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The Views Regarding God and the Doctrine of Brahman
97
unchanged form even in the midst of the transformations undergone by it - seeking to support this position with the help of numerous emprirical illustrations.
True, the texts composed by the pre-Sankara commentators are no more available in full, but the thought-currents represented by them are found preserved, nourished and developed in the different traditions inaug. urated by the later masters. Among these masters, Bhaskara comes first of all. He, treating the element Brahman as something eternal-undergoing-change, attributes to it a multiplicity of capacities and submits that one of these capacities gives rise to the creation-of-the-form-of-things-enjoyed and another one to the creation-of-the-form-of-souls-of-beings-experiencing-enjoyment; again, attributing to Brahman the role of a world-creator, worldsustainer and world-destroyer God and treating it as the material-cause as well as the efficient-cause of the world he refutes rival views as did Sankara. While demonstrating the existence of God Bhaskara too chiefly depends on Upapisads and treats world-creation as that dependent on the acts performed by the mass of living beings. He is of the view that the consciouscum-non-conscious world is different-cum-nondifferent from the element Brabman acting as its material-cause. On his showing each and everything is one from one viewpoint, many from another view point. Thus in one and the same thing both unity and multiplicity are natural as well as real. Just as an ocean, even if one, is also many in the form of its transformations comprising the world on the one hand and souls on the other. These transformations might well be transitory in duration, but that does not turn them into something unreal. Thus while attributing Godship to Brahman Bhāskara, unlike Sankara, was not compelled to take recourse to the conc. ept of māyā; for he has attributed a multiplicity of inherent capacities to Brabman itself.
In this connection it too is noteworthy that just as the Sānkhya derives from the original prakịti tanmātras etc. in this form of a creation-to-beenjoyed and buddhi, ahankara etc. in the form of a creation-to-act-as-enjoyer, similarly does Bhāskara derive the same from the original Brahman itself.15
Though in the times of Upanişads too the prestige of the nondualist idea was growing and getting rooted yet on the other hand the dualist thinkers flourishing both within and outside the circle of those following Up. anisads – were of course clearly coming out in support of the dualist idea.
15 See Dasagupta's 'History of Indian Philosophy' Vol. III, p. 6; also Bhāskarabhāsya
(Brahmasūtra) 2.1.14, p. 97.
13
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