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PROLEGOMENA TO PRAKRITICA et JAINICA
The universe again is said by some Brāhmaṇas and Śramaņas to have been produced from the primeval egg and that He (Brahmā) created the things.63 Some say, 64 that the knowledge of the highest authority is unlimited. Harşakula and Milānka argue that that which has no limit in time and space is called unlimited by some teachers; but those who posses a knowledge of this unlimited by means of super-sensual vision do not thereby necessarily become omniscient. The meaning appears to be that the Vedāntin's idea of the Absolute is that it transcends knowledge and that one who knows the Absolute becomes, as it were, the Absolute himself, both the ideas being very frequent in the Upanişads. The Jainas however, contend that those who possess a knowledge of the Absolute as a transcendental Being do not thereby themselves become entitled to be called omniscient. The text goes on to say that the same philosopher holds that the knowledge is limited in every way. Harşakula and Sīlānka regard these two apparently contradictory views to belong to the same philosophers, and solve the difficulty by taking the latter view to allude to Brahma's sleep for a thousand years alternating with his wakefulness for another thousand years during which he is unconscious and conscious respectively and so the knowledge is both limited and unlimited. The context of the verse is that the Nirgrantha ascetics should know the ordinary views of the common people for some of them say things which are the outcome of a wrong understanding, and as an illustration mentions apparently contradictory views held by Vedāntins and Purānists.
In Adda's discussions one man appears and says that he and his predecessor (whom we have already identified as an adherent of Brahmanism) follow very much the same
63. Sūt.S. I.i.3.8. 64. Sut.S. I.i.4.7. 65. Sat.S. II. 6.46–47
