Saturday, January 15, 2011

Advaita Vedanta

The first person to explicitly consolidate the principles of Advaita Vedanta was Adi Shankara. (788 CE - 820 CE)

Shankara taught that access to Vedic texts, a prerequisite for liberation, should be restricted, in accordance with caste rules, to upper-caste Hindu males. He seems to have generally held that liberation can only be attained by a male renunciant of the Brahmin caste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta