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it with a status which is co-ordinate with that of identity (or brahman). In order to be mutually co-ordinate elements both identity and difference must be equally primary which, though claimed to be so, is not the case in Nimbārka's philosophy. That Nimbārka favours asserting that both the elements are "equally real” is due to the awareness of the equal importance of the element of difference' also in reality. There is, however, no logical warrant for the status or the degree of reality associated with difference in his system. This is inevitable in the case of any bhedābheda system which, like the present one, is a form of satkāryavāda or brahmapariņāmavāda. As a matter of fact the persistent claim, made by this system, for the equal reality between the two unequally real spheres-unequally real because the one (viz. of brahman) is supremely independent, or primordial, and the other (viz. of the world and the selves) solely dependent, or derived-makes the system open to the objection of not mere incongruity but of contradiction. This is somewhat surprising in a system which accuses the Jaina view of self-contradiction.
B. (iv) Rāmānuja's Visiştādvaitism
Rāmānuja's philosophy of Višiştādvaita' (the doctrine
1. See The Brahmavādin (Madras, 1900), Vol. V, p. 425 for the E. T.
of a brief but lucid passage, from Rāmānuja's Vedāntadipa, giving a summary sketch of this doctrine. See also Vedāntadīpa (ed. Bhattanathaswamy, Benares, 1902), Avatārikā, pp. 1-8, and the comments on sūtra 2, p. 11 f., and Vedāntasāra (also by Rāmānuja, ed. Bhagavatacharya, Brindavan, 1905) on the same sū., p. 2 ff.
