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194 Philosophy of the Rāmānuja School of Thought [CH. narrowed by the limitations of the mind substance (antaḥkaranopādhy-avacchinna). When it is said that jīva is a part (amsa) of Brahman, it is neither in the sense of part or of cause that the word “amsa" is used, but in the technical sense of being limited by the limitation of mind. This limitation is not false or unreal, and it is on account of it that the individual souls are atomic. According to Rāmānuja “difference" is felt as a result of ignorance and the difference is therefore unreal. With Rāmānuja the identity of Brahman with the individual souls is the last word. The apparent difference of imperfection, finiteness, etc., between the individual souls and the perfection and infiniteness of Brahman is due to ignorance (avidyā), and is found to be false as soon as the souls realize themselves to be forming the body of Brahman itself. “Difference" as such has no reality according to Rāmānuja, but only modifies and determines the character of the identical subject to which it refers. The subject and its character are identical. Bhāskara considers identity and difference as two modes, both of which are alike independently true, though they are correlated to each other. In criticism of Bhāskara it is said that, if the limitations of Brahman were also true, then they would wholly limit Brahman, since it has no parts, and thus it would be polluted in its entirety. This objection to Bhāskara's view in some of its subtle aspects is made with dialectical skill by Rāmānujal. But it does not appear that it has much force against Bhāskara, if we admit his logical claim that unity and plurality, cause and effect, are two modes of existence of the same reality and that both these forms are equally real. It does not seem that the logical position of Bhāskara has been sufficiently refuted.
Rāmānuja also speaks of Brahman as being identical with individual souls or the material world and yet different therefrom, but only in the sense in which a character or a part may be said to be at once identical with and different from the substance possessing the character or the whole to which the part is said to belong. The individual souls and the inanimate creation cannot stand by themselves independently, but only as parts of Brahman. So from the fact that they are parts of Brahman their identity (abheda) with Brahman becomes as primary as their difference (bheda), inasmuch
i Rāmānuja's Bhāşya, pp. 265, 266, with the Śruta-prakāśikā, Nirnayasāgara Press, Bombay. 1916.
