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xix] Rāmānuja, Venkațanātha and Lokācārya on God 157 quire new qualities. The present state of the world also represents prakrti in a particular state wherein it has acquired the qualities which we note in the phenomenal world of ours.
We have seen before that the existence of īśvara was inferred by Yāmuna on Nyāya lines. But Rāmānuja thinks that there is as much to be said in favour of the existence as against it. Thus he says that, even supposing that the hills, etc., are effects, it cannot be said that they were all created by one person; for even all jugs are not made by the same person; Išvara may also be denied, after the Sāmkhya mode, and it may be imagined that in accordance with the Karma of men the world arose out of a combination of the original guņas. There is thus as much to be said against the existence of īśvara as in favour of it. Rāmānuja holds that Išvara cannot be proved by inference, but is to be admitted on the authority of the sacred texts". The Nyāya and Yoga, moreover, conceived īśvara to be only the nimitta-kāraña, or instrumental cause; but according to Rāmānuja īśvara is all-pervading in all space and in all time. This all-pervasiveness of God does not mean that His reality is the only reality everywhere, or that He is identical with the world-reality, and all else is false. It means, as Sudarsanācārya has said in his Sruta-prakāśikā on the Rāmānuja-bhāsya, 2nd sūtra, that there is no measure with which He may be limited by any spatial relation. Varada and Nārāyaṇa, however, and Venkațanātha, agree in interpreting all-pervasiveness as the absence of any limit to His good qualities (iyad-gunaka iti paricchedarahitaḥ)”. There is nothing else than Isvara's body, so by His body also he may be conceived as pervading the whole world. Thus, īśvara is not only nimitta-kārana but also upādāna-kāraṇa, or material cause as well. Venkața establishes in some detail that the highest īśvara is called Nārāyaṇa and His power, as presiding over matter and souls, is called Lakşmi. Išvara has His manas, and His eternal senses do not require any body or organs for their manifestation. Venkața also mentions three modified forms of manifestation of Lord Vāsudeva, namely Samkarşaņa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. This vyūha doctrine of the Pañcarātra has been briefly discussed in Varavara's bhāsya on the Tattva-traya of Lokācārya. These three, Samkarşaņa, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha,
1 See Rāmānuja's Bhāsya, 3rd sūtra. 2 See Nyāya-siddhāñjana of Venkatanātha.
