________________
xlviii
VEDÂNTA-SÛTRAS.
and thereby become simple gold again-do not continue to exist in those causes.—Here also the argumentation is specially directed against the Sânkhyas, who, in order to account for the materiality and the various imperfections of the world, think it necessary to assume a causal substance participating in the same characteristics.
Adhik. IV (12) points out that the line of reasoning followed in the preceding adhikarana is valid also against other theories, such as the atomistic doctrine.
The one Satra (13) constituting Adhik. V teaches, according to Sarkara, that although the enjoying souls as well as the objects of fruition are in reality nothing but Brahman, and on that account identical, yet the two sets may practically be held apart, just as in ordinary life we hold apart, and distinguish as separate individual things, the waves, ripples, and foam of the sea, although at the bottom waves, ripples, and foam are all of them identical as being neither more nor less than sea-water.— The Sri-bhâshya gives a totally different interpretation of the Sûtra, according to which the latter has nothing whatever to do with the eventual non-distinction of enjoying souls and objects to be enjoyed. Translated according to Râmânuga's view, the Satra runs as follows: 'If non-distinction (of the Lord and the individual souls) is said to result from the circumstance of (the Lord himself) becoming an enjoyer (a soul), we refute this objection by instances from every-day experience. That is to say: If it be maintained that froin our doctrine previously expounded, according to which this world springs from the Lord and constitutes his body, it follows that the Lord, as an embodied being, is not essentially different from other souls, and subject to fruition as they are; we reply that the Lord's having a body does not involve his being subject to fruition, not any more than in ordinary life a king, although himself an embodied being, is affected by the experiences of pleasure and pain which his servants have to undergo.The construction which Râmânuga puts on the Sutra is not repugnant either to the words of the Sätra or to the context in which the latter stands, and that it rests on earlier authority appears
Digitized by Google