The Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha

Competing explanations of knowledge and reality fill Madhava's survey of sixteen philosophical systems. The translators' preface describes an author who presents each school's principal teachings and adopts its followers' arguments, even when their views differ from his own. The arrangement reflects a Vedanta perspective, giving the survey a definite standpoint. This English version by E. B. Cowell and A. E. Gough also explains the scholarly help and interpretive difficulties involved in translating the work.

A clay jar changing colour in a fire supplies one concrete example of the questions under discussion. Rival accounts consider whether heat creates a new jar from altered atoms or changes the colour of the existing object. The accompanying notes explore perception, darkness and different kinds of absence. Readers studying Hindu philosophy can use these detailed comparisons to see how disagreements about familiar objects connect with broader claims about truth and knowledge.