Abstract
Philosophy, a Greek invention, is the preserve of the West – this once-prevailing certainty has long since been shaken, and India is now recognised as having its own philosophical tradition. However, efforts are still being made, in both the West and India, to reduce this profoundly conceptual and polemical heritage to practical wisdom, mysticism or a set of dogmas. To distinguish between Indian philosophy and religion without glossing over the close intertwining of these two fields, and to discern, amidst the clamour of the scriptures and even in the margins of Sanskrit manuscripts, the unique voice of the subcontinent’s philosophers: these are some of the major challenges facing philologists and historians of Indian systems of thought today.
