as expounded by Gau@dapada and as explained by
S'a@nkara consists in this, that S'a@nkara tried as best he could to
dissociate the distinctive Buddhist traits found in the exposition
of the former and to formulate the philosophy as a direct
interpretation of the older Upani@sad texts. In this he achieved
remarkable success. He was no doubt regarded by some as a
hidden Buddhist (_pracchanna Bauddha_), but his influence on
Hindu thought and religion became so great that he was regarded
in later times as being almost a divine person or an
incarnation. His immediate disciples, the disciples of his disciples,
and those who adhered to his doctrine in the succeeding
generations, tried to build a rational basis for his system in a
much stronger way than S'a@nkara did. Our treatment of S'a@nkara's
philosophy has been based on the interpretations of Vedanta
thought, as offered by these followers of S'a@nkara. These interpretations
are nowhere in conflict with S'a@nkara's doctrines, but
the questions and problems which S'a@nkara did not raise have
been raised and discussed by his followers, and without these one
could not treat Vedanta as a complete and coherent system of
metaphysics. As these will be discussed in the later sections,
we may close this with a short description of some of the main
features of the Vedanta thought as explained by S'a@nkara.

Brahman according to S'a@nkara is "the cause from which
(proceeds) the origin or subsistence and dissolution of this world
which is extended in names and forms, which includes many

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agents and enjoyers, which contains the fruit of works specially
determined according to space, time, and cause, a world which is
formed after an arrangement inconceivable even by the (imagination
of the) mind [Footnote ref 1]." The reasons that S'a@nkara adduces for the
existence of Brahman may be considered to be threefold: (1) The
world must have been produced as the modification of something,
but in the Upani@sads all other things have been spoken of
as having been originated from something other than Brahman,
so Brahman is the cause from which the world has sprung into
being, but we could not think that Brahman itself originated from
something else, for then we should have a _regressus ad infinitum_
(_anavastha_). (2) The world is so orderly that it could not have
come forth from a non-intelligent source. The intelligent source
then from which this world has come into being is Brahman.