We however propose to discuss in this article the questions in connection with the Bhagavad Gita which Mr. Charles Johnstone has raised in his valuable paper we extracted in our last, from the Madras Mail, "The Union of Indian Philosophies." He puts himself the question to which of the three Schools of Indian Philosophy - Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta, this book belongs, and says that his off-hand answer would be that it is undoubtedly one of the text books of the Vedanta , school, one of the weightiest of them; and yet, for all this, he thinks that there are other aspects of the Gita, and that there is very much in them which belongs to the Sankhya, and even more that is the property of the Yoga school; and he explains below how the Gita beginning with a ballad on Krishna and Arjuna, gradually expanded itself into its present form, incorporating into itself all the teachings of the Upanishats and the teachings of the Sankhya and Yoga schools, together with puranic episodes of the transfiguration, which in the opinion of this writer 'reproduces all that grim and gruesome ugliness of many armed Gods, with terrible teeth, which the Puranas have preserved most probably from the wild faiths of the dark aboriginals and demon worshippers of Southern India. We will deal with this last statement, which is a pure fiction later on; and the point we wish to draw particular attention to is this, that it has struck the writer as new and he gives it as new to the ignorant world that the Gita does not represent only Vedanta. To the Indian who knows anything of Indian Philosophy, this could not be news at all, as all the modern Indian schools, including Dvaita and Visishitad-vaita and Suddhadvaita, claim the book as an authority and have commented on it too.

But the European who has learnt to read the books of one school of philosophy only (all the books translated till now in English are books and commentaries of the Vedanta School), knows nothing of any other school of philosophy existing in India and what authorities they had, and has gradually come to deny the existence of even such; and young Indians educated in English deriving all their pabulum from such source have also been ignorant of any other phases of Indian Philosophy. We well remember an Indian graduate in arts and law ask us, if there was any such thing as a special school of Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy. Of course, he wears Vibhuti and Rudraksha and worships Siva and he knows that the Great Guru Sankara was an avatar of Siva Himself and all the English books that treated of Hinduism only talked of the Vedanta Philosophy and his surprise and ignorance as such were quite natural. But as a result of the great upheaval that is going on, and the greater attention that is paid to the study of our philosophic and religious literature, even our own people have been slowly waking up to the truth of things.

That stoutest adherent of Vedanta, the editor of the Light of the East was the first to yield and to point out in his articles on the 'Ancient Sankhya System' that the Gita expounded also the Sankhya system, though he tries to make an olla podrida of it by saying that Vedanta is Sankhya and Sankhya is Vedanta - that the Gita does not postulate many Purushas (souls). A Madras Professor declared in the Pachai-yappa's Hall that in some of the special doctrines of the Vedanta, such as the doctrine of Maya, and the identity of the human Soul and the Supreme Soul etc., the Gita is silent. And our brother of the Brahmavadin also affirms in his editorial on 'Maya,' dated 15th August 1896, after stating that the word Maya scarcely occurs in the principal upanishats, and where it does occur, it seems to be used mostly in the old Vedic sense of power or creative power, declares, that "on the whole the attitude of the Bhagavad Gita towards Maya is similar to that of the Upanishats; and it is rather diffi-cult to evolve out of it the later Vedantic sense," of illusion) or delusion.

And when it is admitted also that the Buddhists were the first to develope the Maya theory of illusory nothings, who on that account were called Mayavadins by the other Hindus, and that Sankara only refined this idea, meaning an illusory nothing, into meaning a phenomenal something, though some of his later followers even went so far as to forget Sankara's teaching as to revert to the Buddhist idea of a blank negation and hence were called cryto-Bhuddhists (Prachchanna Bhaudhas), (vide p. 297-Vol. Brahmavadin and Max Muller's lectures on Vedanta), and our brother's opinion being merely that in the Vedas and Upanishats and Gita, we have merely the germs of the later system of thought out of which was elaborated the Vedantic theory of Maya, - a process of double distillation - the point is even worthwhile considering whether Gita has got anything to do with the Vedanta at all. And it can also be positively proved that it has no such connexion. To day we venture to go no further than what is admitted by the other side that Gita contains the exposition of other schools of philosophy which according to Mr. Charles Johnstone, postulates the reality and eternality of matter (Prakriti) and spirit (Purusha) and that the Purushas are without number and that there is one Supreme Spirit different from the souls.

In understanding the word Sankhya as used in the Gita our writer falls into a mistake like many others that it means the Philosophy as expounded in the Sankhya School of Philosophy which is attributed to the Sage Kabila. We have shown in our article on 'Another Side' (vide pp. 21 to 34) that it meant no such thing, that it meant merely, a theory or a system or a philosophy or knowledge and that the Gita instead of having anything to do with Kabila's Sankhya distinctly repudiates it and goes on to postutate its own differences, and this we showed by quoting several passages and that the proper name of the system evolved in the Gita is 'Seshvara Sankhya,' as distinguished from Nireshvara Sankhya of Kabila. To say that this philosophy or the other grew out of this or that is pure fallacy, unless we have real historical evidences about it. We might propound a riddle whether Theism or Atheism was first and which of these rose out of the other. You might argue that Theism was next and grew out of Atheism, as materialists (Lokayitas) only admit the eternal-ity of matter and would not admit of the existence of any other padartha.