PÂDA IV. · 3

Sa@nkara's method thus enables him in a certain way to do justice to different stages of historical development, to recognise clearly existing differences which other systematisers are intent on obliterating. And there has yet to be made a further and even more important admission in favour of his system. It is not only more pliable, more capable of amalgamating heterogeneous material than other systems, but its fundamental doctrines are manifestly in greater harmony with the essential teaching of the Upanishads than those of other Vedântic systems. Above we were unable to allow that the distinction made by Sa@nkara between Brahman and Îsvara is known to the Upanishads; but we must now admit that if, for the purpose of determining the nature of the highest being, a choice has to be made between those texts which represent Brahman as nirguna, and those which ascribe to it personal attributes, Sa@nkara is right in giving preference to texts of the former kind. The Brahman of the old Upanishads, from which the souls spring to enjoy individual consciousness in their waking state, and into which they sink back temporarily in the state of deep dreamless sleep and permanently in death, is certainly not represented adequately by the strictly personal Îsvara of Râmânuja, who rules the world in wisdom and mercy. The older Upanishads, at any rate, lay very little stress upon personal attributes of their highest being, and hence Sa@nkara is right in so far as he assigns to his hypostatised personal Îsvara29 a lower place than to his absolute Brahman. That he also faithfully represents the prevailing spirit of the Upanishads in his theory of the ultimate fate {Intro 125} of the soul, we have already remarked above. And although the Mâyâ doctrine cannot, in my opinion, be said to form part of the teaching of the Upanishads, it cannot yet be asserted to contradict it openly, because the very point which it is meant to elucidate, viz. the mode in which the physical universe and the multiplicity of individual souls originate, is left by the Upanishads very much in the dark. The later growth of the Mâyâ doctrine on the basis of the Upanishads is therefore quite intelligible, and I fully agree with Mr. Gough when he says regarding it that there has been no addition to the system from without but only a development from within, no graft but only growth. The lines of thought which finally led to the elaboration of the full-blown Mâyâ theory may be traced with considerable certainty. In the first place, deepening speculation on Brahman tended to the notion of advaita being taken in a more and more strict sense, as implying not only the exclusion of any second principle external to Brahman, but also the absence of any elements of duality or plurality in the nature of the one universal being itself; a tendency agreeing with the spirit of a certain set of texts from the Upanishads. And as the fact of the appearance of a manifold world cannot be denied, the only way open to thoroughly consistent speculation was to deny at any rate its reality, and to call it a mere illusion due to an unreal principle, with which Brahman is indeed associated, but which is unable to break the unity of Brahman's nature just on account of its own unreality. And, in the second place, a more thorough following out of the conception that the union with Brahman is to be reached through true knowledge only, not unnaturally led to the conclusion that what separates us in our unenlightened state from Brahman is such as to allow itself to be completely sublated by an act of knowledge; is, in other words, nothing else but an erroneous notion, an illusion.—A further circumstance which may not impossibly have co-operated to further the development of the theory of the world's unreality will be referred to later on.30

We have above been obliged to leave it an open question what kind of Vedânta is represented by the Vedânta-sûtras, although reason was shown for the supposition that in some important points their teaching is more closely related to the system of Râmânuja than to that of Sa@nkara. If so, the philosophy of Sa@nkara would on the whole stand nearer to the teaching of the Upanishads than the Sûtras of Bâdarâyana. This would indeed be a somewhat unexpected conclusion—for, judging a priori, we should be more inclined to assume a direct propagation of the true doctrine of the Upanishads through Bâdarâyana to Sa@nkara—but a priori considerations have of course no weight against positive evidence to the contrary. There are, moreover, other facts in the history of Indian philosophy and theology which help us better to appreciate the possibility of Bâdarâyana's Sûtras already setting forth a doctrine that lays greater stress on the personal character of the highest being than is in agreement with the prevailing tendency of the Upanishads. That the pure doctrine of those ancient Brahminical treatises underwent at a rather early period amalgamations with beliefs which most probably had sprung up in altogether different—priestly or non-priestly—communities is a well-known circumstance; it suffices for our purposes to refer to the most eminent of the early literary monuments in which an amalgamation of the kind mentioned is observable, viz. the Bhagavadgîtâ. The doctrine of the Bhagavadgîtâ represents a fusion of the Brahman theory of the Upanishads with the belief in a personal highest being—Krishna or Vishnu—which in many respects approximates very closely to the system of the Bhâgavatas; the attempts of a certain set of Indian commentators to explain it as setting forth pure Vedânta, i.e. the pure doctrine of the Upanishads, may simply be set aside. But this same Bhagavadgîtâ is quoted in Bâdarâyana's Sûtras (at least according to the unanimous explanations of the most eminent scholiasts of different schools) as inferior to Sruti only in authority. The Sûtras, {Intro 127} moreover, refer in different places to certain Vedântic portions of the Mahâbhârata, especially the twelfth book, several of which represent forms of Vedânta distinctly differing from Sa@nkara's teaching, and closely related to the system of the Bhâgavatas.

