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Presidential Address
781
The evolution of the doctrines of Vedanta is too wellknown to need much elaboration. However, a brief review of the philosophy of the Acharyas may be attempted so as to mark the principal stages of its evolution. The earliest school of the Vedantic theology was Bhedabheda-Vada 1. e. Difference-cum -Unity, in which bheda and abheda were regarded as equally real, and the ideal of life was supposed to consist in recognizing this fact or in progressing from one to the other (doctrine of आश्मरथ्य and औडुलोमि ). Next came the Upadhi-Vada in which abheda was regarded as essential and real, and bheda as dependent upon upadhi, yet equally real. This more or less self-contradictory formula of the art and उपाधिवाद was superseded by the Kevalādvaita of Sankara in which the Unity was declared to be real and the difference as unreal. The next stage was to refuse to relegate Individual Spirits and Nature to the category of the Unreal, and to substitute for Sankara's Absolute Monism-with-Maya the doctrine of a triune (three-in-one) complex Reality consisting of the three principles of God, Nature and Man, of which the two latter were forms of the first, but all the three were equally real. To the next AcaryaVallabha-all, the preceding doctrines. including Sankara's Kevaladvaita which was based on Māyā-vāda appeared to be a departure from rigorous Advaitism, inasmuch as, in all of them something over and above Brahma was posited. Hence he claimed for his own doctrine of simple Brahma without Maya the title of Brahmavāda or Suddhadvaita 2. e. pure advaita as distinguished from the kevaladvaita of Sankara and
