________________
CHAPTER I
In describing the nature of the latter, empirical ego in Samsára, he also speaks of Samsara being anâdı without a beginning and that the career of the empirical Self is also anâdı without a beginning. Why is the Self found in association with upâdıs in its empirical form? Sankara distinctly mentions that the Self builds a tabernacle of upâdıs by its own karmas The building up of the karmic upadıs takes the form of its corporeal existence where the Self, through its own body as its vehicle, is able to enjoy the fruits of its own karma, good or bad, in the form of happiness and misery.
This association of the Self with the extraneous material upâdıs is thus explained to be the result of avidya or ignorance which is present in the empirical self from time immemorial The attempt to get itself liberated from the bondage of upâdıs or karmic shackles must begin with getting rid of the avrdya When once this avidya is got rid of, the karmas, good or bad, are got uld of and the individual soul realises its own pure nature in the form of Paramâtma or Brahman, as it is generally designated by the Vedantic writers This career of the individual Self sketched by Sankara is exactly parallel to the sketch given by Jaina metaphysics and the theory is quite unaffected by the other Vedânta theory, that the Brahman is the ultimate cause of things and persons The similarity is much more marked when we turn to the Mîmâmsa conception of the Self This is not encumbered with the Vedântic hypothesis of Brahman as the original cause. It freely assumes the Self to be eternal and uncreated. It postulates a plurality of Selves each having its own individual career. This individual Self is present in the beginningless Samsara in association with karmic upâdıs which are material in nature. This association with material upadis is determined by the Self's own conduct according to Dharma or Adharma. Hence, liberation from the upadıs, must be obtained through discarding both Dharma and Adharma. Thus the association of the Self with karmic upades, its liberation from the same, are both explained without bringing in the aid of any extraneous causal agency. In fact both the Mîmâsakas and the Vedantins stoutly repudiate the hypothesis of a creator or an Iswara put forward by the Nyâya Vaisêshika systems in order to
