A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

(404 VEDANTA IN INDIAN LIFE.Smritis and Puranas subsequent writings to illustrate the doctrines of the Vedas ; these, of course,have not the same weight as the Yedas. And the* lawis that, wherever these Puranas and Smritis differ fromthe Sruti must be followed andany part of the Sruti,Smriti rejected. Now, in the expositions of thedwaitic *.philosopher Sankara and the school founded by him, we find most of the authorities <ifced are ofthe Upanishads, very rarely an authorityis cited fromthe Smritis except, perhaps, to elucidate a point whichcould hardly be found in the Srutis. On the other hand,other schools take more and more refuge in the Smritisand less and less in the Srutis, and, as we go to themore and more Dualistic sects, we find a proportionatequantity of the Smritis* quoted, which is out of all proportion to what we should expect from a Vedantist.It is, perhaps, because these gave such predominance tothe puranic authorities that the Adwaitist came to becalled as Yedantist par excellence, if I may say so.However itmight have been, as we have seen, the wordYedanta must cover the whole ground of Indian religiouslife,and it being the Yedas, by all acceptanceit is the mostancient literature that we have ; for, whatever might be theidea of modern scholars, the Hindus are not ready to admitthat parts of Yedas were written at one time and parts werewritten at another time. They, of course, still hold on totheir belief that the whole of the Yedas were produced atthe same time, rather if I may so call it they were neverproduced, that they always existed in the mind of theLord. Thus, this is what I mean by the word Yedanta tocover the whole ground of Dualism, of Qualified Dualismand Adwaitism in India. Perhaps, we may take in partseven of Buddhism, of Jainism too, if they would come in