history has in Western countries often brought forth the development of more coherent types of philosophic thought, but in India, though the types remained the same, their development through history made them more and more coherent and determinate.  Most of the parts were probably existent in the earlier stages, but they were in an undifferentiated state; through the criticism and conflict of the different schools existing side by side the parts of each of the systems of thought became more and more differentiated, determinate, and coherent.  In some cases this development has been almost imperceptible, and in many cases the earlier forms have been lost, or so inadequately expressed that nothing definite could be made out of them.  Wherever such a differentiation could be made in the interests of philosophy, I have tried to do it.  But I have never considered it desirable that the philosophical interest should be subordinated to the chronological.  It is no

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doubt true that more definite chronological information would be a very desirable thing, yet I am of opinion that the little chronological data we have give us a fair amount of help in forming a general notion about the growth and development of the different systems by mutual association and conflict.  If the condition of the development of philosophy in India had been the same as in Europe, definite chronological knowledge would be considered much more indispensable.  For, when one system supersedes another, it is indispensably necessary that we should know which preceded and which succeeded.  But when the systems are developing side by side, and when we are getting them in their richer and better forms, the interest with regard to the conditions, nature and environment of their early origin has rather a historical than a philosophical interest.  I have tried as best I could to form certain general notions as regards the earlier stages of some of the systems, but though the various features of these systems at these stages in detail may not be ascertainable, yet this, I think, could never be considered as invalidating the whole programme.  Moreover, even if we knew definitely the correct dates of the thinkers of the same system we could not treat them separately, as is done in European philosophy, without unnecessarily repeating the same thing twenty times over; for they all dealt with the same system, and tried to bring out the same type of thought in more and more determinate forms.

The earliest literature of India is the Vedas.  These consist mostly of hymns in praise of nature gods, such as fire, wind, etc.  Excepting in some of the hymns of the later parts of the work (probably about 1000 B.C.), there is not much philosophy in them in our sense of the term.  It is here that we first find intensely interesting philosophical questions of a more or less cosmological character expressed in terms of poetry and imagination.  In the later Vedic works called the Brahmaf@nas and