What Is The Relationship Between Advaita Vadenta And Buddhism? Is Advaita Only A Copy Of Buddhism?

Advaita Vadenta is not just a copy of buddhism. For the past few centuries now, the advaita school of thought has been criticized as being "pracanna bauddham" which literally means "buddhism in disguise". This criticism arises basically from some of the vaishNava schools of thought of the  vedAnta, but it is totally misplaced. Firstly, there really is no one "buddhism" and for the criticism to be true, it must be specified which school of buddhism is Advaita a copy of.

SankarAcArya, the philosopher has exerted a lot of effort condemning many of the philosophical stances taken by the various schools of buddhism in his commentaries on the text of the scriptures. Among the modern academic scholars, advaita vedAnta is most often contrasted and evaluated against the madhyamaka and the yogAcAra schools of buddhism. This has been inspired mostly by the truth that the mANDUkya kArikAs, which is written by gauDapAda, Sankara's paramaguru, exhibits an immense familiarity and awareness of this school of thought of the buddhism.

However, if it is held that advaita vedAnta is fundamentally the identical to madhyamaka buddhism, it has to be pointed out that such an outlook stems and arises from a confusion of the significant system of belief of both advaita vedAnta and madhyamaka buddhism. There are many basic details in which advaita essentially differs from the madhyamaka school of the buddhism. As for yogAcAra, the points of resemblance come to pass from the fact that both the advaita vedAnta and the yogAcAra buddhism have a place for and stress upon yogic practice. But it is the same as other schools of Indian religious philosophy.