Many scholars, both Indian and European, will demur to the high place here assigned to the Advaita philosophy.  I am far from claiming that the doctrine of Sankara is either primitive or unchallenged.  Other forms of the Vedanta existed before him and became very strong after him.  But so far as a synthesis of opinions which are divergent in details can be just, he gives a just synthesis and elaboration of the Upanishads.  It is true that his teaching as to the higher and lower Brahman and as to Maya has affinities to Mahayanist Buddhism, and that later sects were repelled by the severe and impersonal character of his philosophy, but the doctrine of which he is the most thorough and eminent exponent, namely that God or spirit is the only reality and one with the human soul, asserts itself in almost all Hindu sects, even though their other doctrines may seem to contradict it.

This line of thought is so persistent and has so many ramifications, that it is hard to say what is and what is not Vedanta.  If we take literature as our best guide we may distinguish four points of importance marked by the Upanishads, the Brahma-Sutras, Sankara and Ramanuja.

I have said something elsewhere of the Upanishads.  These works do not profess to form a systematic whole (though later Hinduism regards them as such) and when European scholars speak of them collectively, they generally mean the older members of the collection.  These may justly be regarded as the ancestors of the Vedanta, inasmuch as the tone of thought prevalent in them is incipient Vedantism.  It rejects dualism and regards the universe as a unity not as plurality, as something which has issued from Brahman or is pervaded by Brahman and in any case depends on Brahman for its significance and existence.  Brahman is God in the pantheistic sense, totally disconnected with mythology and in most passages impersonal.  The knowledge of Brahman is salvation:  he who has it, goes to Brahman or becomes Brahman.  More rarely we find statements of absolute identity such as “Being Brahman, he goes to Brahman."[764] But though the Upanishads say that the soul goes to or is Brahman, that the world comes from or is Brahman, that the soul is the whole universe and that a knowledge of these truths is the one thing of importance, these ideas are not combined into a system.  They are simply the thoughts of the wise, not always agreeing in detail, and presented as independent utterances, each with its own value.

One of the most important of these wise men is Yajnavalkya,[765] the hero of the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad and a great name, to whom are ascribed doctrines of which he probably never heard.  The Upanishad represents him as developing and completing the views of Sandilya and Uddalaka Aruni.  The former taught[766] that the Atman or Self within the heart, smaller than a grain of mustard seed, is also greater than all worlds.  The brief exposition of his doctrine which we possess