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INTRODUCTION.
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due to avidyâ. 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 Sûtras should be thus understood. If we accept the interpretations of the school of Sankara, it remains altogether unintelligible why the Sûtrakâra should never hint even at what Sankara 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 Sûtrakâra was anxious to hide the true doctrine of the Upanishads as a sort of esoteric teaching, we might be more ready to accept Sankara's mode of interpretation. But no such reasons are forthcoming; nowhere among the avowed followers of the Sânkara 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 Gaudapâda 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 concerning 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, 20-22, which three Sûtras state the views of Asmarathya, Audulomi, and Kâsakritsna as to the reason why, in a certain passage of the Brihadâranyaka, characteristics of the individual soul are ascribed to the highest Self. The siddhânta view is enounced in Sûtra 22, ' avasthiter iti Kâsakritsnah,' i. e. Kâsakritsna (accounts for the circumstance mentioned) on the ground of the 'permanent abiding or abode.' By this 'permanent abiding' Sankara understands the Lord's abiding as, i. e. existing as-or in the condition of -the individual soul, and thus sees in the Sûtra an enuncia
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| SR No. | 007685 |
| Book Title | Grihya Sutras |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Hermann Oldenberg |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1886 |
| Total Pages | 2642 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 49 MB |