Re: Info. on daSAvatArAlu
Sastry Isukapalli (ssi@eohsi.rutgers.edu)
Tue, 7 Jan 1997 13:40:32 -0500
A friend of mine told me this:
Apparently believe buddhists believe(d) in "advaita" philosophy. Seems that
the buddhists disowned the first part of Vedas (dealing with ritualis). At
one point buddhism was very popular in India, and the Hindu religion, as we
know of, was almost being abandoned.
At that time, Adi SankarAchArya rejuvinated Hinduism. Also, he was accused of
being a "buddhist" by some people of his time. Considering both these, may be
one can think of the possibility that SankarAchArya (or his desciples)
described Buddha as an avatAram. IMHO, that was a great thing to do.
Regarding the statement by Prabhakar that buddhists do not believe in God, we
should note that there is a very fine line between "advaitam" and
nAstikatwam.
I am just thinking aloud, and may be most of what I wrote here is wrong.
Could some wise soul please throw more light on this topic?
Sastry.