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The Views Regarding God and the Doctrine of Brahman
the help of inference alone. Lastly, on his view world-creation is some. thing dependent on the acts performed by the mass of living beings 18
Vallabhacārya too in his bhaṣya makes an effort to establish Brahman in the form of God. On an outward view this effort looks somewhat different from that made by other masters, but in fact his procedure is not basically different from that followed by Ramauuja etc. Being an advocate of the doctrine called Suddhadvaita (=pure nondualism) Vallabhācārya con. siders Brahman to be of the form of the world and the world to be of the form of Brahman; at the same time, he demonstrates the world to be something ultimately real. While saying that God of the form of Brahman is a cause of the world he employs a terminology different from that employed by the other earlier masters. Thus he says that God is not the material cause of the world but its samavayi-cause. And his definition of a samavayi-cause is different from that offered by the Nyaya-Vaiseṣika. He too establishes the concept of Brahman chiefly with the help of the means of valid cognition called scripture and considers world-creation to be something dependent on the acts performed by the mass of living beings; and yet he also preserves the full independence of God's desire or playful activity.
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Vallabhācārya has raised the difficulty that if the element God is of the form of existence, consciousness and bliss then in this world too which is His effect or transformation there ought to be experienced these three qualities belonging to God who is of the form of a samavayi-cause of this world but that in both the non-conscious and conscious world-sectors there is commonly experienced only the quality existence while in the world-sector comprising souls there is additionally experienced consciousness and that too in different degrees. If there obtains non-difference between God or Brahman on the one hand and the world on the other or if the world be an effect with God acting as its samavayi-cause, then this effect must eqally exhibit all the qulalties characteristic of its samavayicause. But as a matter of fact the two are not experienced as commonly exhibiting these qualities. Why is all this? This question has been answered by him in his bhāṣya on Brahmasutra 1.1.3-in brief but in an intelligible fashion; and this brief answer has been elaborated by Purusotta maji who commented on the bhāṣya. Thus he says that if the qualities existence etc. belonging to Brahman which is of the form of the samavā. yi-cause of the world are found to be becoming manifest in different degrees in the world which is of the form of the effect then the reason for that lies in the difference of degrees exhibited by the concerned remo
18 See Dasagupta ibid. pp. 445-95; also Vijñānāmṛtabhāṣya 1.1.2; 1.1.4; 2.1.32
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