ABSTRACT
Mimamsa and Vedanta are both philosophical traditions that attempt to establish the truth of the Vedas and Upanishads. They attempt to do this not by relying on the authority of the Vedas themselves but by means of philosophical arguments based on reason and experience. The Vedanta tradition regarded the knowledge claims, not the injunctions to action, as the crucial part of the Vedas. There are three principal schools of Vedantic philosophy, differing from each other in the way they account for the relations between persons, things, and ultimate reality (Brahman). According to Shankara, Brahman is the reality that underlies the appearances that constitute the empirical world. Ramanuja, the eleventh-century Vedantic thinker who interpreted the Upanishads as teaching a qualified nondualism, agrees with Shankara that ultimate reality is one rather than many. According to Madhva, the world as it is experienced empirically, and its foundation as Brahman, is eternally and fundamentally distinct.
