due to avidya. But this is just what we should like to see proved, and the proof offered in no case amounts to more than a reference to the system which demands that the Sutras should be thus understood. If we accept the inter- pretations of the school of 5ankara,it remains altogether un- intelligible why the Sutrakara should never hint even at what vSankara is anxious again and again to point out at length, viz. that the greater part of the work contains a kind of exoteric doctrine only, ever tending to mislead the student who does not keep in view what its nature is. If other reasons should make it probable that the Sutrakara was anxious to hide the true doctrine of the Upanishads as a sort of esoteric teaching, we might be more ready to accept vSankara's mode of interpretation. But no such reasons are forthcoming ; nowhere among the avowed followers of the vSankara system is there any tendency to treat the kernel of their philosophy as something to be jealously guarded and hidden. On the contrary, they all, from Gau- rfapada down to the most modern writer, consider it their most important, nay, only task to inculcate again and again in the clearest and most unambiguous language that all appearance of multiplicity is a vain illusion, that the Lord and the individual souls are in reality one, and that all knowledge but this one knowledge is without true value.
There remains one more important passage concern- ing the relation of the individual soul to the highest Self, a passage which attracted our attention above, when we were reviewing the evidence for early divergence of opinion among the teachers of the Vedanta. I mean I, 4, 20-32, which three Sutras state the views of A^ma- rathya, Au^/ulomi, and Kajakrztsna as to the reason why, in a certain passage of the Brzhadara/zyaka, characteristics of the individual soul are ascribed to the highest Self. The siddhanta view is enounced in Sutra 22/ avasthiter iti Ka^a- krztsna^,' i.e. Klrakrz'tsna (accounts for the circumstance mentioned) on the ground of the 'permanent abiding or abode.' By this ' permanent abiding' vSankara understands the Lord's abiding as, i. e. existing as — or in the condition of — the individual soul, and thus sees in the Sutra an enuncia-
vedanta-s6tras.
tion of his own view that the individual soul is nothing but the highest Self, 'avikrzta^ parame^varo £*ivo nanya^.' Rama- nu^a, on the other hand, likewise accepting Ka^akrztsna's opinion as the siddhanta view, explains ' avasthiti ' as the Lord's permanent abiding within the individual soul, as de- scribed in the antaryamin-brahma^a. — We can hardly main- tain that the term 'avasthiti' cannot have the meaning ascribed to it by 5ankara, viz. special state or condition, but so much must be urged in favour of Rarnanu^a's interpreta- tion that in the five other places where avasthiti (or ana- vasthiti) is met with in the Sutras (I, 2, 17; II, 2, 4 ; II, 2, 13; II, 3, 24; III, 3, 32) it regularly means permanent abiding or permanent abode within something.
It appears from the above review of the teaching of the
Sutras that only a comparatively very small proportion
of them contribute matter enabling us to form a judgment
Introduction. Ci
as to the nature of the philosophical doctrine advocated by Badariya^a. The reason of this is that the greater part of the work is taken up with matters which, according to .Sarikara's terminology, form part of the so-called lower knowledge, and throw no light upon philosophical questions in the stricter sense of the word. This circumstance is not without significance. In later works belonging to .Sankara's school in which the distinction of a higher and lower vidycl is clearly recognised, the topics constituting the latter are treated with great shortness ; and rightly so, for they are unable to accomplish the highest aim of man, i. e. final release. When we therefore, on the other hand, find that the subjects of the so-called lower vidycl are treated very fully in the Vedanta-sutras, when we observe, for instance, the almost tedious length to which the investigation of the unity of vidyas (most of which are so-called sagu/za, i. e. lower vidyas) is carried in the third adhyaya, or the fact of almost the whole fourth adhyaya being devoted to the ultimate fate of the possessor of the lower vidya ; we cer- tainly feel ourselves confirmed in our conclusion that what 6ankara looked upon as comparatively unimportant formed in Bcldarciya^a's opinion part of that knowledge higher than which there is none, and which therefore is entitled to the fullest and most detailed exposition.
The question as to what kind of system is represented by the Vedcinta-sutras may be approached in another way also. While hitherto we have attempted to penetrate to the meaning of the Sutras by means of the different com- mentaries, we might try the opposite road, and, in the first place, attempt to ascertain independently of the Sutras what doctrine is set forth in the Upanishads, whose teach- ing the Sutras doubtless aim at systematising. If, it might be urged, the Upanishads can be convincingly shown to embody a certain settled doctrine, we must consider it at the least highly probable that that very same doctrine — of whatever special nature it may be — is hidden in the enig- matical aphorisms of Badaraya^a 1.
I do not, however, consider this line of argumentation
1 Cp. Gough's Philosophy of the Upanishads, pp. 240 ff.
cii vedanta-s^tras.
a safe one. Even if it could be shown that the teaching of all the chief Upanishads agrees in all essential points (a subject to which some attention will be paid later on), we should not on that account be entitled unhesitatingly to assume that the Sutras set forth the same doctrine. What- ever the true philosophy of the Upanishads may be, there remains the undeniable fact that there exist and have existed since very ancient times not one but several essen- tially differing systems, all of which lay claim to the dis- tinction of being the true representatives of the teaching of the Upanishads as well as of the Sutras. Let us suppose, for argument's sake, that, for instance, the doctrine of Mayd is distinctly enunciated in the Upanishads ; nevertheless Ramanu£*a and, for all we know to the contrary, the whole series of more ancient commentators on whom he looked as authorities in the interpretation of the Sutras, denied that the Upanishads teach Maya, and it is hence by no means impossible that Bddaraya/za should have done the same. The a priori style of reasoning as to the teaching of the Sutras is therefore without much force.
