[Advaita-l] oldest text considering everyone as oneself

[Abhishek RK]

Namaste,
I am sorry. I should have mentioned the context in which I was saying this,
viz, the philosophical position of Vedanta on the Vedas, not the
Guru-Shishya sampradaya. All the Shankara-mathas' Guru-parampara start with
Bhagavan Narayana or Bhagavan Sadashiva.

sadAshiva samArambhaM sha~NkarAchArya madhyamaM|
asmadAchArya paryantaM vande guru paramparaM||

Regards,
Abhishek

On 8/10/06, Lakshminarayana <narayana_kl_71 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Namaste,


But there must be an unbroken tradition of guru and
> shishya in a particular vedAntic school. Sankara
> himself talks about the importance of tradition
> (sAmpradAya) in bhagavad gIta bhAshya. Otherwise you
> can have possibilities like a new AchArya coming up
> after 100 years and giving a completely new
> interpretation to the upanishads and having a
> legitimate claim to being a vedAntin.
>
> So it still makes sense to ask the following question
> -
> When exactly did this unbroken succession of guru and
> shishya (of the advaita-vedAnta school) start? If it
> is at any particular point of time, we face with the
> same problem of not having an unbroken sAmpradAya.
> This issue can be easily resolved by making Ishwara as
> the first guru, as most vedAntic schools do it.
> Because Ishwara doesn't need any teacher and any
> tradition starting from Ishwara can claim to have the
> maximum legitimacy.




-- 
> satyena dhAryate pR^ithvi satyena tapate raviH|
> satyena vAti vAyushca sarvaM satye pratishThitam||
>
> calA lakShmIshcalAH prANAshcalaM jIvita yauvanaM|
> calAcale ca saMsAre dharma eko hi nishcalaH||