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II ADHYÂYA, 2 PÂDA, 43.
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in agreement with the Såtvata law.'-How then could these utterances of Bådarayana, the foremost among all those who understand the teaching of the Veda, be reconciled with the view that in the. Satras he maintains the non-authoritativeness of the Satvata doctrine, the purport of which is to teach the worship of, and meditation on, Vasudeva, who is none other than the highest Brahman known from the Vedanta-texts ?
But other passages in the Mahabharata, such as .There is the Sankhya, the Yoga, the Pankaratra, the Vedas, and the Pasupata doctrine; do all these rest on one and the same basis, or on different ones ?' and so on, declare that the Sankhya and other doctrines also are worthy of regard, while yet in the Sârîraka Satras those very same doctrines are formally refuted. Why, therefore, should not the same hold good in the case of the Bhagavata doctrine ? —Not so, we reply. In the Mahabharata also Bådarayana applies. to the Sankhya and other doctrines the same style of reasoning as in the Satras. The question, asked in the passage quoted, means 'Do the Sankhya, the Yoga, the Pasupata, and the Pankaratra set forth one and the same reality, or different ones? If the former, what is that reality? If the latter, they convey contradictory doctrines, and, as reality is not something which may be optionally assumed to be either such or such, one of those doctrines only can be acknowledged as authoritative, and the question then arises which is to be so acknowledged ?'The answer to the question is given in the passage beginning, 'Know, O royal Sage, all those different views. The promulgator of the Sankhya is Kapila,' &c. Here the human origin of the Sankhya, Yoga, and Påsupata is established on the ground of their having been produced by Kapila, Hiranyagarbha, and Pasupati. Next the clause 'Aparantatamas is said to be the teacher of the Vedas' intimates the non-human character of the Vedas; and finally the clause of the whole Pañkaratra, Narayana himself is the promulgator' declares that Narayana himself revealed the Pañkarâtra doctrine. The connected purport of these different clauses is as follows. As the systems [48]
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