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INTRODUCTION
105
men, etc., while the difference between these classes of being are due to the different merit belonging to the individual souls.” In this passage Sankara appears to drop out the Advaitic doctrine that the Brahma is the material cause or the Upadana Karana of the individual souls. The individual souls are assumed to subsist with all their individual merits and demerits irrespective of the occurrence of Pralaya and fresh creation. By bringing in the analogy of Parjanya, he converts the first cause of Brahma to Nimitta Kartā like the potter making a pot out of clay. This attitude is in conflict with the general advaitic attitude. In order to save the Brahma from the responsibility of being the author of inequality existing in the world, he has to assume the independent reality of the individual souls. So far Sankara entirely agrees with the Jaina attitude represented by Kundakunda
While maintaining that the confusion of the Self with the Non-Self constitutes the initial mithya or the error, both the thinkers part company in further elaborations of their systems. It is certainly an error to identify the Self with the sense-characteristics which are peculiar to the physical body because the sense qualities of colour, taste and smell have nothing to do with the nature of the Self. Birth, old age, decay and death are all characteristics alien to the conscious Self. Social and economic distinction in the individual also pertain to the body and cannot be transferred to the Self. In short the Self is a Cetana entity and the non-Self is an Acetana entity, which is the object of sense perception. Both Sankara and Kundakunda therefore maintain, one following the tradition of Vedantism and the other following the tradition of Jainism, that it is mithya to speak of the body as Self. Kundakunda stops with this statement and Saakara goes beyond this. For the latter it is not only an error to confuse Self with the body, the body itself becomes mithya or illusion. Therefore Kundak unda has to call, Halt! It is only the false identification that is error. The nonSelf is not mithya or illusion. This is the fundamental difference between the two systems of metaphysics, Saukara's Advaitism and Sri Kundakunda's Jaina metaphysics. Sarkara seems to forget his own statement in the introduction of the fundamental distinction between the Self and the Non-Self when he comes to propound his theory of unqualified monism, by denying the reality of external world itself.
NATURE AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD The reality of the external world is admitted by the Jaina metaphysics as in the case of Sankhya philosophy. The Upanişadic thought also maintains the reality of the external world in spite of its pantheistic monism. The other commentators of Vedanta Sūtras, besides Sankara also maintain the reality of the external world. Sankara himself while contradicting the Buddhistic school of Vijñānavada accepts the doctrine of the reality of the external world in refuting the Buddhistic school. The Vijäänavada school of the Buddhistic philosophy which maintains that the external reality is
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