A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. I / Surendranath Dasgupta -- Chapter V: Buddhist Philosophy -- Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1922

In 1922, the young Indian scholar Surendranath Dasgupta published the first volume of what would become a five volume history of Indian philosophy.  It is a magisterial, encyclopedic work.  Chapter Five is a noteworthy summary of Buddhist philosophy in India, substantial in both length and depth.

Dasgupta begins the work as one might expect, describing the state of philosophy in India just before the time of the Buddha, recounting the legends associated with the life of the Buddha, and outlining the literature of the early period of the Buddhist tradition, but he quickly moves on to a more substantive treatment of Buddhist philosophy, detailing a wide variety of doctrines held by numerous schools.  At first he provides a general account of a number of concepts that are central to the early schools of Buddhism, e.g., causation, consciousness, rebirth, the khandas (Sk: skandhas), theories of matter and sense contact, morality, meditation, kamma (Sk: kharma), and nibbana (Sk: nirvana), providing rather mainstream interpretations.  He goes on, though, to indicate how various schools have reinterpreted these ideas.  Later, Dasgupta takes up the contributions of the Mahayana schools -- Madhyamaka and Yogacara -- and ultimately takes up the views of the Sautrantikas.

The work is an excellent overview of Buddhist philosophy; however, the reader might be somewhat puzzled by its organization.  It is not always clear which views are being attributed to which schools and which views are taken to be shared by numerous schools.  It is notable that his treatment of Madhyamaka was written before the work of Fyodor Stcherbatsky and T.V.R. Murti.  Consequently, he takes the Madhyamikas to be nihilists and does not provide the more sophisticated account of sunyata (emptiness) that characterizes later works on Buddhism. 

Regardless of its shortcomings, Chapter Five of A History of Indian Philosophy is an extremely valuable treatment of Buddhist philosophy which can serve both as an encyclopedic reference source and a valuable continuous text.