Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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The sc hools known as Vedanta are in princ iple based on the Brahmasutras or
Aphorisms on the Holy Power, assembled in the first or sec ond c entury CE. These
somewhat enigmatic utterances attracted major commentaries from the main
figures of the Vedanta sc hool, notably Sankara (8th c entury), Ramanuja (12th
c entury), and Madhva (13th c entury). Sankara’s rather rigorous Advaita Vedanta or
Non-Dualist ic Vedant a was influenc ed by the Buddhist Madhyamaka theory or
viewpoint , whic h saw supposed realit y at t wo levels: as it is, empt y, at t he ‘higher
level,’ and at t he empiric al level. Sankara makes use of t his different iat ion, so t hat
Brahman (divine realit y) is t ruly non-personal, wit h no propert ies, t hough it is
c onst it ut ed by being, bliss and c onsc iousness. At t he lower level of illusion Brahman
is the Lord (or personal God). It is by knowledge of the higher truth that a person is
liberated, so that she or he is no longer reborn. This monism of Sankara’s arose
from his st rong int erpret at ion of ‘t hat art t hou.’ All separat e individualit y is an
illusion. At a lower level, however, a person c an worship God and express devot ion.
Sankara thus ac c ommodated the ‘ordinary’ religious believer. But in the end God
herself is an illusion, c aught up in the very illusion she c reates. Modern thinkers
made use of an adaptation of this sc hema in formulating modern Hinduism and
modern Hindu nationalism. Though Sankara has bec ome highly influential in the
modern formulation of the Indian tradition, his reinvigoration of the tradition in the
latter part of the first millennium stirred resistance from those who took the
personal side of theism more seriously, especially because in that era and after
Buddhism faded from view, partly under Muslim onslaughts, Hindu c ontroversy had
its own traditions to turn against.
Ramanuja objec ted to Sankara both on religious and philosophic al grounds. He
c onsidered that Sankara’s non-personalism made nonsense of the very idea of race,
intrinsic to Ramanuja ’s strongly held theism. Ramanuja believed that the c osmos is
God’s body... by analogy with the way the soul c ontrols the human or animal body.
Ramanuja also objected to Sankara’s theory of illusion or maya. He held to a realist
theory of perc eption. Moreover, he thought that the notion that not only the
c osmos c an be God’s body, but also souls, c reated a suffic iently intimate union
between God and souls for the ‘that art thou’ saying to be true. In his c ommentary
on the Bhagavadgita, it would seem that Ramanuja was nearer to the original
intent of the text than was Sankara. Madhva, on the other hand, went far in the
ot her direc t ion.
He argued, by a gerrymandering of language, that theoretically the great text
read (wit h an inserted ‘non-’ so to speak), ‘that thou art not.’ His position is known
as Dvaita or Dualism, as against both Sankara’s Non-Dualism and Ramanuja ’s
Qualified Non-Dualism. Madhva emphasized the partic ularity of substanc es and
souls, and affirmed God’s difference from both. Later Vedantins tended toward
forms of theism, as did the followers of Siva. Thus, in a way, Vedanta had as its
c ore variat ions on t heism and devot ional religion.
However, during the British period new fac tors entered into Indian
philosophic al self-underst anding. While some veered t oward simplifying Hindu belief
and reforming prac t ic e, ot hers preferred a way of harnessing t he c lassic al t radit ion
to the preservation and formulation of a new Hinduis m intertwined with Indian
nat ionalism. Brit ish inst it ut ions had unified India as never before, while English-
speaking higher educ ation gave Indian intellec tuals a new entrée on to the world. It