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 wor