________________
xxi] A General Idea of Nimbārka's Philosophy 409 as pure consciousness has no intrinsic opposition to ajñāna, for there can be no knowledge which is not opposed to ignorance. Therefore the Sankarites are not in a position to demonstrate any entity which they mean by the intuition “I” in “I am ignorant.”
'The final conclusion from the Nimbārka point of view therefore is that it is inadmissible to accept any ajñāna as a world-principle producing the world-appearance by working in co-operation with the Brahman. The ajñāna or ignorance is a quality of individual beings or selves who are by nature different from Brahman but are under its complete domination. They are eternal parts of it, atomic in nature, and are of limited powers. Being associated with beginningless chains of karma they are naturally largely blinded in their outlook on knowledgel
The Sankarites affirm that, through habitual failure in distinguishing between the real nature of the self and the not-self, mis-perceptions, misapprehensions and illusions occur. The objection of Anantarāma against such an explanation is that such a failure cannot be attributed either to Brahman or to ajñāna. And since all other entities are but later products of illusion, they cannot be responsible for producing the illusion?
In his commentary Sankara had said that the pure consciousness was not absolutely undemonstrable, since it was constantly being referred to by our ego-intuitions. To this the objection that naturally arises is that the entity referred to by our ego-intuitions cannot be pure consciousness; for then the pure consciousness would have the characteristic of an ego-a view which is favourable to the Nimbārka but absolutely unacceptable to the Sankarites. If it is held to be illusory, then it has to be admitted that the egointuition appears when there is an illusion. But by supposition the illusion can only occur when there is an ego-intuition? Here is then a reasoning in a circle. The defence that reasoning in a circle can be avoided on the supposition that the illusory imposition is beginningless is also unavailing. For the supposition that illusions as such are beginningless is false, as it is well known that illusions
paramā-tma-bhinno'lpa-saktis tad-adhinah sanātanas tad-amsa-bhūto' mīdi-kurmä-tmikā-ridyā-r'rta-dharma-bhūtā-jñānojiva-kşetrajñā-di-sabda-bhidhevas tat-pratyayā-śraya iti. Vedānta-tattva-bodha, p. 12.
! Ibid. p. 13.
3 adhyastattre tu adhyāse sati bhāsamānatvam, tasmin sati sa ity anyonyaśruva-dosah. Ibid. p. 14.
