Advaita

[Guest guest]

Were the Hindus the first to think about advaita? Has this concept

been thought of in any other world religions? I do not mean in modern

times.

I was told by a Christian friend that St Augustine (fifth century AD)

discussed a concept very similar to advaita and rejected it.

Can someone please shed some historical light into this?

[Guest guest]

There need be no doubt about the fact that the oldest religion of the

world is the Vedic Religion. Travellers and invaders who crossed

the " Sindhu River " , gave the name as " Sindhus " to all who lived

around and beyond the Sindhu river. That term was called Hindu and

later the term Hinduism and so on.

 

Coming to your query, even before St. Augustine, St. Thomas came to

India and he was the first follower of Jesus to come to India, around

32 B.C or so. There is still a St. Thomas mount in Madras which many

might be aware of. But much before that Megasthenes(the Greek

traveller) came to India and wrote a travelogue about the " Vedic

culture " of the land.

 

Vedas ( & vedic culture) in their current form were given to us by

Vyaasa, who also wrote the Brahma Sutras around 5000years back, which

was nothing but distilled Advaitam. There are older texts such as

the " Yoga Vasishta " which were composed around the time of Rama,

which are much much older and which are full of advaitam only. You

might want to read a commentary or reference to Yoga Vasishta by

either Ramana or Sivananda.

 

Many think, Sankara founded Advaitam. Its not so. Sankara only

preached correct advaitam and re-established it as the supreme, when

it was getting distorted by other religions sprouting then. Sankara

is very much a part of documented history and not a fictitious

character, even according to " Western Pundits " .

 

So, even if one were to argue that Advaitam existed only from

Sankara, still it is much older than any other religion or doctrine,

and much much before Christianity or so.

 

Finally, the Vedas were only divided by Vyaasa, and as such they are

beginning-less and timeless, and Vedaantam(end of the Vedas) is about

Advaitam, so by that metric also Advaitam is the oldest siddhantam

and very much from this Bharata Desam and nowhere else.

 

-- Pradeep

 

Ramakrishna, " somdev48858 " <somdev48858> wrote:

> Were the Hindus the first to think about advaita? Has this concept

> been thought of in any other world religions? I do not mean in

modern

> times.

> I was told by a Christian friend that St Augustine (fifth century

AD)

> discussed a concept very similar to advaita and rejected it.

> Can someone please shed some historical light into this?