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IX.14 The advent of Sankara
The next important milestone is the advent of Sankara. In his short but marvellously active life, he travelled all through the country, refuting atheistic and materialistic systems of thought, wrote commentaries on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutra and on the Gita. He interpreted these scriptures and built up his thesis with wonderful clarity and depth of exposition. He remoulded Indian thought and destroyed many dogmas. His great capacity for deep feeling and emotional expression was combined with relentless logic. Sankara’s contribution to philosophy is his blending of the doctrines of Karma and Maya, which culminated in a logical exposition of the idea of non-dualism. The entire universe consisting of Namarupa, names and forms, is but an appearance; Brahman, infinite consciousness, is the sole reality. Its attainment and the annihilation of the great illusion of the universe called Maya, by a process of realization, were the objects of Sankara’s quest. He revivified the doctrines of the Upanishads. His Advaita doctrine is still a living force in India. Sankaracharya established several mutts in India to propagate the Vedantic or Advaita doctrine and the successive heads of these mutts as well as later scholars like Madhusudana Saraswathi and the great Appayya Diksitar have produced important treatises, elucidating the Vedanta as propounded by Sankaracharya.
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