Book Title: History of Indian Philosophy
Author(s): Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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Page 2391
________________ XXXVI] 79 The Nature of Brahman regarded as being due to the grace of God. So, from one point of view the laws of the world of appearance may be regarded as natural laws, while from another all the natural laws may be regarded as being the manifestations of the grace of God. It may be urged that if Lord Siva is all-merciful why does He not remove the sorrows of all beings by liberating them? To this question it may be said that it is only when, by the deeds of the persons, the veil of ignorance and impurity is removed that the ever-flowing mercy of God manifests itself in liberating the person. Thus there is a twofold action, one by the person himself and the other by the extension of mercy on the part of God in consonance with his actions. Again, the dissolution of the world of appearance is not a magical disappearance, but rather the return of the grosser nature of the prakặti or primal matter into its subtle nature of the same prakyti. The world as a whole is not illusion, but it had at one time manifested itself in a grosser form of apparent reality, and in the end it will again return into the subtle nature of the cosmic matter or prakşti. This return into the nature of the subtle prakrti is due to the conjoint actions of all animate beings as favoured by the grace of God. The second sūtra, which describes or defines Brahman as that from which all things have come into being, into which all things will ultimately return, and wherein all things are maintained, regards these qualities of production, maintenance, and dissolution of all things, according to Srīkaņtha as interpreted by Appaya, as being the final determinant causal aspect, both material and instrumental, by virtue of which the nature of Brahman as God or Isvara can be inferred. So according to Śrīkantha and Appaya this sūtra 'janmādy-asya yataḥ' should be regarded as a statement of infallible inference of the nature of Brahman. Sankara in his commentary had definitely pointed out that those who regard Isvara or God as the cause of all things and beings interpret this sūtra as an example of inference, by which the unlimited nature of Brahman could be directly argued; and that such a definition, in that it points out the reasons, is sufficient description, not too wide nor too narrow. Therefore, by this argument one can understand the Brahman as being the supreme and unlimited Lord of the whole of the material and spiritual universe. Sankara definitely

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