Excerpt from The Mandukyopanishad With Gaud pada's K rik s and the Bh shya of S'ankara It is difficult to determine when each of the six well-known dar anas or schools of Indian Philosophy came into prominence; but it is easy to trace a consistent development of thought, as we progress from Gantama and Kanada to Kapila and Vyasa. The esoteric doctrine of the Veda had given place to exoteric forms, culminating in the hard and fast rules of the Mimansa, generally known as the Purva-mimansa of Jaimini. The true philosophy, the real gnosis, capable of leading to immediate liberation, was, however, preserved intact in the Upanishads; a reconciliation of whose various texts widely differing in meaning from one another, and a concise statement of the fundamental Upanishad-doctrine, is the aim and object of the aphorisms of Vyasa, known as the Vedanta-sutras, or the aphorisms of the Uttara as opposed to the Purva-mimansa. This Uttara-mimansa is the principal text of the Vedanta doctrine, nay of all religio-philosophical teaching in India. To be able to set up a new school and secure any considerable following, a fresh thinker must show that his teaching, whatever it be, follows directly from the aphorisms of the Uttara-mimansa and is corroborated by the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. These three are called in technical language, the Prasthanatraya; and no one who does not connect his teaching with these has the right to be called a teacher, an acharya. The four principal schools of S'ankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, and Vallabha, though opposed in their teachings one to the other, each claim the three Prasthanas as their own. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."