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Dialectical criticism against the Sankara School 317
down; if it be non-different, then also on the one hand Brahman could not free itself from it and on the other hand there could be no evolution of the avidya which has merged itself in the nature of the Brahman, into the various forms of egoism, passions, etc. If this avidyā be regarded as false and therefore incapable of binding the free nature of Brahman, the objection may still be urged that, if this falsehood covers the nature of Brahman, how can it regain its self-luminosity; and if it cannot do so, that would mean its destruction, for self-luminosity is the very nature of Brahman. If the avidya stands as an independent entity and covers the nature of Brahman, then it would be difficult to conceive how the existence of a real entity can be destroyed by mere knowledge. According to Rāmānuja's view, however, knowledge is a quality or a characteristic of Brahman by which other things are known by it; experience also shows that a knower reveals the objects by his knowledge, and thus knowledge is a characteristic quality of the knower by which the objects are known.
Nineteenth Objection. In refuting the view of Sankara that ignorance or avidyā rests in Brahman, Venkața tries to clarify the concept of ajñāna. He says that ajñāna here cannot mean the absolute negation of the capacity of being the knower; for this capacity, being the essence of Brahman, cannot be absent. It (ajñāna) cannot also mean the ignorance that precedes the rise of any cognition, for the Sankarites do not admit knowledge as a quality or a characteristic of Brahman; nor can it mean the negation of any particular knowledge, for the Brahman-consciousness is the only consciousness admitted by the Sankarites. This ajñāna cannot also be regarded as the absence of knowledge, since it is admitted to be a positive entity. The ajñāna which can be removed by knowledge must belong to the same knower who has the knowledge and must refer to the specific object regarding which there was absence of knowledge. Now since Brahman is not admitted by the Sankarites to be knower, it is impossible that any ajñāna could be associated with it. The view that is held by the members of the Ramanuja school is that the individual knowers possess ignorance in so far as they are ignorant of their real nature as self-luminous entities, and in so far as they associate themselves with their bodies, their senses, their passions, and other prejudices and ideas. When they happen to discover their