Facts of this nature—from entering into the details of which we are prevented by want of space—tend to mitigate the primâ facie strangeness of the assumption that the Vedânta-sûtras, which occupy an intermediate position between the Upanishads and Sa@nkara, should yet diverge in their teaching from both. The Vedânta of Gaudapâda and Sa@nkara would in that case mark a strictly orthodox reaction against all combinations of non-Vedic elements of belief and doctrine with the teaching of the Upanishads. But although this form of doctrine has ever since Sa@nkara's time been the one most generally accepted by Brahminic students of philosophy, it has never had any wide-reaching influence on the masses of India. It is too little in sympathy with the wants of the human heart, which, after all, are not so very different in India from what they are elsewhere. Comparatively few, even in India, are those who rejoice in the idea of a universal non-personal essence in which their own individuality is to be merged and lost for ever, who think it sweet 'to be wrecked on the ocean of the Infinite.'31 The only forms of Vedântic philosophy which are—and can at any time have been—really popular, are those in which the Brahman of the Upanishads has somehow transformed itself into a being, between which and the devotee there can exist a personal relation, love and faith on the part of man, justice tempered by mercy on the part of the divinity. The only religious books of widespread influence are such as the Râmâyan of Tulsidâs, which lay no stress on the distinction between an absolute Brahman inaccessible to all human wants and sympathies, and a shadowy Lord whose very conception depends on the illusory principle of Mâyâ, but love to dwell on the delights of devotion {Intro 128} to one all-wise and merciful ruler, who is able and willing to lend a gracious ear to the supplication of the worshipper.

The present translation of the Vedânta-sûtras does not aim at rendering that sense which their author may have aimed at conveying, but strictly follows Sa@nkara's interpretation. The question as to how far the latter agrees with the views held by Bâdarâyana has been discussed above, with the result that for the present it must, on the whole, be left an open one. In any case it would not be feasible to combine a translation of Sa@nkara's commentary with an independent version of the Sûtras which it explains. Similar considerations have determined the method followed in rendering the passages of the Upanishads referred to in the Sûtras and discussed at length by Sa@nkara. There also the views of the commentator have to be followed closely; otherwise much of the comment would appear devoid of meaning. Hence, while of course following on the whole the critical translation published by Professor Max Müller in the earlier volumes of this Series, I had, in a not inconsiderable number of cases, to modify it so as to render intelligible Sa@nkara's explanations and reasonings. I hope to find space in the introduction to the second volume of this translation for making some general remarks on the method to be followed in translating the Upanishads.

I regret that want of space has prevented me from extracting fuller notes from later scholiasts. The notes given are based, most of them, on the tîkâs composed by Ânandagiri and Govindânanda (the former of which is unpublished as yet, so far as I know), and on the Bhâmatî.

My best thanks are due to Pandits Râma Misra Sâstrin and Ga@ngâdhara Sâstrin of the Benares Sanskrit College, whom I have consulted on several difficult passages. Greater still are my obligations to Pandit Kesava Sâstrin, of the same institution, who most kindly undertook to read a proof of the whole of the present volume, and whose advice has enabled me to render my version of more than one passage more definite or correct.