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POST-VEDIC PHILOSOPHY
35
mancipated purushas. If we add to this the fact that all the other elements of the system including the three gunas can be derived, from the Upanishad doctrine, we can no longer hesitate to admit that the whole Sârikhya system is nothing but a result of the degeneration of the Vedânta by means of the growth of realistic tendencies. There seems to have been a time when Vedântic thought lived only in this realistic form of the Sârikhya; for when the Yoga took the form of a philosophical system it was built up on the very inconvenient base of the Sârikhya system, probably because at that time no other base was available.
The System of the Vedânta
25. The genesis of the Vedânta-system represented by Badarayana and Çankara, has many analogies with the Reformation in the Christian Church. In the same way as Luther and others rejected the various traditions of the medieval Church and based the Protestant creed on the pure word of the Bible, so Çarikara (born 788 A. D.) rejected the changes in Vedic doctrine brought about by Buddhism and Sânkhya and founded the great system that bears his name on the holy word of the Upanishads alone; but in doing this a great difficulty arose; for the Upanishads, the words of which are in the view of Çankara a divine revelation, contain not only the pure idealism of Yajnavalkya but also its later modification such as pantheism, cosmogonism and theism. In meeting this difficulty Çankara exhibits great philosophical astuteness, which may serve as a model for Christian theology in fu
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