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INTRODUCTION.
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in which Sankara employs it.-If, on the other hand, we, with Râmânuga, understand the word 'mâyâ' to denote a wonderful thing, the Sûtra of course has no bearing whatever on the doctrine of Mâyâ in its later technical sense.
We now turn to the question as to the relation of the individual soul to Brahman. Do the Sûtras indicate anywhere that their author held Sankara's doctrine, according to which the gîva is in reality identical with Brahman, and separated from it, as it were, only by a false surmise due to avidyâ, or do they rather favour the view that the souls, although they have sprung from Brahman, and constitute elements of its nature, yet enjoy a kind of individual existence apart from it? This question is in fact only another aspect of the Mâyâ question, but yet requires a short separate treatment.
In the conspectus I have given it as my opinion that the Sutras in which the size of the individual soul is discussed can hardly be understood in Sankara's sense, and rather seem to favour the opinion, held among others by Râmânuga, that the soul is of minute size. We have further seen that Sutra 18 of the third pâda of the second adhyaya, which describes the soul as 'gña,' is more appropriately understood in the sense assigned to it by Râmânuga; and, again, that the Sûtras which treat of the soul being an agent, can be reconciled with Sankara's views only if supplemented in a way which their text does not appear to authorise.We next have the important Sûtra II, 3, 43 in which the soul is distinctly said to be a part (amsa) of Brahman, and which, as we have already noticed, can be made to fall in with Sankara's views only if amsa is explained, altogether arbitrarily, by' amsa iva,' while Râmânuga is able to take the Sutra as it stands.—We also have already referred to Sûtra 50,'âbhâsa eva ka,' which Sankara interprets as setting forth the so-called pratibimbavâda according to which the individual Self is merely a reflection of the highest Self. But almost every Sûtra-and Sûtra 50 forms no exception-being so obscurely expressed, that viewed by itself it admits of various, often totally opposed, interpretations, the only safe method is to keep in view, in the case of each ambiguous [34]
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