Most Famous Indian Philosophers

Philosophers in this tradition

• Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902 · Indian

  Narendranath Datta, known as Swami Vivekananda, was an Indian Hindu monk and the principal disciple of the mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. His address at the Parliament of the W...

• Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948 · Indian

  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, political leader, and philosopher who developed the doctrine and practice of satyagraha, nonviolent ci...

• Patanjali c. 200 AD – c. 250 AD · Indian

  Patanjali was the Indian sage to whom the Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of the Yoga school of Indian philosophy, are attributed. The Sutras present a concise and systematic...

• Shantideva c. 685 AD – c. 763 AD · Indian

  Shantideva was an Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher of the Madhyamaka school. According to tradition, he was a prince who renounced the throne to enter the great monastic uni...

• Adi Shankara 788 – 820 · Indian

  Adi Shankara was an Indian philosopher and theologian who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, the school of non-dualism. Working in a brief but extraordinarily product...

• Bhartrihari c. 450 AD – c. 510 AD · Indian

  Bhartrihari was an Indian Sanskrit grammarian and philosopher of language whose Vakyapadiya is one of the founding texts of Indian linguistic philosophy. Building on the grammat...

• Buddha c. 563 BC – c. 483 BC · Indian

  Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha or Awakened One, was the founder of Buddhism, traditionally said to have lived in northern India in the fifth century BC. Born into the r...

• Jiddu Krishnamurti 1895 – 1986 · Indian

  Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian-born philosopher and spiritual teacher whose lectures, dialogues, and writings challenged organized religion and the very category of the guru. ...

• Nagarjuna c. 150 – c. 250 · Indian

  Nagarjuna was a 2nd or 3rd-century AD Indian Mahayana Buddhist philosopher and the founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school, regarded as one of the most important philosop...

• Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941 · Indian

  Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet, philosopher, musician, and educator and the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born into a prominent Bengali fa...

• Ramana Maharshi 1879 – 1950 · Indian

  Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage and one of the most influential teachers of Advaita Vedanta in the twentieth century. At sixteen he experienced a spontaneous identifica...

• B. R. Ambedkar 1891 – 1956 · Indian

  Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer, and the principal architect of the Indian Constitution. Born into the Mahar caste, he was the first Dali...

• Jaimini c. 300 BC – c. 200 BC · Indian

  Jaimini was an Indian philosopher and the founder of the Mimamsa school of orthodox Hindu philosophy, traditionally dated to the third century BC, whose Mimamsa Sutras establish...

• Naropa 1016 – 1100 · Indian

  Naropa was an eleventh-century Indian Buddhist tantric master, abbot of the great monastic university of Nalanda before he renounced his post in search of his teacher Tilopa, an...

• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 1888 – 1975 · Indian

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian philosopher and statesman, the second President of independent India and one of the foremost twentieth-century interpreters of Indian phil...

• Sri Aurobindo 1872 – 1950 · Indian

  Sri Aurobindo was an Indian philosopher, yogi, poet, and anti-colonial revolutionary. After studies at Cambridge and early activism in the Bengali nationalist movement, he withd...

• Udayana c. 975 – c. 1050 · Indian

  Udayana was an Indian philosopher of the eleventh century, the most important figure of the late Nyaya tradition before the rise of Navya-Nyaya, who systematized the union of Ny...

• Ananda Coomaraswamy 1877 – 1947 · Sri Lankan-American

  Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was a Sri Lankan-born philosopher of art and metaphysics and one of the principal exponents of the Traditionalist school of thought in the twentieth ...

• Madhva 1199 – 1278 · Indian

  Madhva was an Indian theologian and the founder of Dvaita, or dualistic Vedanta. Against Adi Shankara's non-dualism and Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism, he taught that there is...

• Vatsyayana c. 350 – c. 425 · Indian

  Vatsyayana, also called Pakshilasvamin, was a fourth- or fifth-century Indian Nyaya philosopher, the author of the Nyaya-bhasya, the foundational commentary on the Nyaya Sutras ...

• Lalla c. 1320 – c. 1392 · Kashmiri

  Lalla, also known as Lal Ded, was a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic poet and philosopher in the Trika Shaivite tradition, and the founder of the philosophical and devotional ...

• Saraha c. 750 – c. 820 · Indian

  Saraha was an early-medieval Indian Buddhist tantric master and poet, traditionally regarded as the founder of the Mahamudra tradition of song and the first of the eighty-four M...

• Sri Ramakrishna 1836 – 1886 · Indian

  Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was a Bengali Hindu mystic and religious teacher and one of the most influential religious figures of nineteenth-century India. As the principal priest a...

• Aryadeva c. 175 – c. 275 · Indian

  Aryadeva was an Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka philosopher and the principal pupil of Nagarjuna, traditionally identified as a south Indian or Sinhalese monk who succeeded his teach...

• Daya Krishna 1924 – 2007 · Indian

  Daya Krishna was an Indian philosopher and the most influential figure in the post-independence Indian philosophical scene, professor of philosophy at the University of Rajastha...

• Kanada c. 200 BC – c. 100 BC · Indian

  Kanada was an Indian philosopher and the founder of the Vaiseshika school of orthodox Hindu philosophy, traditionally dated to the second or third century BC, whose Vaiseshika S...

