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6. MONOTHEISM & REINCARNATION
Hinduism as we know today came with Shankara of Kerala. Shankara was born in Kerala in 788 A.D. Where did Shankara get this idea? Shankara was born on the Malabar Coast, where the Christians missionaries and the Jewish community had been active for centuries. Further, the agents of Islam, the Arabs had also penetrated the Malabar coastal area decades before the religious training of Shankara had begun. Thus, by the time Shankara was mastering the religious philosophy, concepts and practices of Hinduism from his Guru Gobinda, three versions of monotheism - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - were quite familiar to the intellectuals and religious men of this area. According to historian R.C. Majumdar, "Sankara's monism was based upon Islamic creed which he had learnt from the forefathers of the Moplas, Navayats and Labbes of South India.
Hinduism as we know today came with Shankara of Kerala.
Hinduism as we know today came with Shankara of Kerala. - Indrajit Ganguli
It was during this period that the original Gita was interpolated and monotheistic concept inserted into what is known as Bhagavad-Gita today. This was done to establish the historical legitimacy of the monotheistic concept. It was for this purpose that the redactors added chapters I and X to the RigVeda, reconstructed the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata by identifying Rama and Krishna with The Supreme Being, added several verses to Sankhya Karika to change the original concept, and the concept of Purusha and Prakriti, and added more than 100 verses to the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali to introduce the concept of Isvara (God) and to interpret Yoga as union with God.
The original Gita had only 84 verses and the basic concept was based on Shamkya philosophy. The Bhagavad-Gita has 700 verses and that will mean that 616 verses were interpolated. The interpolated Bhagavad-Gita and other scriptures were corrupted between 800 and 1000 A.D. Research work concerning the interpolation of Gita was done by German scholars such as Richard Garbe, Rudolf Otto, JW Hauer, and others and their findings were later confirmed when copies of the original Gita was discovered in Bali, Indonesia and another one in Farukkabad. Both these versions had 84 verses only. Phulgenda Sinha argues in his book "The Gita as it was" that only the first three chapters of Gita are authenic, and the rest are interpolated around the year 800 in Common Era. He says that the Gita was written by Vyasa, under the influence of Kapilas samkya philosophy and Patanjalis yoga sutras. After Vyasas first three chapters the Gita seems to have been interpolated by two entirely different authors, one of them monist and the other theist.
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