Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

The Vedantic idea of knowledge does not present the same difficufties. The Cfita takes it over at once and completely and throu^out the six chapters quietly substitutes the still immutable Brahman of the Vedantins, the One .witl|y|t a se.co nd immanent in all cosmos, for the still i K pu- table but multiple Purusha of the SankhyasT It accepts throughout these chapters knowledge \pid realisation of the Brahman as the most impgrtsm^ the ipdispe nsable means of liberation, even while it insists on desireless works as an essential part of knowledge. It accepts equally Nirvana of the ego in the infinite equality of the immutable, impersonal Brahman as essential to liberation ; it practically identifies this extinction with the Sankhya return of the inactive immutable Purusha upon itself when it emerges out of identification with the SANKHYA, YOGA AND VEDANTA 2actions of Prakriti ; it combines and fuses the language of the yedanta with the language of the S^tik^a, as had already indeed been done by certaiiT'bf the Upanishads.* But still there is a defect in the Vedantic position which has to be overcome. We may, perhaps, conjecture that at this time the Vedanta had not yet redeveloped the later theistic tendencies which in the Upanishads are already present as an element, but not so prominent as in the Vaishnava philosophies of the later Vedantins where they become indeed not only prominent but paramount. We may take it that thejarthodox Vedanta was, at any rate in its main tendencies, pantheistic at the basis, monistic at the summit.f It knew of the Brahman, one without a second ; it knew of the Go ds^“Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma and the rest, who all resolve themselves into the Biahm^nj^ but the one supreme Brahman as the one, Jfshwara, Purusha, Deva — words often applied to if' in the Upanishads and justifying to that extent, yet passing beyond the Sankhya and the theistic conceptions — was an idea that had fallen from its pride of place the names could only be applied in a strictly logical Brahmavada to sub- ordinate or inferior phases of the Brahman-idea. • Especially the Swetaswatara.