Page:The Advaita philosophy of Śaṅkara.pdf/5

Rh piness, and even the ultimate and highest happiness, to rest in Jnana and not in Karman. Still the revolt against the religion of Karman was not complete. It was reserved for Buddha to proclaim in unmistakable language the illusoriness of worldly possessions, including even that Heaven which the Karmakanda promised to its devotees and to establish instead, Nirvana or the total absence of all worldly illusions, as the state of perfect bliss. His was a code of high morality and universal brotherhood not only of men, but of the whole creation from the tiny straw to the proud human lord treading heedlessly upon it The Gospel of Buddha found its adherents, but it was a breaking away from the religion of the Karmakanda, far too abrupt and perhaps too unpractical to reconcile all grades of intellect to its truthfulness. Kumdrila tried to restore the dying Kannakduda to its former position, but it was Sankara, who suppressed with a sure hand the rising revolt. He brought the Upanishads to the front, and indirectly accepting the sublime philosophy of Buddha, effected a reconciliation between Karman and Jnana, by showing that the former is a ﬁt preparation for the latter. While eﬁ'ecting this, he was not indifferent to the dissatisfaction in his own ranks. There were the various Daréanas, which though setting up an ideal slightly different from the Vedic one, were, yet, allies neither of Buddha nor of Saizkara. Safzkara paid the best attention possible to these, and his philosophy would appear in the sequel to be mainly evolved from them. Thus the hand of the Master restored peace throughout the region of philosophy, by reconciling the cravings for a higher and truer ideal with the ritual of the Veda, and thus signiﬁcantly showing that the Vedc’intu was really the Uttara—mimdn’rsc’i sequel (Jﬁdna) to the Puma-Munciﬁzsd or preliminary (Kannakdnda). In the extreme south where Buddha’s voice had perhaps never reached, and Safzkara’s teachings had not had any ﬁrm footing, the Kaamakdzzda still continues in all its various forms, and several sects continue to abuse Saﬁkara as a. Prachchlzanna _Buddha, a Buddha in a Brahhmanic garb. No clearer commentary is necessary on the work of Samara.

We are, now, indeed, in a position to understand the philo-