In This Book The Author Tries To Trace Out The Ethical Thought Of The Ancient Hindus From The Early Rig-Vedic Period Down To The Age Of The Mahabharata And The Dharma-Shastras. The Author Had Tried To Trace Out The Ethical Thought Of The Ancient Hindus From The Early Rig-Vedic Period Down To The Age Of The Mahabharata And The Dharma-Sastras. The Period Covered Here Witness Indeed The Rise And Fall Of Hindu Culture, Its Very Interesting Evolution In Successive Periods Under Diverse Historical Conditions. Yet While There Is A Rich Diversity Of Moral Ideals, Presented To Us During These Periods Of Hindu History, A Clear Thread Of Unity Runs Through All These. At No Period Can We Say That There Is A Sudden Break Or Charm In The Continuity Of Our Civilization; And An Un-Mistakable Attempt Was Made At Every New Turn To Trace The Changes Of Thought Or Practice To Some Old Authority. The Hindu Ethical Theory Has Therefore An Organic Coherence About It; Its Childhood, Its Period Of Adolescence, And Its Old Age Were All Definitely Connected With Each Other.

Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy, by Shyam Ranganathan, presents a compelling, systematic explication of the moral philosophical content of history of Indian philosophy in contrast to the received wisdom in Indology and comparative philosophy that Indian philosophers were scarcely interested in ethics. Unlike most works on the topic, this book makes a case for the positive place of ethics in the history of Indian philosophy by drawing upon recent work in metaethics and metamorality, and by providing a through analysis of the meaning of moral concepts and PHILOSOPHY itself- in addition to explicating the texts of Indian authors. In Ranganathan`s account, Indian philosophy shines with distinct options in ethics that find their likeness in the writings of the Ancient in the West, such as Plato and the Neo-Platonists, and not in the anthropocentric or positivistic options that have dominated the recent Western tradition.