Re: Info. on daSAvatArAlu
Bapa Rao (brao@pollux.usc.edu)
Tue, 7 Jan 1997 14:38:53 -0800 (PST)
I don't know how good an authority he is, but Rahula SaamkRtyaayana
suggests that the core ideas of Buddhism, Upanishads, Jainism
(karmic doctrine, rebirth, moksha or liberation, ...) all appeared
around the same time period (6th or 7th century BC) and took on
different flavors in the form of Buddhist, Vedantist and Jainist
doctrines. So, it may not be accurate to say that Buddhism or
Vedantism "simply borrowed" the ideas from one another, insinuating
that one is an intellectual derivative of another. This idea of
co-development also makes sense when we consider how advances in
knowledge and insight takes place more as a sort of product of the intellectual
zeitgeist than as a brilliant individual leap of imagination occurring
in a vacuum.
My personal views.
Bapa Rao