Vedanta

Vedanta has a rule of entry that no other Indian school imposes so strictly. To found a school a teacher must write commentaries on three texts, the prasthanatrayi or triple foundation: the principal Upanishads, which are revelation; the Bhagavad Gita, which is remembered tradition; and the Brahma Sutras, which are the reasoned summary. A position that has not been argued through all three is an opinion rather than a school.

The Brahma Sutras carry the weight because they are almost unusable on their own. Badarayana compressed the argument into aphorisms of two or three words, many of which cannot be construed without a commentary telling the reader what the missing words are. That extreme compression is why the same text supports readings that contradict each other completely: Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva each supply different implied terms and each can claim to be doing nothing but reading.

The consequence is a tradition that argues by exegesis. A Vedanta philosopher does not usually set out a system and then look for support; he takes the disputed sutra, the disputed Upanishadic sentence, and shows what it must mean given everything else. The great sentences of the Upanishads, that you are that, that this self is brahman, are the contested ground, and the schools differ over whether such a sentence states an identity, a relation of dependence, or a resemblance.

Advaita, given its classical form by Shankara in the eighth century, holds that brahman alone is real, that brahman is without qualities, and that the world and the individual self are superimposed on it by ignorance in the way a rope is taken for a snake. Liberation is therefore the removal of an error rather than the attainment of anything.

Vishishtadvaita, argued by Ramanuja in the eleventh, holds that souls and matter are real and are related to God as a body is related to the self that inhabits it: distinct, dependent, and not a second thing beside him. Dvaita, argued by Madhva in the thirteenth, holds that God and the soul are simply two, and sets out five eternal differences between God, souls and matter that no analysis dissolves.

Others fill the space between. Bhedabheda holds difference and non-difference together, and Vallabha and the Bengali Vaishnava tradition each work variants of that.

The nineteenth century changed the balance. Vivekananda and the reform movements presented Advaita as the philosophical core of Hinduism to audiences in Europe and America, and the version that travelled was adapted for that purpose. Scholars now generally distinguish this Neo-Vedanta from the classical school, and the claim that Advaita is the natural centre of Hindu thought is treated as a modern development that is argued over rather than as an established fact.