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy 1772 – 1833 · Indian

  Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a Bengali religious and social reformer and one of the founders of the Indian Renaissance of the nineteenth century. Educated in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic...

• Ramanuja 1017 – 1137 · Indian

  Ramanuja was an Indian theologian and the most important exponent of Vishishtadvaita, or qualified non-dualism, in the Vedanta tradition. Against Adi Shankara's Advaita, he taug...

• Buddhaghosa c. 400 – c. 470 · Indian

  Buddhaghosa was a fifth-century Indian Theravada Buddhist philosopher who, having begun his life as a brahmin scholar of Vedic literature and converted to Buddhism, traveled to ...

• Asanga c. 310 AD – c. 390 AD · Indian

  Asanga was an Indian Buddhist philosopher and the co-founder, with his half-brother Vasubandhu, of the Yogacara or Consciousness-Only school of Mahayana philosophy. According to...

• Dignaga c. 480 AD – c. 540 AD · Indian

  Dignaga was an Indian Buddhist logician and epistemologist and the founder of the Buddhist tradition of logic and philosophy of knowledge. His Pramana-samuccaya, the Compendium ...

• Raimon Panikkar 1918 – 2010 · Spanish-Indian

  Raimon Panikkar was a Spanish-Indian philosopher and Catholic priest, born in Barcelona to a Catalan mother and an Indian father, and one of the most influential figures in twen...

• Tilopa 988 – 1069 · Indian

  Tilopa was an eleventh-century Bengali Buddhist tantric master, traditionally regarded as the founder of the Indian lineage of the Mahamudra teachings that, through his pupil Na...

• Bimal Krishna Matilal 1935 – 1991 · Indian

  Bimal Krishna Matilal was an Indian philosopher and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford, widely credited with putting classical Indian...

• Abhinavagupta c. 950 – c. 1016 · Indian

  Abhinavagupta was a Kashmiri philosopher, mystic, and aesthetician and the principal systematizer of the non-dual Trika tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. His encyclopedic Tantralok...

• Akka Mahadevi c. 1130 – c. 1160 · Indian

  Akka Mahadevi was a twelfth-century Kannada Bhakti poet and philosopher in the Lingayat tradition of southern India, one of the most striking female voices in classical South As...

• Akshapada Gautama c. 200 BC – c. 150 BC · Indian

  Akshapada Gautama is the traditional name of the author of the Nyaya Sutras, the foundational text of the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy and one of the six orthodox darshanas...

• Asvaghosa c. 80 – c. 150 · Indian

  Asvaghosa was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, poet, and dramatist of the first and second century AD, traditionally counted as one of the most important Sanskrit poets and as a ...

• Bhaviveka c. 500 – c. 578 · Indian

  Bhaviveka, also known as Bhavaviveka, was an Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka philosopher of the sixth century, traditionally counted, with Buddhapalita and Candrakirti, among the fou...

• Buddhapalita c. 470 – c. 540 · Indian

  Buddhapalita was an Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka philosopher of the late fifth and early sixth century, traditionally counted, with Bhaviveka and Candrakirti, as one of the three ...

• Candrakirti c. 600 – c. 650 · Indian

  Candrakirti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher of the seventh century and the most important Madhyamaka commentator of the consequentialist, or Prasangika, school. His Madhyamak...

• Dharmakirti c. 600 AD – c. 660 AD · Indian

  Dharmakirti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher who completed and transformed the logical and epistemological tradition founded by Dignaga. His seven treatises, including the Pra...

• Gaudapada c. 500 – c. 600 · Indian

  Gaudapada was an Indian philosopher of the early medieval period, traditionally regarded as the paramaguru, the teacher's teacher, of Adi Shankara, and the first systematic expo...

• J. L. Mehta 1912 – 1988 · Indian

  J. L. Mehta was an Indian philosopher and one of the most important interpreters of Heidegger and the Vedantic tradition in twentieth-century Indian thought. Trained in Banaras ...

• Jonardon Ganeri b. 1963 · British-Indian

  Jonardon Ganeri is a British-Indian philosopher, professor at the University of Toronto, and one of the leading interpreters of classical Indian philosophy in the English-speaki...

• Kumarila Bhatta c. 700 – c. 750 · Indian

  Kumarila Bhatta was an Indian Sanskrit philosopher and the principal exponent of the Bhatta sub-school of Mimamsa, the Vedic school of ritual exegesis and epistemology. Working ...

• Madhusudana Sarasvati c. 1540 – c. 1640 · Indian

  Madhusudana Sarasvati was a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Indian Advaita Vedantin philosopher, traditionally regarded as one of the greatest Advaita systematists between Sa...

• Vacaspati Misra c. 900 – c. 980 · Indian

  Vacaspati Misra was an Indian philosopher of the tenth century and the most learned commentator of his age, a Maithila scholar who wrote authoritative commentaries on every majo...

• Vasubandhu c. 316 AD – c. 396 AD · Indian

  Vasubandhu was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, one of the most important systematic thinkers in the Mahayana tradition. He first composed the Abhidharmakosha, an encyclopedic tr...

• Vasumitra c. 100 – c. 170 · Indian

  Vasumitra was an Indian Buddhist abhidharma philosopher of the early second century AD, traditionally counted as one of the principal compilers of the Mahavibhasha, the great co...