The idea of a benevolent deity to be worshipped with devotion and faith and not with ceremonies is strange to old Buddhism and old Brahmanism alike.  It was a popular idea which became so strong that neither priests nor Bhikshus could ignore it and in its ultimate result it is hard to say whether Buddhist or Brahmanic elements are more prominent.  Both Avalokita and Krishna are Devas.  The former has the beauty of holiness and the strength which it gives, but also the weakness of a somewhat abstract figure:  the latter is very personal and springs from the heart of India but to those who are not Hindus seems wanting in purity and simplicity.  The divine character of both figures is due to Brahmanism rather than Buddhism, but the new form of worship which laid stress on a frame of mind rather than on ceremonial and the idea of Avataras or the periodic appearance of superhuman saviours and teachers indicate the influence of Buddhism on Brahmanism.

There is a similar parallel between the newer Buddhist philosophy and the Vedantist school represented by Sankara, and Indian critics detected it.  Sankara was called a Pracchanna-bauddha or crypto-buddhist by his theological opponents[184] and the resemblance between the two systems in thought, if not in word, is striking.  Both distinguish relative and absolute truth:  for both the relative truth is practically theism, for both absolute truth is beyond description and whether it is called Brahman, Dharma-kaya or Sunyata is not equivalent to God in the Christian or Mohammedan sense.  Just as for the Vedantist there exist in the light of the highest knowledge neither a personal God nor an individual soul, so the Madhyamika Sutra can declare that the Buddha does not really exist.  The Mahayanist philosophers do not use the word Maya but they state the same theory in a more subjective form by ascribing the appearance of the phenomenal world to ignorance, a nomenclature which is derived from the Buddha’s phrase, “From ignorance come the Sankharas.”

Here, as elsewhere, Buddhist and Brahmanic ideas acted and reacted in such complex interrelations that it is hard to say which has borrowed from the other.  As to dates, the older Upanishads which contain the foundations but not the complete edifice of Vedantism, seem a little earlier than the Buddha.  Now we know that within the Vedantist school there were divergences of opinion which later received classic expression in the hands of Sankara and Ramanuja.  The latter rejected the doctrines of Maya and of the difference between relative and absolute truth.  The germs of both schools are to be found in the Upanishads but it seems probable that the ideas of Sankara were originally worked out among Buddhists rather than among Brahmans and were rightly described by their opponents as disguised Buddhism.  As early as 520 A.D.  Bodhidharma preached in China a doctrine which is practically the same as the Advaita.