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104
VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
that Brahman is knowledge, itself shines forth in consequence of the self-luminous nature of Brahman, and hence we have no right to make a distinction between that knowledge which constitutes Brahman's nature, and that of which that nature is the object, and to maintain that the latter only is antagonistic to Nescience.-Moreover (and this explains the third sloka), according to your own view Brahman, which is mere consciousness, cannot be the object of another consciousness, and hence there is no knowledge which has Brahman for its object. If, therefore, knowledge is contradictory to non-knowledge (Nescience), Brahman itself must be contradictory to it, and hence cannot be its substrate. Shells (mistaken for silver) and the like which by themselves are incapable of throwing light upon their own true nature are not contradictory to non-knowledge of themselves, and depend, for the termination of that nonknowledge, on another knowledge (viz. on the knowledge of an intelligent being); Brahman, on the other hand, whose essential nature is established by its own conscious ness, is contradictorily opposed to non-knowledge of itself, and hence does not depend, for the termination of that nonknowledge, on some other knowledge. If our opponent should argue that the knowledge of the falsity of whatever is other than Brahman is contradictory to non-knowledge, we ask whether this knowledge of the falsity of what is other than Brahman is contradictory to the nonknowledge of the true nature of Brahman, or to that nonknowledge which consists in the view of the reality of the apparent world. The former alternative is inadmissible ; because the cognition of the falsity of what is other than Brahman has a different object from the non-knowledge of Brahman's true nature) and therefore cannot be contradictory to it; for knowledge and non-knowledge are contradictory in so far only as they refer to one and the same object. And with regard to the latter alternative we point out that the knowledge of the falsity of the world is contradictory to the non-knowledge which consists in the view of the reality of the world ; the former knowledge therefore sublates the latter non-knowledge only, while
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