Hinduism / by Monier Williams.

  • Monier Monier-Williams
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hinduism / by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    211/254 page 203
    We may add, in illustration of the notion of the eternity of sound, that the Chinese have a saying : ‘ The echoes of a word once uttered vibrate in space to all eternity.’ The Vedanta. The Vedanta of Vyasa or Badarayana is, for con- venience, placed last of the six orthodox systems ; but on many accounts it ought to stand first. The outline of its pantheistic creed is traceable, as we have seen, in the Rig-veda, and it conforms more closely than any other system to the doctrines pro- pounded in the Upanishads, on which treatises indeed, as forming the end of the Veda, it professes to be founded. Moreover, it is the truest exponent of the habits of thought of thoughtful Hindus, as much in the most recent as in the most ancient times. The most celebrated teacher of this school of philosophy was Sankaracarya (sec p. 137), who was the great reviver of Brahmanism, in opposition to unorthodox Buddhism, about the end of the 7th or beginning of the 8th century of our era. As the Nyaya has much in common with the prac- tical philosophy of Aristotle, which gave to things and individuals, rather than to ideas, a real existence, so the Vedanta offers many parallels to the idealism of Plato. A Vedantist’s creed has the merit of extreme sim- plicity, being comprised in the well-known formula of three words from the C'handogya Upanishad (ckam evddvitlyam, one only essence without a second), or in the following : “ Brahma exists truly, the world falsely, the soul is only Brahma, and no other,” or in the following : “ All this universe indeed is Brahma ; from him does it proceed ; into him is it dissolved ; in him it breathes. So let every one adore him calmly.” p
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