Its adherents had therefore to use all their ingenuity and
subtlety in support of their own positions, and to discover the
defects of the rival schools that attacked them. A system as it was
originally formulated in the sutras had probably but few problems
to solve, but as it fought its way in the teeth of opposition of
other schools, it had to offer consistent opinions on other problems
in which the original views were more or less involved but to
which no attention had been given before.
The contributions of the successive commentators served to
make each system more and more complete in all its parts, and
stronger and stronger to enable it to hold its own successfully
against the opposition and attacks of the rival schools. A system
in the sutras is weak and shapeless as a newborn babe, but if
we take it along with its developments down to the beginning
of the seventeenth century it appears as a fully developed man
strong and harmonious in all its limbs. It is therefore not possible
to write any history of successive philosophies of India, but it is
necessity that each system should be studied and interpreted in
all the growth it has acquired through the successive ages of
history from its conflicts with the rival systems as one whole [Footnote
ref 1].
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