Vedāntic Idealism

By Vedāntic idealism is meant the idealism based upon the Upaniṣads or the Vedānta. There are many idealistic systems that claim the Upaniṣads as their support. But of all these, Śaṅkara’s Advaita is regarded even by Western scholars ¹ as more true to the Upaniṣads than the others. Besides, most of the others have more or less a sectarian or local origin. The Vaiṣṇava systems like that of Rāmānuja and the Śaiva systems like that of Śrikaṇṭha are first Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva and then Upaniṣadic. That is, their systems are given originally in the Pāñcarātra and Pāṡupata Āgamas, which are different from the Upaniṣads; and one doubts whether it is not by the way, and in order to prove that they too are orthodox and thus attract adherents from the learned upper classes, that they claim the support of the Upaniṣads also. There are some, for example, among the Śaivas, ² who attach higher value to their Āgamas than to the Upaniṣads, though there are others who treat both as of equal value. ³ There is, however, no doubt as to the esteem in which Rāmānuja held the Upaniṣads, both the principal and the sectarian. The latter are spurious and late additions to the former, and are held as authoritative only by sectarian philosophers like the Śaivas, the Śāktas, etc. One can easily see that Rāmānuja’s philosophy is a development of the views given in the Pāñcarātra Āgamas. It is for this reason that Śāṅkara is called the smārta ⁴ or the traditionalist interpreter of the Upaniṣads, while the others are not called smārtas. This does not mean that the followers of Rāmānuja and the other ācāryas do not obey the injunctions of the Smṛtis. But they prefer calling themselves Vaiṣṇavas or Śaivas, and the followers of Śaṅkara only are called smārtas. Smārta means the traditionalist, the tradition here being the tradition of the Śruti. In India it is accepted that Śaṅkara alone kept to that tradition.