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INTRODUCTION.
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the oldest commentary extant next to Sankara's. It is further to be noted that the sect of the Ramânugas occupies a pre-eminent position among the Vaishnava sects which themselves, in their totality, may claim to be considered the most important among all Hindu sects. The intrinsic value of the Sri-bhashya moreover is--as every student ac. quainted with it will be ready to acknowledge-a very high one; it strikes one throughout as a very solid performance due to a writer of extensive learning and great power of argumentation, and in its polemic parts, directed chiefly against the school of Sankara, it not unfrequently deserves to be called brilliant even. And in addition to all this it shows evident traces of being not the mere outcome of Râmânuga's individual views, but of resting on an old and weighty tradition.
This latter point is clearly of the greatest importance. If it could be demonstrated or even rendered probable only that the oldest bhâshya which we possess, i.e. the Sankara-bhashya, represents an uninterrupted and uniform tradition bridging over the interval between Bådarayana, the reputed author of the Satras, and Sankara; and if, on the other hand, it could be shown that the more modern bhashyas are not supported by old tradition, but are nothing more than bold attempts of clever sectarians to force an old work of generally recognised authority into the service of their individual tenets; there would certainly be no reason for us to raise the question whether the later bhashyas can help us in making out the true meaning of the Satras. All we should have to do in that case would be to accept Sankara's interpretations as they stand, or at the utmost to attempt to make out, if at all possible, by a careful comparison of Sankara's bhashya with the text of the Satras, whether the former in all cases faithfully represents the purport of the latter.
In the most recent book of note which at all enters into the question as to how far we have to accept Sankara as a guide to the right understanding of the Satras (Mr. A. Gough's Philosophy of the Upanishads) the view is maintained (pp. 239 ff.) that Sankara is the generally recognised expositor
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