understanding self and consciousness – strategies that translate clearly into the idioms of
contemporary Western philosophy.
In this volume, authors explore various Hindu positions, going back to the early Upaniṣad texts,
which influenced and were challenged by the Buddha. Among the many Hindu schools, those
explored here are Sāṃkhya, Nyāya, Kashmiri Shaiva, Mīmāṃsā and Advaita; but of course, these
developed and changed, and some also separated into sub-schools over time. Sāṃkhya is committed
to the principle of conscious being (puruṣa), apparently both as a cosmological feature of reality and
as the conscious individual. Nyāya and its sister-school, Vaiśeṣika, include the self (ātman) as a
non-physical entity in their ontological lists, an entity which possesses the quality of consciousness
and of which there is an infinite plurality of individuals. Mīmāṃsā too is committed to selves as
individual non-physical entities like in Nyāya, but individuates them with a greater degree of
psychological character (and in this, comes closest to the medieval Christian notion of a soul).
Advaita analyses consciousness at different metaphysical levels, and takes ātman to be the generic
name for the reflexive presence of any locus of consciousness. Kashmiri Shaivism offers a dynamic
theory of self-consciousness within an idealist theology. These descriptions raise more questions than
they answer; but they cannot be given in any greater detail because to do so would be to plunge into
particular interpretations, with all their ramifying consequences. Our aim in this collection is only to
give the reader an initial sense of the complexity and sophistication of the Hindu traditions.
The chapters in this volume only occasionally touch on metaphysical arguments for self (however it
is conceived). A great many analyse phenomenological issues, especially pertaining to the ways in
which Hindu schools defend their theory of self. Broadly speaking, whatever the precise ontology to
which they are officially committed, many of the Hindu philosophers focus on the role they think a
self plays in explaining the nature of our experience, especially of ourselves. The unity of
consciousness – both synchronic and diachronic – was often the focus of Hindu phenomenological
arguments for self, even if the thinkers realised that this was not in itself sufficient for the
establishment of further, more ontological claims. (In the case of Advaita, which rejected the self as
an individuated entity, whether substantialist or not, this was not a concern.) In ordinary experience, it
seems that the unity of consciousness is undeniable. It is expressed in a variety of ways: the
idiosyncratic use of the first-person ‘I’, memory, phenomenal consubjectivity, emotion, desire and
agency. Arguably, ātmavādins explain these phenomenological features better than Buddhists who
deny self. At the same time, such issues as narrative and the construction of personhood, the
problematic sense of the body as itself the whole self, meditative deconstruction of ego, and so on,
which are well known in the contemporary understanding of Buddhism, are equally dealt with in
detail by several Hindu schools. The tension between psychological or narrative construction of the
person and the subjective unity of consciousness (for example, read as a tension between personhood
and selfhood), the slipperiness of the referential ‘I’, the tricky relationship between memory and
personal identity, the large challenge of naturalising phenomenological accounts of selfhood – all
these are as amenable to Hindu responses as they are to Buddhist ones. Most, although not all, of
these themes are dealt with in these chapters. While the AHRC project itself was originally concerned with Hindu responses to Buddhist
critiques because of our sense that far more attention had been paid in the comparative literature to
Buddhism, we in no way intend to enter into a sterile contest in which each imagined side attacks a
straw man on the other. For this reason, the chapters here look even-handedly at the relationship