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CHAPTER III
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diverse-can, as it has been repeatedly pointed out, result in a justly comprehensive scheme of reality in which the principle of difference, and all that it implies, can enjoy an intrinsically real and co-ordinate status. Despite its professions to the contrary, Rāmānuja's Viśistādvaitism must be counted among such systems, for it holds that brahman is the supreme reality and cit and acit are, despite their supposedly distinctive status of existence, real only in so far as they derive their reality from brahman. Under this scheme the course of reality becomes a one-way traffic—that is, one in which reality flows only from the infinite absolute to the so-called real and finite world and the selves—but not a genuinely comprehensive synthesis resulting from an interaction of the independent, but complimentary, elements of identity and difference.
Thus there can be little doubt that in Rāmānuja's philosophy, identity, represented by brahman, is, as shown in the present account, the primary principle; and difference, represented by the modal elements of cit and acit, is the secondary principle having brahman for its source and
1. That brahman is, strictly speaking (vastutastu), the only real
principle (ekameva), in višiştādvaita as in the other schools of Vedānta (vedāntānām) in the opinion of Śrīnivāsa : vastutastu vedāntānāṁ cidacidviśiştam advaitam ekameva brahmeti tātparyam/ ata eva cidacidviśiştaṁ brahmaikam iti upakramya tameva prakāram nirūpitavān/ataḥ cidacidviśişto.... nārāyaṇa evaikam tattvam iti vićişțădvaitavādināṁ darśanam iti siddham // śrīnivāsa's Yatindramatadīpikā, p. 47; see also p. 39, and cf. evam sarvāvasthāvasthitacidacidvastusariratayā tatprakāraḥ paramapuruşa eva kāryāvasthakāraṇāvasthajagadrūpena avasthita iti..../ Śrībhāşya (S. Abhyankar's edn., text, p. 119). See also Vedāntasāra, pp. 8-9.
