The book is the first attempt to present the history of Indian philosophy as the history of creative philosophical individuals. Based primarily on the Pali canon of Buddhists and the canonical texts of the Jains, the author reconstructs the philosophical biographies and teachings of more than twenty major characters in the real history of Indian thought of the Shramanic era - the era of the first revaluation of all values and the first intellectual revolution of India, dating from the 6th to 5th centuries. BC e. The personality of the Shraman era ends with a philosophical biography of the Buddha, in whom the author sees a kind of final figure of the first period of all Indian philosophy. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of the achievements of the first Indian and Greek philosophers, and as an appendix, a translation of one of the fundamental monuments of the Pali canon, “Brahmajala Sutta,” and a fragment on polemics from the treatise “Charaka Samhiga” are presented. The textbook is intended for future historians of philosophy and anyone interested in Eastern thought.