Epilogue

Abstract

Abstract The Epilogue argues that Śaṅkara’s enduring significance in Indian intellectual history lies not in his originality as a philosopher or his portrayal as a mystic but in his theology of liberation. While often described as a synthesizer of prior doctrines and cast as a mystic by Western and Indian scholars influenced by Otto and Schleiermacher, Śaṅkara’s project was to repudiate the Yogic emphasis on direct, experiential knowledge and the doctrine of prasaṅkhyāna, which subordinated scriptural cognition to meditative intuition. Instead, Śaṅkara advanced a hermeneutics of liberation grounded in scriptural exegesis (śravaṇa) and philosophical reflection (manana), asserting that the realization of Brahman was mediated through language yet culminated in perfect dispassion and non-identification. His innovation lay in reinterpreting the Upaniṣadic identity statements as affirmations of real identity rather than meditative constructs, thereby resolving the problem of mediacy in Vedic theology. This approach, coupled with the pāramparya model of successive causality, required prior ethical purification before intellectual inquiry, reversing the ritual-centric soteriology of his predecessors. Ultimately, Śaṅkara’s theology rejected mystical immediacy in favor of anamnesis—the recognition that “I am the Self”—and positioned Advaita Vedānta as a system where liberation was achieved through clarified knowledge rather than experiential intuition.