Archaeologists in the Ghaggar-Hakra Basin have unearthed 5th-century BCE clay tablets inscribed in an early Brahmi script. The texts, titled Viveka-Sutra, offer a sophisticated treatise on the Philosophy of Discernment, focusing on the cognitive ability to distinguish between the eternal and the transient. This find suggests that the intellectual foundations of the later Advaita schools were already well-developed in the pre-Mauryan era.
Scholars believe these tablets belonged to an early academy of logic located along the banks of the ancient river. The Viveka-Sutra outlines specific mental exercises designed to refine the intellect (buddhi) through a series of logical paradoxes and contemplative inquiries. This discovery is expected to reshape the timeline of the development of Indian analytical philosophy.