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The Views Regarding God and the Doctrine of Brahman
making a use of Upanisads.13 On their view a real actorship belongs to prakṛti alone while a soul is merely a bystander devoid of actorship and enjoyership. Strongly pitted against this view were the advocates of the doctrine of Brahman who, pointing out that conceived in whatever manner the element prakṛti is after all something non-conscious, would ask as to how a non-conscious element can create or control the world possessed of such a multifarious and incomprehensible constitution. For such a creation and control there is required some conscious element possessed of an incomprehensible capacity. As this idea gathered strength it also assumed various forms. And it is this idea that is responsible for the composition of Brahmasutra. In it there is refuted with the help of scripture as well as reasoning the doctrine attributing independent actorship to prakṛti and there is demonstrated that chief actorship pertains only to the element Brahman. All the available bhaṣyas of Brahmasutra are unanimous in maintaining that the element Brahman is alone the chief and independent cause of the world, but the commentation undertaken by these bhāṣyas does not end merely with a consideration of the question of causalship. For they have also to elucidate the nature of the so conceived basic cause in a language employing the concept of God. Hence all those who posed such a bhäṣya, however much they might differ among themelves, would, while attributing to the element Brahman the properties appropriate to God, borrow in the course of amplifying these properties of God as conceived by them certain positions and arguments given currency by their rival non-Vedic advocates of ths doctrine of God.
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All the available bhaṣyas of Brahmasutra can be divided into two chief classes. Of these, one class includes only the bhasya composed by Sankara while the other class all those composed by the authors beginning with Bhaskara and coming down to Caitanya. Sankara is an advocate of the doctrine called Kevaladvaita (absolute nondualism). So he is not in favour of attributing ultimate realship to any element other than Brahman; and yet the difficult question before him is that if there exists nothing save Brahman of the form of something eternal-undergoing-no-change then what ought to be the source of a multiplicity and how this multiplicity
13 Sankhyadayah svapakṣasthapanaya vedäntaväkyäny apy udahṛtya svapakṣanugunyenaiva yojayanto vyacakṣate. Teşim yad vyäkhyanam tad vyäkhyānābhasam, na samyagvyäkhyānam ity etavat purvakṛtam, -Brahmasutra Sankarabhaṣya 2.2.1
For a discussion of the relation obtaining between Sankhya philosophy and Upanisad see History of Indian Philosophy' by Belvalkar and Ranade, Vol. 2, pp. 412-30
Sankhyadayas tv astikā nātra prativadinah, Tair bauddhagatabhyupagama vādata eva svasvapratijñātāṇām vedäntärthaikadesänäm pratipädanād iti mantavyam. The passage introducing Vijñānāmṛtabhasya on Brahmasutra 2.1.1
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