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18
The Bhāgavata-purāņa
[CH. their dogmas and creeds, and, thus uncontrolled, they descend from the domain of reason to the domain of the purāņic faith of a mythological character.
In describing the special excellences of God, Jiva follows Rāmānuja in holding that He has none of the evil qualities that are found in the world, but possesses all the excellent characters that we can conceive of. In the light of the concept of incomprehensibility (acintya) all these excellent characters are regarded as somehow manifestations of His essential power and therefore identical with Him. The introduction of the supra-logical concept of acintya enables Jiva and other interpreters of the Bhāgavata of his school to indulge in eclecticism more freely than could otherwise have been possible; and thus it is that, though Jiva follows Rāmānuja in admitting ultimate reality to be qualified, he can in the same breath assert that ultimate reality is formless and characterless. Thus he says that, though the followers of Rāmānuja do not accept the view of Brahman as characterless, yet admission of characters naturally presupposes the admission of the characterless also?. The idea of introducing the concept of the supra-logical in order to reconcile the different scriptural texts which describe reality as characterless (nirvišeşa), qualified (višista) and many, can be traced to the introduction of the concept of višeșa in the philosophy of Madhva, already described in a previous chapter, by which Madhva tried to reconcile the concept of monism with that of plurality. The Bengal school of Vaişnavism, introduced by Caitanya, is based principally on the Bhāgavata-purāna, and of the many writers of this school only two are prominent as authors of philosophical treatises, Baladeva Vidyābhūsana and Jiva Gosvāmī. Of these Baladeva has again and again referred to the indebtedness of this school to the philosophy of Madhva, and to the initiation of Caitanya as an ascetic by a follower of the Madhva school of Vaişnavism. Though he was a junior contemporary of Jiva Gosvāmī and a commentator of the latter's Tattva-sandarbha, yet he often reverts to Madhva's doctrine of višesa in reconciling the monistic position with the positions of qualified monism and pluralism. Had he adhered to Jiva's concept of the supra-logical, the
1 yadyapi $i-Rāmānujlyair nirvišeşam brahma na manyate tathāpi saviseşam manyamūnair višeşātiriktam mantavyam eva.
Jiva's Sarva-samvādini, p. 74 (Nityasvarūpa Brahmacări's edition).
