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XX
VEDÂNTA-SÚTRAS.
importance is sufficiently proved by the three passages quoted. The one quoted last is specially significant as showing that recognised authorities-deemed worthy of being quoted in the Satras--denied that doctrine on which the whole system of Sankara hinges, viz. the doctrine of the absolute identity of the individual soul with Brahman.
Turning next to the Sankara-bhâshya itself, we there also meet with indications that the Vedantins were divided among themselves on important points of dogma. These indications are indeed not numerous: Sankara does not on the whole impress one as an author particularly anxious to strengthen his own case by appeals to ancient authorities, a peculiarity of his which later writers of hostile tendencies have not failed to remark and criticise. But yet more than once Sankara also refers to the opinion of 'another,' viz., commentator of the Satras, and in several places Sankara's commentators explain that the other' meant is the Vritti. kâra (about whom more will be said shortly). Those references as a rule concern minor points of exegesis, and hence throw little or no light on important differences of dogma; but there are two remarks of Sankara's at any rate which are of interest in this connexion. The one is made with reference to Sutras 7-14 of the third pada of the fourth adhyâya ; 'some,' he says there,' declare those Satras, which I look upon as setting forth the siddhanta view, to state merely the purvapaksha;' a difference of opinion which, as we have seen above, affects the important question as to the ultimate fate of those who have not reached the knowledge of the highest Brahman.-And under I, 3, 19 Sankara, after having explained at length that the individual soul as such cannot claim any reality, but is real only in so far as it is identical with Brahman, adds the following words, 'apare tu vadinah pâramarthikam eva gaivam rupam iti manyante asmadîyas ka kekit,' i. e.
other theorisers again, and among them some of ours, are of opinion that the individual soul as such is real.' The term 'ours,' here made use of, can denote only the Aupanishadas or Vedântins, and it thus appears that Sankara himself
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