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India's progressive emergence on the world stage, in terms unimaginable just a few decades ago, obliges us to reconsider is nutured by the West for over two thousand years: a prestigious image maybe, but also grealty reductive. as the privileged home of occult knowledge, ecstasy and asceticism, or ---quite the opposite--of fabulous riches and voluptous pleasures. Rather than getting to know India, by West has preferred to dream of it: one result has been that Indian thought, albeit unanimously celebrated as the seat of the hightest wisdom, has not been granted even the smallest place on the great stage of the historyphilosophy.

The book presents the thoought of pre-modern India first and foremost by outlining the cultural parameters within which it arose and developed, and should be read: often associated with religious experience, but also essentially independent of it; sometimes differing in form and outcome, but more often very closed to Western thought, and certainly never 'alien'.

"This is a marvellous piece of compact insight in all respects: a summary as well as a fresh view of the whole area, always sound and based on first hand experience with the material. I relly mean it when I would like to call it the best modern survey of our field at an extraordinary high level of penetration."