Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1618

xvi
VEDÂNTA-SÛTRAS.
upon with much hope of success; but it becomes much more urgent, and at the same time more feasible, when we meet in India itself with systems claiming to be Vedântic and based on interpretations of the Sûtras and Upanishads more or less differing from those of Sankara. The claims of those systems to be in the possession of the right understanding of the fundamental authorities of the Vedanta must at any rate be examined, even if we should finally be compelled to reject them.
It appears that already at a very early period the Vedanta-sútras had come to be looked upon as an authoritative work, not to be neglected by any who wished to affiliate their own doctrines to the Veda. At present, at any rate, there are very few Hindu sects not interested in showing that their distinctive tenets are countenanced by Bâdarayana's teaching. Owing to this the commentaries on the Sûtras have in the course of time become very numerous, and it is at present impossible to give a full and accurate enumeration even of those actually existing, much less of those referred to and quoted. Mr. Fitz-Edward Hall, in his Bibliographical Index, mentions fourteen coinmentaries, copies of which had been inspected by himself. Some among these (as, for instance, Râmânuga's Vedântasara, No. XXXV) are indeed not commentaries in the strict sense of the word, but rather systematic expositions of the doctrine supposed to be propounded in the Satras; but, on the other hand, there are in existence several true commentaries which had not been accessible to Fitz-Edward Hall. It would hardly be practical—and certainly not feasible in this place—to submit all the existing bhâshyas to a critical enquiry at once. All we can do here is to single out one or a few of the more important ones, and to compare their interpretations with those given by Sankara, and with the text of the Sûtras themselves.
The bhâshya, which in this connexion is the first to press itself upon our attention, is the one composed by the famous Vaishnava theologian and philosopher Râmânuga, who is supposed to have lived in the twelfth century. The Râmanuga or, as it is often called, the Sri-bhâshya appears to be
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