Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 34 — The Vedanta-Sutras, Part I (Sankara/Thibaut, page scans)
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The translator’s English as printed. The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
whole of the Upanishads to a system consistent and free from contradictions is an intrinsically impossible one. But the task once being given, we are quite ready to admit that .Sankara's system is most probably the best which can be devised.
INTRODUCTION. CXXU1
While unable to allow that the Upanishads recognise a lower and higher knowledge of Brahman, in fact the distinction of a lower and higher Brahman, we yet acknowledge that the adoption of that distinction furnishes the interpreter with an instrument of extraordinary power for reducing to an orderly whole the heterogeneous material presented by the old theosophic treatises. This becomes very manifest as soon as we compare vSahkara's system with that of Ramânug-a. The latter recognises only one Brahman which is, as we should say, a personal God, and he therefore lays stress on all those passages of the Upanishads which ascribe to Brahman the attributes of a personal God, such as omniscience and omnipotence. Those passages, on the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced mass of impersonal intelligence, Ramanufa is unable to accept frankly and fairly, and has to misinterpret them more or less to make them fall in with his system. The same remark holds good with regard to those texts which represent the individual soul as finally identifying itself with Brahman ; Rdmanu^-a cannot allow a complete identification but merely an assimilation carried as far as possible. Sankara, on the other hand, by skilfully ringing the changes on a higher and a lower doctrine, somehow manages to find room for whatever the Upanishads have to say. Where the text speaks of Brahman as transcending all attributes, the highest doctrine is set forth. Where Brahman is called the All-knowing ruler of the world, the author means to propound the lower knowledge of the Lord only. And where the legends about the primary being and its way of creating the world become somewhat crude and gross, Hira/zyagarbha and Vira^* are summoned forth and charged with the responsibility. Of Wirkg Mr. Gough remarks (p. 55) that in him a place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads for the purusha of the ancient ^/shis, the divine being out of whom the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we substitute for the ' poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox Vedânta system — for the Upanishads give no indication whatever
CXX1V VEDANTA-stiTRAS.
the divine being out of whom the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we substitute for the ' poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox Vedânta system — for the Upanishads give no indication whatever
CXX1V VEDANTA-stiTRAS.
that by their purusha they understand not the simple old purusha but the Virâg* occupying a definite position in a highly elaborate system ; — but the mere phrase/ providing a place' intimates with sufficient clearness the nature of the work in which systematisers of the Vedantic doctrine are engaged. Sankara'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 Vedantic systems. Above we were unable to allow that the distinction made by 5ankara between Brahman and l^vara 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 nirgu/za, and those which ascribe to it personal attributes, 5ankara 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 1 jvara of Ramanu^a, 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 Sankara is right in so far as he assigns to his hypostatised personal i^vara1 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 esents the prevailing spirit of the Upanishads in his theory of the ultimate fate
1 The tjvara who allots to the individual souls their new forms of embodiment in strict accordance with their merit or demerit cannot be called anything else but a personal God.
1 The tjvara who allots to the individual souls their new forms of embodiment in strict accordance with their merit or demerit cannot be called anything else but a personal God. That this personal conscious being is at the same time identified with the totality of the individual souls in the unconscious state of deep dreamless sleep, is one of those extraordinary contradictions which thorough-going systematisers of Vedantic doctrine are apparently unable to avoid altogether.
INTRODUCTION. CXXV
of the soul, we have already remarked above. And although the Maya 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 Maya 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 Maya 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.
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