IS BUDDHISM A DIFFERENT TYPE OF HINDUISM?
Few scholars would disagree that at the time of the Buddha, a very heterogeneous and actively developing religious culture flourished in India. This generally accepted historical reality proves that Buddhism was neither real a protest against, or an offshoot of Hinduism (this view is even expressed for example in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica). Buddhism simply proved to be one of the more successful new schools of thought within a large variety of philosophies. As debate is a very old traditional means of testing (spiritual) teachers in Indian culture, of course one can trace many philosophical works (especially in the Mahayana tradition), that could be interpreted as protesting against, or arguing with other traditions. Western philosophers may have misinterpreted these works as “protest”, as such a thing is unthinkable within Western religious systems. The Buddha himself actually refused to argue on spiritual matters, he explained that he only presented what he had realised as the tru
