It bears mentioning that some of the involuntarily "unified" communities, certainly strict Vaishnava groups, perceived this development with something akin to theological horror. Indeed the greatest Vaishanva Vedantists, including Ramanuja, Madhva, and Baladeva, explicitly sought to refute the notion that all paths lead as rivers into the ocean of Brahman, unless by that one meant Krishna as param brahman (Gita 10.12)

Thus for centuries there has been strong tension, and theological battles, between on the one hand the unifying Hindu view, including what Halbfass called the "Neo-Hindu" thought of Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan etc, with their roots in Sankara et all, and on the other hand the various Vaishnava traditions including the Sri Vaishnava followers of Ramanuja, the Dvaita-vadi followers of Madhva, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava followers of Caitanya.

I present all this not as an argument against your thesis, which I basically accept, but rather to elicit your learned view on the matter.

Thanks!

Howard

On Dec 17, 2013, at 2:07 PM, Andrew Nicholson <andrew.nicholson@stonybrook.edu> wrote:

Dear list members,

I am pleased to announce that my first book, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, is now available in an affordable paperback edition from Columbia University Press.

In addition, if you enter the discount code UNINIC when ordering the paperback edition from the Columbia University Press website you will receive $8.40 off the normal list price of $28.

For more information on the contents of the book, please click on the link or see below.

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14986-0/

Warmest season's greetings,
Andrew
_____________________________________
Andrew J. Nicholson
Associate Professor
SUNY Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5343 USA
Tel: (631) 632-4030 Fax: (631) 632-4098
http://sbsuny.academia.edu/AndrewNicholson

--------
Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History
Paper, 280 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14987-7
$28.00 / £19.50

Winner of the Book Award for Best First Book in the History of Religions, American Academy of Religion

Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality.

Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.

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