Cultural Traditions in India, 750-1200

Answer: Sankracharya was an orthodox Brahman for whom all the Vedic literature was sacred and unquestionably true. To harmonise its many paradoxes he had recourse to an expedient already known in Buddhism, that of a double standard of truth. On the every day level of truth the world was produced by Brahama, and went through an evolutionary process similar to that taught by the Sankhya school from which Sankracharya took over the doctrine of the three guns. But on the highest level of truth the whole phenomenal universe, including the God themselves, was unrealthe world was maya, an illusion, a dream, a mirage, a figment of imagination. Ultimately the only reality was Brahman, the impersonal world soul of the Upanishads, with which the individual soul was identical.

As in the Upanishads, salvation was to be obtained by recognition of this identity through meditations. Sankra's Brahman is not really different from the "Void" or the Nirvana of Mahayana Buddhism. An important achievement of Sankracharya was the defeat of the Buddhist scholars in arguments. Endowed with the powerful intellect, and incisive mind, and passion for the ancient traditions of India or Sanatan Dharma, Sankracharya was able to show clearly that Buddhist metaphysics was only a poor imitator of the metaphysics of Sanatan Dharma. His debate, discussion and agreements spelt the intellectual death of Buddhism. Sankracharya wrote Commentaries on the upanishads, the Bhagwatagita and the Brahma Sutra. These commentaries are still regarded as the masterpieces of Indian religion and philosophical speculations. The comparison of Sankracharya in Hinduism with St. Thomas Aquinas in the Roman Catholic Church is very fair one. The doctrine of Sankracharya is known as 'advaita' ("allowing no second", i.e. monism) or kevaradvaita (strict monism).