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Topics of Vallabha Vedānta If the nature of the world be regarded as due to avidyā, one may naturally think, to whom does the avidyā belong? Brahman (according to the Sankarites) being qualityless, avidyā cannot be a quality of Brahman. Brahman Himself cannot be avidyā, because avidyā is the cause of it. If avidyā is regarded as obscuring the right knowledge of anything, then the object of which the right knowledge is obscured must be demonstrated. Again, the Sankarites hold that the jīva is a reflection of Brahman on avidyā. If that is so, then the qualities of the java are due to avidyā as the impurities of a reflection are due to the impurity of the mirror. If that is so, the jīva being a product of the avidyā, the latter cannot belong to the former. In the Vallabha view the illusion of the individual is due to the will of God.
Again, the avidyā of the Sankarites is defined as different from eing and non-being; but no such category is known to anybody, because it involves self-contradiction. Now the Sankarites say that the falsity of the world consists in its indefinableness; in reality this is not falsity--if it were so, Brahman Himself would have been false. The śruti texts say that He cannot be described by speech, thought or mind. It cannot be said that Brahman can be defined as being; for it is said in the text that He is neither being nor nonbeing (na sat tan nāsad ity ucyate). Again, the world cannot be regarded as transformation (vikāra); for, if it is a vikāra, one must point out that of which it is a vikāra; it cannot be of Brahman, because Brahman is changeless; it cannot be of anything else, since everything except Brahman is changeable.
In the Vallabha view the world is not false, and God is regarded as the samavāyi and nimitta-kārana of it, as has been described above. Samavāyi-kārana is conceived as pervading all kinds of existence, just as earth pervades the jug; but, unlike the jug, there is no transformation or change (vikāra) of God, because, unlike the earth, God has will. The apparent contradiction, that the world possessed of quality and characters cannot be identified with Brahman, is invalid, because the nature of Brahman can only be determined from the scriptural texts, and they unquestionably declare that Brahman has the power of becoming everything.
In the Bhedābheda-svarūpa-nirnaya Puruşottama says that according to the satkāryavāda view of the Vedānta all things are existent in the Brahman from the beginning. The jīvas also, being
