ব্রহ্মসূত্র ---- শঙ্কর মতানুসারী প্রস্থানত্রয়ের একটি/পর্ব ১০ প্রীতম সেনগুপ্ত

ব্রহ্মসূত্র : শঙ্কর মতানুসারী প্রস্থানত্রয়ের একটি

পর্ব ১০ 

প্রীতম সেনগুপ্ত 

প্রস্থানত্রয় বিষয়ে মুক্তিপদ বেহেরা জানাচ্ছেন ----‘ Three texts -- Upanishads, Brahma Sutra, Gita are called  prasthana traya.These three are considered by all Indian scholars to establish their Vedanta philosophies. Upanishads are called Sruti prasthana, Brahma Sutra is called Naya Prasthana and Gita is called Smriti Prasthana. For example Shankaracharya has established Advaita-vada by interpreting same three prasthana texts.So on... So these three are the core texts in Hinduism. শ্রী বেহেরা আরও জানাচ্ছেন ---‘Vedanta darsana is one of the six darsana ( six systems of Indian philosophy) preached by Vyasa. He wrote a text named Brahmasutra to summarize his Vedanta darsana. Others are Sankshya, Naya, Vaisesika, Yoga, Mimansa. All these darsanas are based of Vedic authority. Later there are many commentators on Vedanta darsana , for example, Sankara, Ramanuja, Jiva Goswami etc. 

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People interchangeably use Vedanta word to express both Upanishads and Vedanta philosophy.’ ( Evolution of Vedic wisdom, Muktipada Behera )

রামকৃষ্ণ সঙ্ঘের ত্রয়োদশ সঙ্ঘগুরু স্বামী রঙ্গনাথানন্দ  বলেছেন, ‘The majority of the people of India belong to one or other of the various branches of the ancient religion of the country, Vedanta. It has another significant name --- Sanatana Dharma or Eternal Religion. This was the name that the people of India gave to their religion. It is based on the eternal impersonal principles discovered by different sages at different times and collected together in the Upanisads. As such, Sanatana Dharma is not derived from the authority of any single personal founder.

The sages of the Upanisads discovered the truths of religion, and they ( these sages ) are honoured as such; but the truths themselves are eternal, and can be discovered by any person in any age. In fact, Sanatana Dharma holds that it is precisely this effort to discover the truth by oneself and its final realization that constitute religion, and not the effort to believe in a creed or dogma about God or soul.

This impersonal foundation of the Indian religions stands in sharp contrast to the personal authority of a founder of all the other world religions. Early Buddhism was an impersonal religion. Buddha discovered the Truth and showed the way to Truth others. He described himself as the Tathagata, the path-finder, and declared that Buddhahood was a state, not a person, and that it was attainable by all.

In this he was a teacher of Sanatana Dharma, and his teaching was close to the spirit of the Upanisads. Later, when he was transformed into a personal founder of a particular religion, a spirit of exclusiveness developed; and from being, like Vedanta, an Eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma, it was changed into a religion with history, so much so that, without the authority of the personal founder, the religion so interpreted cannot stand.

This limitation of its scope was one of the important reasons for its later disappearnce, in name and form, though certainly not in substance, from India, a phenomenon in Indian history not confined to this one instance only. 

Vedanta or Sanatana Dharma is not the same thing as Hinduism. The words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ were not coined by the people of India to refer to themselves or to their religion. As was said earlier, they themselves designated their religion as ‘Sanatana Dharma’, Eternal Religion. ‘Hindu’ was a term coined by foreigners, especially the ancient Persians, to designate the people of India in a territorial sense; it only meant the people living on the east of the river Sindhu ( modern Indus ), and they pronounced ‘S’ as ‘H’. Thus the ‘Sindhu’ of Sanskrit became ‘Hindu’, and their land Hindusthan. (The spiritual life of the Indian people, Swami Ranganathananda, The Ramakrishna mission institute of culture )

(ক্রমশ)