History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

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The Sankara School of Vedānta [CH. had been left out or slightly touched by Sankara were discussed fully by his followers. But it should always be remembered that philosophical reasonings and criticisms are always to be taken as but aids for convincing our intellect and strengthening our faith in the truth revealed in the Upanişads. The true work of logic is to adapt the mind to accept them. Logic used for upsetting the instructions of the Upanişads is logic gone astray. Many lives of Sankarācārya werewritten in Sanskrit such as the Sankaradigvijaya, Sankara-vijaya-vilāsa, Sankara-jaya, etc. It is regarded as almost certain that he was born between 700 and 800 A.D. in the Malabar country in the Deccan. His father Śivaguru was a Yajurvedi Brāhmin of the Taittiriya branch. Many miracles are related of Sankara, and he is believed to have been the incarnation of Siva. He turned ascetic in his eighth year and became the disciple of Govinda, a renowned sage then residing in a mountain cell on the banks of the Narbuda. He then came over to Benares and thence went to Badarikāśrama. It is said that he wrote his illustrious bhāsya on the Brahma-sūtra in his twelfth year. Later on he also wrote his commentaries on ten Upanisads. He returned to Benares, and from this time forth he decided to travel all over India in order to defeat the adherents of other schools of thought in open debate. It is said that he first went to meet Kumārila, but Kumārila was then at the point of death, and he advised him to meet Kumārila's disciple. He defeated Mandana and converted him into an ascetic follower of his own. He then travelled in various places, and defeating his opponents everywhere he established his Vedānta philosophy, which from that time forth acquired a dominant influence in moulding the religious life of India.
Šankara carried on the work of his teacher Gaudapāda and by writing commentaries on the ten Upanişads and the Brahmasūtras tried to prove, that the absolutist creed was the one which was intended to be preached in the Upanişads and the Brahmasūtras? Throughout his commentary on the Brahma-sūtras, there is ample evidence that he was contending against some other rival interpretations of a dualistic tendency which held that the Upanişads partly favoured the Sāmkhya cosmology
i The main works of Sankara are his commentaries (bhāsya) on the ten Upanişads (Isa, Kena, Katha, Praśna, Mundaka, Māndūkya, Aitareya, Taittiriya, Brhadāranyaka, and Chándogya), and on the Brahma-sätra.