But apart from any intention of arriving thereby at the meaning of the Sutras there, of course, remains for us the all-important question as to the true teaching of the Upa- nishads, a question which a translator of the Sutras and .Sankara cannot afford to pass over in silence, especially after reason has been shown for the conclusion that the Sutras and the vSarikara-bhashya do not agree concerning most important points of Vedantic doctrine. The Sutras as well as the later commentaries claim, in the first place, to be nothing more than systematisations of the Upani- shads, and for us a considerable part at least of their value and interest lies in this their nature. Hence the further question presents itself by whom the teaching of the Upa- nishads has been most adequately systematised, whether by Badaraya/za, or vSarikara, or Ramanu^-a, or some other commentator. This question requires to be kept altogether separate from the enquiry as to which commentator most faithfully renders the contents of the Sutras, and it is by no means impossible that 5ankara, for instance, should in
INTRODUCTION. Clll
the end have to be declared a more trustworthy guide with
regard to the teaching of the Upanishads than concerning
the meaning of the Sutras*
We must remark here at once that, whatever commenta- tor may be found to deserve preference on the whole, it appears fairly certain already at the outset that none of the systems which Indian ingenuity has succeeded in erecting on the basis of the Upanishads can be accepted in its entirety. The reason for this lies in the nature of the Upanishads themselves. To the Hindu commentator and philosopher the Upanishads came down as a body of revealed truth whose teaching had, somehow or other, to be shown to be thoroughly consistent and free from contra- dictions ; a system had to be devised in which a suitable place could be allotted to every one of the multitudinous statements which they make on the various points of Vedantic doctrine. But to the European scholar, or in fact to any one whose mind is not bound by the doctrine of >Sruti, it will certainly appear that all such attempts stand self-condemned. If anything is evident even on a cursory review of the Upanishads — and the impression so created is only strengthened by a more careful investigation — it is that they do not constitute a systematic whole. They themselves, especially the older ones, give the most unmis- takable indications on that point. Not only are the doctrines expounded in the different Upanishads ascribed to different teachers, but even the separate sections of one and the same Upanishad are assigned to different authorities. It would be superfluous to quote examples of what a mere look at the .Oandogya Upanishad, for instance, suffices to prove. It is of course not impossible that even a multitude of teachers should agree in imparting precisely the same doctrine ; but in the case of the Upanishads that is certainly not antecedently probable. For, in the first place, the teachers who are credited with the doctrines of the Upanishads manifestly belonged to different sec- tions of Brahminical society, to different Vedic j-akhas ; nay, some of them the tradition makes out to have been kshattriyas. And, in the second place, the period, whose
civ vedAnta-s^tras.
mental activity is represented in the Upanishads, was a creative one, and as such cannot be judged according to the analogy of later periods of Indian philosophic de- velopment. The later philosophic schools as, for instance, the one of which vSankara is the great representative, were no longer free in their speculations, but strictly bound by a traditional body of texts considered sacred, which could not be changed or added to, but merely sys- tematised and commented upon. Hence the rigorous uniformity of doctrine characteristic of those schools. But there had been a time when, what later writers received as a sacred legacy, determining and confining the whole course of their speculations, first sprang from the minds of creative thinkers not fettered by the tradition of any school, but freely following the promptings of their own heads and hearts. By the absence of school traditions, I do not in- deed mean that the great teachers who appear in the Upanishads were free to make an entirely new start, and to assign to their speculations any direction they chose ; for nothing can be more certain than that, at the period as the outcome of whose philosophical activity the Upanishads have to be considered, there were in circulation certain broad speculative ideas overshadowing the mind of every member of Brahminical society. But those ideas were neither very definite nor worked out in detail, and hence allowed themselves to be handled and fashioned in different ways by different individuals. With whom the few leading conceptions traceable in the teaching of all Upanishads first originated, is a point on which those writings themselves do not enlighten us, and which we have no other means for settling ; most probably they are to be viewed not as the creation of any individual mind, but as the gradual outcome of speculations carried on by generations of Vedic theologians. In the Upanishads themselves, at any rate, they appear as floating mental possessions which may be seized and moulded into new forms by any one who feels within himself the required inspiration. A certain vague knowledge of Brahman, the great hidden being in which all this manifold world is one, seems to be
Introduction. Cv
spread everywhere, and often issues from the most unex- pected sources. 6Vetaketu receives instruction from his father Uddalaka ; the proud G&rgya has to become the pupil of A^ata^atru, the king of Karf ; Bhugyu Sahya- yani receives answers to his questions from a Gandharva possessing a maiden; Satyakama learns what Brahman is from the bull of the herd he is tending, from Agni and from a flamingo ; and Upako^ala is taught by the sacred fires in his teacher's house. All this is of course legend, not history; but the fact that the philosophic and theological doctrines of the Upanishads are clothed in this legendary garb certainly does not strengthen the ex- pectation of finding in them a rigidly systematic doctrine.