/lit/ - Literature

>>13114618
It dates back to before the pre-socratics and has a very long history, continuing up until basically the modern day. It has most of the equivalent schools found in western school such as grammer, logic, epistemology, naturalism, metaphysics, ontology etc. They tended to be more into mysticism and religious philosophy than western thought generally but if that's what your into than that would be considered a boon. It's held in high regard mostly because of it's religious philosophy, in particular Buddhism, Vedanta, Yoga etc; the Bhagavad-Gita is an example of an Indian philosophy text which is considered to be a classic of both world and spiritual literature. If you're at all into Neoplatonism, Parmenides, Spinoza, German Idealism or Schopenhauer than you should be able to find stuff in Indian philosophy that you really like

>what will await me if I dive into it?
You just gotta see for yourself nigga, there is a lot of variety in it though so if you don't like whatever you decided to first study you can always switch to another part of it. It's generally a good idea to begin by reading an overview of Indian Philosophy that explains all the schools and their history so that you understand how they all related to eachother and that will help you decide what part you want to study specifically, Hiriyanna, Radnakrishnan and Chandradhar Sharma all have good books of varying lengths that review all the different schools.

>>12311601
I've read the Indians. With all of eastern philosophy and especially the Indian you want to read the primary texts as much as possible as opposed to secondary books summarizing/describing them. However, this is balanced out by the fact that to get into the more deeper/complicated texts you need to learn many Sanskrit words and phrases which it can be good to learn from books written for that purpose. It is helpful to have a read a book on Hindu/Indian history before studying the philosophy but it's not at all necessary. The best and most straight forward intro book of medium length is Hiriyanna's 'Essentials of Indian Philosophy'. Radnakrishnan also has various good books of varying length that review it. Guenon's books on Hinduism are also good if you are interested in it from an anti-modern/perennialism perspective.

There are Hindu texts to read from each of the 6 darshanas (orthodox schools of thought) although most of the more interesting and relevant texts which someone interested in eastern philosophy would read would probably be found in Vedanta and Yoga, the other ones don't have as many good texts (at least translated to English). Outside the darshanas a lot Hindu Tantric texts are good too. Aside from certain Tantric thinkers like Abhinavagupta, some of the most impressive philosophical/metaphysical writings is found in the writings of the founders of the various Vedanta schools. Adi Shankara is basically the Plato of Hinduism, his commentaries and other works are absolutely kino but in order to understand them you need to have a very solid grasp of Hindu philosophy and basic Sanskrit terminology. You can start with reading some background/intro books on Hinduism and Hindu philosophical concepts, then you can start with some shorter and more simpler texts like the Bhagavad-Gita and Yoga Sutras, and then you can go from there to higher-level stuff. Radnakrishnan has good translations of both the Gita and the principal Upanishads, if you can any questions about certain schools or texts I might be able to answer it. The Mahabharata and Ramayana are more Homeric epics and are not the ideal choice if you want straight philosophy/metaphysics.

>>12043894
Switch to the Indians, they came before and influenced the Greeks anyways