Vijñānabhikṣu

Vijñānabhikṣu, a Hindu philosopher who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in northern India, was a systematic thinker who elaborated on earlier teachings from the Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, and Yoga philosophical schools. In his earliest works, he upheld a form of realist Vedānta philosophy known as “Difference and Non-difference” (Bhedābheda Vedānta) and critiqued the anti-realism of the “Nondual” (Advaita Vedānta) subschool. With his argument that Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, and Yoga are best understood as complementary aspects of a single comprehensive philosophy rather than competing systems, he anticipated themes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hindu reformers.