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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1308
school held strictly to the conception of Brahman, or that, as Absolute
Reality, all else being held to be Maya, or the illusory phenomenal universe.
Brahman was held to be the only Truth, and the individual Atman, or Spirit,
was held to be identical with Brahman. The Vishnuites (or Vaishnevas), claim
Sankaracharya as having been one of their school, and his writing seems to
bear out this fact, but nevertheless, he seems to have made common cause
with the Shaivas in the common fight against Buddhism and Jainism, and
indeed, both of the schools of the Vaishnavas and the Shaivas, respectively,
might accept the Vedanta teachings without any trouble, by the simple
process of identifying their respective deity with Brahman, or that.
In the twelfth century a.d., appeared Ramanuja, the other great Vedanta
teacher, who attacked Sankaracharya’s position of absolute monism, or nondualism,
and advanced a system of “qualified-dualism,” or Vishishtadvaita,
which held that there exist Individual Souls or Atma, which though
proceeding from Brahman, are not essentially one with that, but instead
bear a high degree of relation to It, as “elements” of Its Being; and which also
differed from the Advaitist system by holding that Brahman was not merely
a purely abstract being, but that It possessed real qualities of goodness,
love, etc., raised to an infinite degree. Consequently, there at once arose a
close degree of sympathy and relationship between the regular Vaishnava,
or Vishnuite school, and this new Vishishtadvaita system of philosophy.
Ramanuja made frequent respectful and worshipful mention of Vishnu, and
his school were ardent Vishnu worshipers and recognized as a branch of the
Vaishnavas on the religious side, while considered a branch of the Vedanta
on the philosophical side—thus does philosophy and religion blend in India.
In the fifteenth century there arose another teacher destined to exert
a marked influence upon the Vaishnava school, one Vallabhacharya, a
Brahmin. His teachings were very much along the lines of those of Ramanuja,
but in addition he laid great stress upon the human side of Krishna, an avatar
or incarnation of Vishnu, who was represented as of a most attractive human
personality. Vallabhacharya taught among other things that the best way of