[Advaita-l] Swami Vivekananda on Shankara

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, S Jayanarayanan wrote:

> --- S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The following website gives a quote from Vivekananda about Shankara:
> >
> > http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/15042001/Art06.htm
> >
> > "About the activities of Sankaracharya, even Vivekananda had
> > observed:
> > 'And, such was the heart of Sankara that he burnt to death lots of
> > Buddhist monks by defeating them in argument. What can you call such
> > action on Sankara's part except fanaticism.' (Complete works of Swami
> > Vivekananda, Vol. III, p. 118, Calcutta, 1997)."
> >
>
> I discovered that the quote is incorrect and deliberately misleading.
> Even the reference is false,

I'm not surprised.  every single thing in that article was either a lie or
half-truth.  This whole episode should serve as a warning that we need to
learn more about history ourselves.  Just because someone has "Professor"
in front of their names doesn't mean they necessarily know what they are
talking about!

Btw, even with this proviso, the story is not historically accurate.
Buddhism was in decline in India long before Shankaracharya.


vishwanthan Krishnamoorthy wrote:

> In fact the biggest publicists of the vedic precepts
> are non-Indians (and hence non-brahimins) like Max
> Muller and Griffith etc... :)

Legitimate scholars like these may say things that are flattering to us or
they may not.  We should learn what we can from them but be aware their
agenda is different from ours so they should not be relied upon for the
purposes of sadhana.


-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/