epistemology, so that ontology does not preclude speaking about deontic and linguistic realities. Kumārila’s main text, the Ślokavārttika (Versed Explanation), has been partly translated into English and studied by John Taber (the book on perception, 2005) and by Kei Kataoka (the book on the impossibility of omniscience and the morality of violence, 2011).

Evan Thompson:

A detailed study of the Advaita Vedānta philosophy through its key notion of “witness consciousness” (sāksin). It examines the controversies between the Nyāya and Vedānta systems and compares the Vedānta conception of consciousness to that found in European Phenomenology. An extremely rich study, important for anyone interested in the philosophy of consciousness.

Śāntideva: Introduction to the Way of Life of a Bodhisattva translated by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton William Edelglass: Introduction to the Way of Life of a Bodhisattva, attributed to a late eighth century north Indian Buddhist monk, Śāntideva, is a meditation manual that explores moral reflection, mindfulness and awareness, ritual, metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology. It is a poetic guide to the cultivating the virtues of a bodhisattva: generosity, moral discipline, patience, vigor, mindfulness and awareness, and wisdom. Śāntideva’s text is the most oft-cited source for Indian Buddhist ethics. There are a handful of excellent translations. Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton’s translation, published by Oxford, has the most helpful notes and commentary for a reader new to Śāntideva.

Nicolas Bommarito:

Writing a good introduction means knowing not only the texts but also being able to do philosophy well. Ganeri is one of the few people great at both. This book covers a lot of ground with incredible clarity – definitely one of the best introductions to Indian philosophy.

Jack Beaulieu:

It was a toss up between this text and Nāgārjuna’sMūlamadhyamakakārika, the foundational text of Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy. But the Vigrahavyāvartanītouches on topics in epistemology and philosophy of language Nāgārjuna does not typically consider. In this short text, Nāgārjuna answers objections to the views he articulates in the Mūlamadhyamakakārika. It is a delightful read: rather than provide positive arguments in favour of his theories, he proceeds with his prasaṅgika method, whereby he (often irreverently) dismisses his opponents’ objections by showing that their views lead to unacceptable results. In the course of doing so, he even attacks Nyāya epistemology as incoherent, setting the stage for future skeptical philosophers who would eventually cause a crisis in Indian epistemology. For an excellent translation of the Vigrahavyāvartanī, check out Jan Westerhoff’s translation and commentary.

The Bhagavadgītā Elisa Freschi: The Bhagavadgītā is possibly the most influential book for South Asian religious life. It is also extremely influential for ethical theories and because, since the rise of the Vedānta schools in the second millennium CE, all Vedānta authors felt the need to offer an original commentary on the Bhagavadgītā, which should show how the text actually supported their point of view. Śaṅkara (8th c. CE?) reads it as upholding an absolute monism, with the personal God Kṛṣṇa being only a preliminary step towards one’s recognition of one’s identity with the impersonal absolute. By contrast, Rāmānuja (12th c.) read the same text as proclaiming that the absolute reality is a personal God and that He exists within the whole universe while not being exhausted by it, in a way which harmonises Spinoza’s pantheism with personal devotion. van Buitenen offers an entrance to Rāmānuja’s commentary and Ram-Prasad compares the two arch-enemies, Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, while dealing with the Gītā.

The Praśastapādabhāṣya with the Nyāyakandalī of Śrīdhara translated by Ganganath Jha Jonardon Ganeri: The philosophers of Vaiśeṣika are to India what Aristotle is to Greek philosophy. There is a fascinating metaphysics, embodying a rich and complex understanding of the fundamental structure of the world. Praśastapāda put it together in his treatise, and Śrīdhara in the 10th century wrote a commentary which is a goldmine of rich and sophisticated philosophical argumentation.

The Mahābhārata Maria Heim: Since you are limiting us to just three top picks, I have to mention the great epic because of its exhaustive examination of human life – as the text itself claims, what is found here can be found elsewhere, but what is not found here can be found nowhere. It is within its chapters that one encounters the celebrated Bhagavad Gītā, a conversation with God on the nature and purpose of moral action and the enduring nature of the self. Woven throughout the many other pages of the epic are studies of character and probing philosophical investigations by both men and women into the ethics of war, the demands and conflicts of duty, and the ties of family and society. The Clay Sanskrit Library has most of the volumes available in Sanskrit and English.

The Gita According to Gandhi Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad: The Gita According to Gandhi (also called Anāsakti Yoga, or the ‘Discipline of Non-Attachment’) is Mahatma Gandhi’s distinctively modern reading of the Bhagavad Gita(The Song of the Lord), a relatively short composition set within the vast epic, the Mahabharata, and consisting of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna, who explains the reasons why Arjuna must overcome his despondency and fight. Modern philosophers see the Gītāin terms of moral dilemmas and ethical arguments, while lay readers use it as a guide to conduct. The pre-modern commentators read it for its metaphysics and theology (for Krishna reveals himself as God); it was Gandhi, above all, who re-oriented it as a poem for human perfection, insightful yet open to radical re-interpretation, and applicable to concrete personal, social and political situations. His commentary thus became a document for one of the most significant political achievements of the 20thc.

William Edelglass:

Initially, much Indian philosophy can feel obscure. Because this list is intended to introduce readers to Indian intellectual traditions, I wanted to include one recent work that presents and interprets a millennium of Indian Buddhist thought. Jan Westerhoff’s recent text, The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, does an excellent job introducing and situating the major figures, questions, debates, and developments of Buddhist philosophy in India. It serves as an accessible entry into the field from which readers can choose which primary or secondary texts they may want to explore.

Evan Thompson:

This landmark book defends perceptual realism (perception grasps how the world really is apart from the mind) by elaborating the Nyāya tradition in relation to Anglophone philosophy of perception. Matilal brought Indian philosophy into engagement with analytical philosophy, thereby making the Indian tradition an interlocutor in philosophy today. Matilal was a brilliant thinker with both traditional Indian and Western academic training. Indian philosophy would not be what it is today were it not for him.

What do you think are the most important Indian philosophy books? Let us know which books you’d nominate as the most important Indian philosophy books, on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoyed this, don’t miss our recent reading list, The Most Important Chinese Philosophy Books.