Ignorance of Kevaladvaita of Sankara is profound. In course of time, it came to be highly misinterpreted and gave rise to many misnomers, uninformed and ill-informed accounts and thereby misleading criticism. E.g.,
(a) Sankaras Advaita came to be branded as Mayavada and because of this; it usually comes to be summarized in oft-quoted verse, which runs as follows: Brahman is the only reality; the world is ultimately false; and the individual soul is non-different from Brahman, although Sankara has never subscribed such a view.
(b) The metaphysics of Brahman at the hands of Sankara came to be substituted by the metaphysics of Avidya.
(c) The world (Jagat) came to be held as completely condemnable and worthless (tuccha) in the tradition of Advaita.
(d) Jivanmukti came to be overshadowed by Videhamukti.
(e) A Samnyasin came to be held to be a paradigmatic Advaitin.
This book is an attempt to find out whether and to what extent, if at all could these views have been anticipated by Sankara or some kind of extension of his thought and brand of Kevaladvaita together with its conceptual framework. It is also attempted to inquire where the seeds and roots of these views lie and how and why in course of time came to exercise impact upon minds of subsequent scholars and came to be wrongly attributed to Sankaras Advaita.
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